Custom Buttons for Blue Point, New York

Somebody at work gets handed the awareness month. Usually it is one person on a committee, or an office manager who said yes in a meeting and now owns the whole thing: a colour, a ribbon, a date circled on the shared calendar, and a budget figure that has to be exact before anyone will sign off on it. Buttons come up early in that conversation, because they are the one item everybody in the building can put on at the same time, on a lanyard, a jacket, a bag strap, the edge of a name badge. If you are the person in Blue Point holding that list, this page is written for you.

Deciding what actually goes on the face

We print full colour from artwork you upload. That can be the logo your communications team already uses, a ribbon graphic, a date, a slogan the committee settled on, or all of those stacked together. There is no template you have to work inside and no limit on how many colours the design uses.

The practical thing to think about is size against detail. A button is round and the face curves at the rim, so anything sitting right at the outer edge starts to wrap out of easy view. Give the design a margin of breathing room and keep the part you most want read, usually the words, nearer the middle. A single short line of text reads clean on the 1 inch. A logo plus a tagline plus a date wants one of the larger sizes.

You are also not locked to one design. If the committee wants the department name on it, or wants a different ribbon for a second month later in the year, each design is simply its own set of buttons in the same order.

Five sizes and what each one costs

There are five round pin back sizes and nothing else:

• 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

The rate steps at three counts and holds level between them. A handful for the committee pays the listed rate; enough for every shift in the building pays 20, 25 or 30 percent less, decided by the count for that one size. Padding a count across sizes gains nothing, because sizes are counted separately. The only padding that pays is inside one size, at a boundary. This is the single most useful thing to know when you are the one writing the budget line, because it means you can multiply and be done. Count times price, and that is the buttons.

Which size you pick is a judgement call about where it will be worn. The 1.5 inch sits neatly beside an existing badge without competing with it. The 2.25 inch is the one most people picture when they think of a pin back button. The 3 inch is the one you choose when you want it read from across a lobby or a cafeteria line.

Four hundred of the large size, priced out

Here is a real order the way it looks on paper. Four hundred of the 3 inch button at $1.87 each, the rate for 250 to 499 of a single size, is $748.00 in buttons. Flat shipping for an order of that size is $19.99. The order comes to $767.99 before tax.

That is the entire arithmetic. Nothing is added per design, and the $748.00 already has the 250 to 499 discount in it, because four hundred of one size earns 25 percent off. If your count turns out to be different, swap it into the same two lines: your quantity times the price for your size, then one shipping figure on the end.

Where the shipping tiers fall

Shipping is flat and it is set by the total number of buttons on the order, not by how many designs those buttons are split across:

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

Because the buttons themselves never change price, the tier is the only part of the total that moves in steps. That is worth a glance before you submit. A count that lands just past 250 pays $19.99 where a count of exactly 250 pays $14.99, so if your headcount is hovering right around a boundary it is worth asking whether the number can sit at the boundary rather than one over it. The same logic applies at 100 and at 500. It is a small amount of money, but it is the one lever the order has, and finance people notice.

A neighbour one mile out

Bayport sits 1.0 miles away, which is unusually close for two places the site treats separately. Patchogue is 1.3 miles out, North Patchogue 2.2, East Patchogue 2.8, and Sayville 3.0. Everything in that list is inside a three mile radius.

That tightness matters for a very ordinary reason. Organisations in this part of

Brookhaven often have people spread across two or three of those places, a second office, a satellite team, a branch. If that is you, there is no reason to run separate orders. One order, one shipping tier, and you hand out the boxes yourself. Designs at the same size pool for the discount and different sizes never do, so a mixed order does not combine its way into a band.

Collecting or having it sent

Blue Point, in the 11715 ZIP, is 20.9 miles south east of us in a straight line, inside Suffolk County. That is a distance where both options are genuinely on the table, so it is worth deciding early rather than at checkout. Local pickup is free, which takes the shipping figure off the total entirely. Shipping puts one flat charge on the order from the tiers above and takes the errand off your plate. Neither one changes the cost of the buttons.

Four people who place this order

If you are the whole committee. One person, a budget to justify, and no design department behind you. Work backwards from headcount to a single number you can put in an email, and pick one size so there is only one price to explain.

If every department wants its own. Multiple designs on one order is normal. Because the per button price is identical across the whole order and shipping is counted on the combined total, splitting by department costs you nothing extra as long as it stays one order.

If you are ordering for more than one location. Send the full quantity to whoever is closest to the people handing them out, then distribute from there. One order covering the offices scattered across Bayport, Sayville and Patchogue is simpler on paper and cheaper on shipping than three separate ones.

If you are spending someone else's money. You need a total, not an estimate, and you need it before a purchase order goes out. Quantity times per button price plus one shipping tier gives you a figure you can defend line by line, and it will not change underneath you.

Questions that come up

Our Blue Point office wants three departments to each have a different design. Is that one order or three? One. Different designs live comfortably on a single order. Shipping is worked out on the combined button count, so keeping them together keeps you in one tier.

If our Blue Point order is 400 of the 3 inch button, what is the total? $748.00 for the buttons, $19.99 shipping, $767.99 before tax.

Does ordering a larger quantity for Blue Point bring the price per button down? Yes, as long as the count is for one size. There are three steps, at 100, 250 and 500 of a single size, worth 20, 25 and 30 percent. Adding buttons nobody needs is still waste, except in the few counts just below a break, where the larger order is genuinely cheaper. Both ladders break at 100, 250 and 500, and they pull in opposite directions.

Our Blue Point count is sitting just over 250. Is that worth adjusting? Possibly. At 250 the flat shipping is $14.99 and just above it the next tier is $19.99. If your headcount has any flexibility, landing on 250 rather than just past it saves the difference.

We have people in Blue Point and people in Bayport. Should we place two orders? One is usually better. Splitting a run across designs is free as long as the designs are the same size.