Custom Pin-Back Buttons for Bayport, New York

Volunteer committees place most of the orders that look like this one: four or five neighbours who have taken on a charity walk between them, a logo somebody's cousin drew, a headcount that keeps moving, and a fixed pot of money that has to cover a giveaway without swallowing the cause it was raised for. What they want is one wearable thing every participant gets, legible from a few feet away, with a total they can put in front of a treasurer without hedging. If that is the job in front of you in Bayport, this page was written for it rather than for a general shopper browsing sizes.

Two hamlets a single mile apart

Most places we write about have a nearest neighbour three or four miles off, far enough that an event in one is plainly an event in one. Here the gap is a flat 1.0 miles to Blue Point, which is tight enough that a fundraiser rarely respects the boundary at all. Volunteers, sponsors and walkers routinely come from both sides of it, and nobody running the thing thinks of it as two events with two supply problems. Sayville is 1.9 miles out, Patchogue 2.3, North Patchogue 2.8 and West Sayville 3.1, so the practical catchment for a Suffolk County charity walk based in Bayport is a handful of hamlets almost on top of each other.

That has one consequence worth acting on. When a committee spans two hamlets, the instinct is often to let each side handle its own people and place its own order. Resist it. The buttons are priced per button, and the shipping charge is calculated once against the total number of buttons on the order. Splitting a combined headcount into two orders does not lower the price of anything, and it adds a second shipping charge for no gain.

In straight line terms this is 20.2 miles south east of the shop, which is a figure taken off a map rather than a description of any route.

What an order of forty actually comes to

Here is a real total rather than a range. Forty of the 2.25 inch button at $1.99 each is $79.60 in buttons. Flat shipping on an order of that size is $9.99, so the order stands at $89.59 before tax. That is the whole arithmetic. There is no setup charge folded in somewhere else and no per design fee waiting at the end.

A committee can therefore work backwards from a budget with confidence: take the money available, subtract the shipping tier your headcount falls into, divide what is left by the per button price for the size you want, and that is your count.

The rate ladder, counted per size

This is the part that surprises people who have priced promotional goods before, so it is worth stating plainly. The three steps are 100, 250 and 500, counted per size. Forty and four hundred are not the same rate any more: forty pays the listed rate and four hundred pays 25 percent under the listed rate. Rounding a count up pays off when it crosses 100, 250 or 500 of the same size. Anywhere else it just buys you buttons you did not need.

The five prices are the five prices: $1.89 each for the 1.5 inch, $1.99 each for the 2.25 inch, $2.49 each for the 3 inch. A growing count moves the rate band for that size first and the shipping tier second.

Where the shipping tiers change

Shipping is a flat charge set by the total number of buttons on the order, not by weight and not by size. Up to 100 buttons it is $9.99. Up to 250 it is $14.99. Up to 500 it is $19.99. Up to 1000 it is $24.99.

Because the charge is flat inside each band, the only place it matters is at the edges. An order of exactly 100 buttons pays $9.99. An order of 101 pays $14.99, and so does an order of 250. A committee expecting a round hundred walkers is sitting directly on a boundary, and adding one or two spare buttons moves the whole order up a tier. If you genuinely need the spares, take them, because another 149 buttons would cost you nothing further in shipping. If you do not, stopping at the hundred keeps the lower charge.

Choosing among the five sizes

There are five round sizes and nothing else. The 1.5 inch suits a mark or a monogram meant to sit unobtrusively on a lapel or a bag strap. The 2.25 inch is the common choice for a walk giveaway because it holds a logo and a short line of text together at a size a bystander can actually read. The 3 inch is a statement piece: one large graphic, a name in big letters, a photo that deserves the room. At the small end the 1 inch is $1.49 and the 1.25 inch is $1.69, which are the two worth looking at when the count is high and the design is simple.

Size sets the starting rate and the count sets the discount, so the size decision is still mostly about how much artwork has to fit. Work out what the artwork needs, then multiply.

Designing for a circle

Everything prints in full colour from artwork you upload, so photographs, gradients and hand drawn work are all fair game. The two things to watch are the crop and the edge. A square logo has to sit inside a circle, so anything in the corners of the original falls outside the printed area. And because the print carries around the curve of the button face, text or a border pushed close to the outer boundary can end up partly on the side rather than facing forward. Pull the important content toward the middle and leave yourself a margin.

One idea per button reads better than three. For a fundraiser that usually means the cause name and a single supporting line, or the logo alone at a size that carries. The same file works across all five sizes, but small type on the 3 inch becomes very small type on the 1.5 inch.

Four committees, four different problems

If you are organising the walk itself, your headcount is your enemy and your budget is fixed. Decide the size first, check which shipping band your expected number lands in, and use the printed rate ladder to set the count rather than negotiating with yourself over quantity.

If you are the parents group funding something for a school, you probably need two designs rather than one: the event on the front of the order and a plainer version for the people staffing the tables. Two designs sit happily on the same order, and the total button count across both is what sets the shipping tier.

If you are running a memorial fund, the artwork is usually a photograph and the 3 inch size exists for exactly that. Give the image room, keep any dates or names away from the outer edge, and let the picture do the work.

If you are a local business underwriting the giveaway for a Bayport cause, you are effectively buying the whole print run. Ask for the count and the size in writing before you commit, run the arithmetic above, and you will know your exposure to the dollar.

Questions that come up

Our fundraiser covers both Bayport and Blue Point. Should that be one order or two? One. Keeping it on one order matters twice now, once for the single shipping charge and once for the combined count that sets each size's rate.

If our Bayport walk grows, does ordering more buttons bring the price each down? No. A hundred of one size is the first point where the per button figure drops. One ladder is counted inside a size and the other across the whole order, which is why they do not step together.

We are expecting about a hundred walkers in Bayport. Does going slightly over matter? Yes, at that exact number. One hundred buttons ships at $9.99 and 101 ships at $14.99. If you want spares, note that the same $14.99 covers you all the way to 250, so there is no point stopping at 105.

Can sponsors of a Bayport event have their own separate design on the same order? Yes. Different designs can sit on one order. Each design is its own artwork, the per button price is the same for all of them, and the shipping tier is set by the combined number of buttons.

Which size makes the most sense for a Bayport charity walk giveaway? The 2.25 inch at $1.99 is the usual pick, because it fits a logo and a line of text at a size people can read across a table. Go to the 3 inch at $2.49 if the artwork is a photograph, or down to the 1.5 inch at $1.89 if the design is just a mark.