Custom Pin-Back Buttons for Bellmore, New York

Wantagh sits one mile away and Merrick sits 1.2 miles off in the other direction, with Seaford about 2.2 miles on from there, which means Bellmore is hemmed in by three other places we cover inside a span most people would think of as a single errand. That tight spacing changes how an order gets planned more than you would expect. A band that plays a room in one of those places on Friday and a different room in another on Saturday is not really moving between towns, it is moving between two rooms, and the merch box travels with it either way. So the sensible unit is not one order per venue. It is one order, one box, everything in it.

A cluster you can cover in one order

Wantagh at 1.0 miles and Merrick at 1.2 miles are close enough that splitting an order across them makes no sense. Two smaller orders cost you twice: two shipping charges, and two counts too small to reach a band that one order might have reached. Put every design and every size onto a single order and let the box do the travelling. The same logic pulls in Seaford at 2.2 miles. If your run of shows over a month touches two or three of those rooms, count the total number of buttons you actually need across all of them, not the number you need for the next one, and order that total once.

This also matters for what you bring to a table. Merch people tend to under-order the thing that moves and over-order the thing that does not, and buttons usually move, because they are what somebody picks up when they do not want a shirt. Counting across a cluster of dates rather than a single date is the practical fix.

Where we are from you

The shop is 17.2 miles from Bellmore in a straight line, to the north east. That is a real distance rather than a figure of speech, and it is measured point to point, not along any road. We mention it because people ask, and because it tells you whether picking an order up yourself is a reasonable thing to consider or whether you would rather have the box arrive. Both are options. Neither one changes what a button costs.

Five sizes, and what each one is for

We make round pin-back buttons in five sizes and nothing else: 1 inch, 1.25 inch, 1.5 inch, 2.25 inch and 3 inch. The 1.5 inch is the workhorse for a merch table. It takes a logo, a short band name, a single bold mark, and it is the size people buy three of. The 2.25 inch gives you room for a name plus a line of text, or artwork with more than one element in it, and it reads from a little further away on a jacket. The 3 inch is a poster in miniature. It will carry album art, a tour date list, an illustration with actual detail in it. Bands often run the small size as the volume item and the largest size as the one they charge more for.

All five are full colour, printed from artwork you upload. There is no restriction on how many colours you use and no surcharge tied to the artwork itself.

What a button costs at your count

Crossing 100 of a size takes 20 percent off every one of them, not just the hundredth. You do not have to ask for the discount, because the count applies it.

• The 1 inch $1.49 each
• The 1.25 inch $1.69 each
• The 1.5 inch $1.89 each
• The 2.25 inch $1.99 each
• The 3 inch $2.49 each

Ten of the 1.5 inch cost $1.89 each. A thousand of the 1.5 inch is quoted rather than priced automatically, and 999 of them are $1.32 each. This is worth stating plainly because a lot of print pricing works the other way and people plan around a discount that is not there. You do not need to inflate a count to reach a better rate. Order the number you actually want.

A worked order, 400 at 1.5 inch

Say you want 400 of the 1.5 inch button. At $1.42 each, 25 percent off because the count clears 250, that is $568.00 in buttons. Flat shipping for an order of that size is $19.99, so the order comes to $587.99 before tax. Nothing in that figure is quantity dependent except the shipping tier.

Shipping tiers and where the boundaries fall

Shipping is flat and set by the total number of buttons on the order, all sizes counted together.

• up to 100 $9.99
• up to 250 $14.99
• up to 500 $19.99
• up to 1000 $24.99

The boundaries are worth a look before you submit. An order of 260 buttons pays $19.99 in shipping, the same as the 400 button order above, because both land in the same tier. If your real need is 260 and you were going to pad it anyway, the 140 extra buttons up to 500 do not change the shipping line at all. They still cost the full published rate each, so this is not a discount and you should not treat it as one. It is simply that the shipping charge has already been paid for that range.

Sending us your artwork

Upload the art with your order. Design each size separately if the artwork has text in it, because a line that reads cleanly at 3 inch can close up at 1.5 inch. Leave your important elements away from the outer edge, since the printed circle wraps around the rim of the button and anything sitting right at the boundary ends up on the curve rather than on the face.

Who tends to order these

If you play solo. One design, one size, a modest count. 60 pays the listed rate, and 600 pays 30 percent under the listed rate.

If you are one of four bands on a bill. Buttons are the item you can hand to somebody standing at the table while another band loads in. A person who will not buy a shirt from a band they just heard for the first time will often take a button.

If you just finished a record. This is the case for the 3 inch. Album art at that size is legible, and it works as the higher priced item next to a stack of the small ones.

If you run the merch table for somebody else. Order across every date at once, count all sizes together for the shipping tier, and keep the artwork files organised by size so a reorder is a matter of uploading the same files again.

Questions we hear

We play a room here and another in Wantagh the same weekend. Does a Bellmore band need two separate orders for that? No. Put the whole count on one order. The per button figure is set by the size and by how many of that size you order.

Can a Bellmore customer pick the order up instead of having it shipped? Yes. Local pickup is free, and choosing it removes the shipping charge from the order entirely. The per button price stays the same.

We want 400 buttons for a show in Bellmore. Does the price per button drop at 400? It does now. 400 of the 1.5 inch is $1.42 each rather than $1.89, because 400 sits in the 250 to 499 band. It is $1.42 each, which is the 250 to 499 rate, for the 1.5 inch at 400 and at every other quantity. The thresholds are 100, 250 and 500 of one size, and they are the only places the rate moves.

Our Bellmore order came to 260 buttons and the shipping went up. Why? The tiers are set by total button count. At 250 the charge is $14.99 and from 251 through 500 it is $19.99, so 260 lands in the next tier. Anything up to 500 pays that same $19.99.

Can a Bellmore order include more than one design and more than one size? Yes. Mix as many designs and all five sizes on a single order. Each button is priced at its own size rate, and the shipping tier is worked out from the combined count of everything on the order.