Custom Die-Cut Stickers for Huntington, New York

How many buttons does a Huntington event need when the volunteer list is still changing? Order for the list you already have and add a margin for the people who sign up late, because more of one size can only improve the rate on all of them. The gap between them is real: one hundred pays 20 percent under the listed rate while one thousand of one size needs a quote. That single fact takes most of the pressure out of the guess. The ladder itself is fixed between orders, so a later run of the same count pays the same rate the first one did. There are two ladders in play, one on the rate for each size and one on shipping for the whole order. It is about which tier your total number of buttons lands in.

Six ZIP codes under one name

The area covers six ZIP codes: 11721, 11724, 11731, 11740, 11743 and 11746. That is more than most places we cover, and it has a practical effect on how a badge order gets put together. A committee can easily have a chairperson in one ZIP code, a venue in a second and a storage space in a third, all sitting inside Suffolk County and all inside the same township that carries the town name.

None of that changes what you pay. The ZIP code on the billing address does not alter the price of a button and it does not alter the shipping tier. Tiers are set by the number of buttons on the order and nothing else. So if three people on the same committee are each holding a piece of the job, the cleanest approach is usually to pool the count into one order and send it to whichever of the six ZIP codes is most convenient for whoever is handing badges out on the day.

Five sizes, and what fits on each

There are five round pin back buttons and nothing else: 1 inch, 1.25 inch, 1.5 inch, 2.25 inch and 3 inch. All five are full colour, printed from artwork you upload. The 1 inch, at $1.49, is the smallest we make, and the 1.25 inch at $1.69 is a step up from it.

The 1.5 inch button is the lapel size. It holds a logo, or a single word such as STAFF or CREW, and it reads clearly when someone is standing next to you. The 2.25 inch is the usual badge size. There is room on it for a name plus a role line underneath, and still space left for a small mark or logo. The 3 inch is the one people choose when a badge has to be read across a room rather than across a handshake. It takes a name, a role and a logo without any of the three crowding the others.

Up to 99 of one size there is no discount, and from 100 of it there is. The published bands are 1 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499 and 500 to 999, per size.

What five hundred badges comes to

Here is the arithmetic on a run that size, using the 2.25 inch badge. Five hundred buttons at $1.39 each, 30 percent under the 1 to 99 figure, is $695.00 in buttons. Flat shipping for an order of that size is $19.99. The order comes to $714.99 before tax.

Nothing in that total is quantity sensitive except the shipping line. Combine designs at one size and the combined count is what sets the rate. If you switch the same five hundred to a different size, the per button price changes with the size, but the shipping tier does not move, because tiers count buttons rather than inches.

Where the shipping tiers fall

Flat shipping is set by the total number of buttons on the order:

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

Five hundred is worth a second look, because it sits exactly on a boundary. An order of five hundred badges is the top of the $19.99 tier. Add one more button and the order moves into the $24.99 tier. So if your count is hovering around that number, there are two sensible moves and one wasteful one. You can stop at five hundred and stay in the lower tier. You can go well past five hundred, so the higher tier is buying you a real block of spare badges. What you do not want is to cross the line by three or four buttons and pay the higher tier for almost nothing.

The distance, stated once

The town sits 1.8 miles south west of the shop in a straight line. Several neighbouring places we also cover are close by on the same measure: Cold Spring Harbor at 1.5 miles, West Manor at 1.8 miles, Lloyd Harbor at 3.0 miles and West Hills at 3.3 miles. If your committee is spread across those, everyone is working inside a few miles of the same point.

Local pickup is free. An order picked up in person carries no shipping tier at all, which for a five hundred badge run is the whole $19.99 line removed from the total.

Four people on the same committee

The organiser holding the headcount. Order the count you actually need, with one exception worth checking: if you are a handful short of 100, 250 or 500 of a single size, the bigger order can come to less than the smaller one. Count your confirmed people, add your usual margin for late sign ups and replacements, then look at where that total sits against the shipping tiers before you round it.

The volunteer coordinator. You probably need more than one badge design: staff, volunteer, vendor, medical, whatever your roles are. Put them all on one order. The per button rate you can look up means splitting by role costs nothing extra per button, and a single order keeps the whole set inside one shipping tier instead of paying a tier for each role.

The treasurer. Your line item is one multiplication and one lookup. Buttons are quantity times the published rate for the size, and shipping is whichever tier the total count falls in. There is a reason to round up now, but only one. Landing on 100, 250 or 500 of one size moves every button of that size onto a lower rate.

The person with the artwork. You upload the file and the badge prints full colour. Your main decision is size, and size is really a question of how much text has to fit and how far away it has to be legible.

Common questions

Our Huntington event still has volunteers signing up. Can we place a second order later instead of guessing high now? Yes. A repeat order of the same size and the same count lands in the same band, because the bands are published and fixed. The one thing to know is that each order carries its own shipping tier, so two orders mean two shipping charges.

Our Huntington venue and our office are in different ZIP codes. Does that change the order? No. All six ZIP codes in the area are treated the same way. The ZIP code affects neither the per button price nor the shipping tier, which is set only by how many buttons are on the order.

Our Huntington staff list just pushed us past five hundred badges. What changes? The shipping tier. Up to five hundred buttons the flat shipping is $19.99, and above that it is $24.99 through one thousand buttons. A size's rate is fixed inside its band and steps at the next one.

What does a run of five hundred of the 2.25 inch badge come to for a Huntington event? Five hundred at $1.39 each, 30 percent under the 1 to 99 figure, is $695.00 in buttons, plus $19.99 flat shipping, for $714.99 before tax.

Can a Huntington customer avoid the shipping charge entirely? Yes, by picking the order up in person. Local pickup is free, so no shipping tier is applied to the order at all.