Custom Pin-Back Buttons for Northport, New York

$1,305.00 in buttons, $24.99 in shipping, $1,329.99 on the order before tax. That is 750 of the 3 inch button, worked all the way through, and two of those three figures behave in ways that catch people out the first time they budget for a booth.

Reading that total line by line

The first figure is pure multiplication and nothing else. The 3 inch button is $1.74, and $1.74 multiplied by 750 gives $1,305.00. No second rate is hiding behind the larger quantity. Compare the two: forty of the 3 inch at $2.49 each, and nine hundred of it at $1.74 each in the 500 to 999 band. Anyone who has bought printed giveaways before will be waiting for a bracket to kick in somewhere. There is no bracket. Order honestly and check the boundaries once. Those two steps are the whole of the decision.

What that buys is a budget you can do in your head. Decide the size, decide the count, multiply. Exhibit budgets tend to be approved once and adjusted against reality later, so a rate that holds still through those adjustments is worth more than it sounds.

The only number on the order that moves

Shipping is flat too, but it steps. It is charged in tiers, and the tier is set by the total number of buttons on the whole order rather than by design, by size or by box:

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

Seven hundred and fifty buttons lands in the top tier, which is where the worked example picks up its $24.99. The useful thing to notice is where that tier begins and ends. An order of 501 pays $24.99. An order of 1000 also pays $24.99. So a run sitting a little past the 500 mark has already paid for the whole of the top tier, and adding the extra buttons a second table or a second day would need does not move the shipping figure at all. Going the other way, a run that comes in at or under 500 sits in the tier below. Either way the buttons themselves cost what they cost, per button, unchanged.

Five diameters and what each one tends to be for

There are five sizes of round pin-back button and no other shapes or formats. The 1.5 inch is the understated option. It reads at conversation distance, it sits comfortably next to a name badge or on a lanyard, and it suits a short mark: an icon, a two word phrase, a version number. Because nothing about the rate is negotiated, it is a reasonable size to run several variants of rather than committing everything to one design. Add the 1 inch at $1.49 and the 1.25 inch at $1.69 to that list, which are the two to reach for on a giveaway run.

The 2.25 inch is the one most people reach for when a single button has to do everything. It holds a logo and a line of text together without either crowding the other, and it reads across the width of a standard table, which matters when the thing sitting in the bowl has to pull someone over.

The 3 inch is the size in the example above. It gives artwork room to keep its detail after the round crop, and it suits a design with more than one element to hold: a mark, a phrase and a small piece of supporting text. All five are printed full colour from artwork you upload.

One name root, two mailing addresses

Here is the wrinkle specific to this corner of Suffolk County, and it is worth saying out loud before an order goes in. East Northport is a separate place, next door, sharing a name root and an awful lot of correspondence. Exhibit teams are rarely all in one building, and when half a roster gets typed into a shipping field from memory, the two names collect each other's parcels with some regularity.

The fix is dull and it works: put the ZIP on the line. The one here is 11768. If the ZIP and the town name agree with each other, the label is unambiguous however the rest of it was typed. Keep the same discipline inside your own files, too. If a run is going to be split between offices, name the artwork and the packing note for the destination rather than for the design, because one box of 3 inch buttons looks exactly like every other box of 3 inch buttons once the tape is on.

Where the shop sits from here

Measured straight line, this sits 3.1 miles north east of the shop, which makes it one of the closest places on the list. That is a map measurement and not a driving figure, so treat it as a rough sense of proximity rather than anything you would plan around.

The same measurement puts Centerport at 1.6 miles, East Northport at 1.9, Fort Salonga at 2.7, Greenlawn at 3.0 and Elwood at 3.8. All of those sit inside the town of Huntington, in Suffolk County, and all of them are covered the same way with the same published per button rate, which matters if a company has staff spread across several of them and wants one order rather than five.

Four booths, four different problems

The first-time exhibitor with a single table. You have one design, one size and no idea what the right count is. The published rate for each band helps here more than anywhere else, because guessing low costs you nothing in unit price. There is a discount at 100 of a size, a better one at 250 and the best online one at 500.

The company doing a season of shows. Several events, one artwork, different counts at each. Watch the tier boundaries rather than the per unit figure, since the per unit figure will not change. Consolidating two shows into one order can land you inside a tier you were going to pay for anyway.

The association or membership group. A membership booth usually wants variants: one button for members, one for board, one for a campaign. The rate for every band is published up front, so the decision is about how many you want to carry, not about what the mix does to the rate.

The marketing coordinator ordering for someone else. You are spending a budget you will have to reconcile afterwards. Screenshot the tier table with the order, because the shipping line is the only figure on the invoice that will not be a clean multiple, and that is the one that gets queried.

Questions we get from exhibitors

What does 750 of the 3 inch button come to for a Northport exhibitor? $1,305.00 for the buttons, at $1.74 each, 30 percent off because the count clears 500, plus $24.99 flat shipping, which is $1,329.99 before tax.

If a Northport order drops from 750 buttons down to 500, does the price per button change? No, not between those two counts: 500 and 750 both sit in the 500 to 999 band for a single size. Every button is $2.49 at the 3 inch size whatever the count. The only line that moves is shipping, from the up to 1000 tier at $24.99 to the up to 500 tier at $19.99.

Our Northport team wants all five sizes on one order. Which shipping tier applies? Add up every button on the order regardless of size, then read the tier from that total. Sizes are not shipped or counted separately.

Half our roster lists a Northport address and half lists East Northport. Does that split the order? Only if you want it split. One order can go to one address, or you can place separate orders per destination, in which case each one is counted for its own shipping tier.

Can an order placed from Northport ship to the venue rather than to the office? Yes. The buttons go to whatever shipping address you enter, so put the venue and the booth number on it if that is where they need to land.