Custom Pin-Back Buttons for Mount Sinai, New York

How many buttons does a workplace actually need for an awareness month? It is the first thing organisers ask, and headcount turns out to be the wrong place to start. A button that people wear on a lanyard or a jacket gets handed to visitors, to a colleague's partner, to the person covering the next shift. Orders that come to us from Mount Sinai for this kind of campaign are usually sized somewhere above the staff list and below double it, because the organiser has learned that running out halfway through the month is the one outcome nobody forgives. The band your count lands in is published in advance, so you can pick a number and know exactly what it costs before you commit.

Everything worth knowing sits inside a three mile circle

The unusual thing about this part of Suffolk County is how tightly the covered places are packed. Miller Place is 1.8 miles away. Port Jefferson is 2.6 miles. Terryville and Port Jefferson Station are both 2.7 miles. Sound Beach is 2.8 miles. Five neighbouring places, all inside a circle you could draw with a short piece of string.

That matters for a workplace order more than it sounds like it should. An employer in this pocket of Brookhaven rarely draws staff from one ZIP code. 11766 will be on plenty of personnel files, and so will the ZIPs either side of it. When a committee counts up who is going to be handed a button, the count usually spans several of those neighbouring places at once, which is why the number climbs past the payroll figure so easily. It also means a second site, a satellite office or a partner organisation a couple of miles up the road can be folded into the same single order rather than handled as a separate one.

The shop itself is 20.1 miles due west in a straight line, not a driving figure, just the distance across the map.

Five sizes, and what each one can carry

There are five round pin-back sizes and nothing else: 1 inch, 1.25 inch, 1.5 inch, 2.25 inch and 3 inch. Full colour throughout, printed from artwork you upload.

The 1.5 inch is the badge size. It carries a ribbon, a symbol, a logo mark, or a very short line of type. It sits flat on a lapel or a lanyard without dominating a uniform shirt, which is why it is the common pick when the whole building is wearing one.

The 2.25 inch is the everyday badge. A symbol plus a readable slogan, or a logo plus a two line message, fits here without crowding. If people are meant to read your button from a desk away rather than from arm's reach, this is the size that does it.

The 3 inch is the one that reads across a room. A date, a hashtag, a department name, a QR code of a sensible size: all of that fits. It is the size committees choose for the handful of people staffing a table, while the rest of the building wears the smaller one.

Four price bands, and where they break

Up to 99 of a size the rate is the one listed, and at 100 of that size it comes down 20 percent. Padding a count across sizes gains nothing, because sizes are counted separately. The only padding that pays is inside one size, at a boundary.

• 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

Twenty prices itself at the listed rate, and two thousand of one size goes to a quote instead of an automatic price. That is worth saying plainly, because most people arrive expecting a bracket table and try to reverse engineer the number that unlocks a better rate. There isn't one. Order the quantity you actually want.

Two things change with quantity: the shipping charge, banded by the total number of buttons on the order, and the rate for each size, banded by that size's own count.

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

A four hundred button order, priced out

Take a common shape for an awareness month order: 400 of the 1.5 inch button.

• 400 x $1.42 = $568.00
• Flat shipping = $19.99
• Order total = $587.99 before tax

Now look at where 400 sits. It is well past the 250 boundary, which means the order sits in the $19.99 band. A second department asking for another hundred would take the order to 500, the shipping line would still read $19.99, and every button including the first four hundred would drop from $1.42 to $1.32. That is the band doing the work rather than the shipping line. What you have avoided is crossing into the next shipping band, which does not happen until you pass 500.

The same logic runs the other way. An order of 260 buttons is barely over the 250 line and pays the same $19.99 as an order of 500. If your real requirement is somewhere in the 240s, it is worth knowing that staying under 250 puts the order in the $14.99 band instead.

Preparing the artwork you upload

Full colour printing means the background colour is free to be whatever the campaign uses. Awareness campaigns tend to come with a defined colour, and a solid field of it with the mark centred reads better on a small round button than a busy composite does.

Two things to watch. First, the printed area curves over the edge of the button, so anything sitting right at the rim of your artwork will wrap around the side rather than stay flat on the face. Keep type and logos comfortably inside the middle. Second, small type on a 1.5 inch circle disappears more than it looks like it will on screen. If the wording matters, step up a size rather than shrink the type.

Four people who usually end up placing the order

The HR or wellness lead running the campaign. You need one design across the whole building and a quantity that covers staff plus the people they hand buttons to. The 1.5 inch at $1.89 is the workhorse here, and the per button rate you can look up means you can size the order to the real need rather than to a discount threshold.

The committee volunteer who inherited it. Somebody handed you this on top of your actual job. The arithmetic is short: pick a size, multiply by quantity, add one shipping charge from the table above. That is the whole quote.

The office manager covering more than one site. If you are ordering for a main office and a satellite location a few miles away, one order at the combined count is simpler than two separate ones, and the shipping is banded on the combined total.

The union rep or employee resource group organiser. You may want two sizes: the 3 inch for the people staffing the information table, the 1.5 inch for everyone else. Both sizes can sit on one order, each priced at its own band, set by its own count, with shipping banded on the total button count across both.

Questions that come up

Our Mount Sinai office wants 400 of the 1.5 inch button. What is the total? $568.00 in buttons, plus $19.99 flat shipping, for $587.99 before tax.

Does the per button price drop if a Mount Sinai order goes from 250 up to 500? Yes, and it is worth knowing where the steps are. 250 of one size pays 25 percent under the listed rate and 500 of it pays 30 percent under the listed rate. Discounts are worked out per size, and the first one lands at 100 of that size. Each size has four price bands: 1 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499 and 500 to 999.

If a Mount Sinai order grows from 400 to 500 buttons, does the shipping change? No. Both sit in the up to 500 band at $19.99. Shipping only moves when the total button count crosses into the next band.

Is shipping different for Mount Sinai than for Miller Place or Sound Beach? No. The shipping charge is set by the total number of buttons on the order, not by which of the covered places it is going to.

Which size suits a workplace campaign in Mount Sinai that needs a slogan, not just a symbol? The 2.25 inch at $1.99. A symbol plus a readable line of type fits without crowding. The 1.5 inch is better when the design is a single mark, and the 3 inch when the button has to be read across a room.