Custom Pin-Back Buttons for Northwest Harbor, New York

The first thing worth settling on any order placed from Northwest Harbor is whether you would rather collect the buttons in person or have them sent out to you. At this end of Suffolk County that is a genuine decision and not a formality, and it is usually easier to make it before you start thinking about sizes, artwork or quantities. Everything else on the order behaves the same way either route you pick. The rate you pay depends on how many of that one size are on the order. Only the last line of the order is different.

Collecting or having them sent

Straight line, this part of East Hampton township sits 61.2 miles east of the shop. That is the honest figure and it is the one that should drive the choice. If you already come west for other reasons, a pickup costs you nothing and folds into a trip you were making anyway. If you do not, shipping is a flat charge that depends only on how many buttons are on the order, and for most counter-sized runs it is the smaller number of the two once you count the cost of the road.

There is no wrong answer here, and you do not have to decide before you upload artwork. It is simply the one part of the order that is different for a customer this far out than it is for someone a few miles from the counter, so it is worth thinking about once rather than being surprised by it at the end.

An order with no ZIP code on it

Northwest Harbor is the unusual case on our coverage list: there is no ZIP code of its own on file for it. Orders are routed by street address instead, which sounds like a problem and almost never is. Put the street number, the street, the place name and NY on the shipping form exactly as you would write it on an envelope, and the order goes where it is meant to go.

What causes trouble is guessing. If you borrow a ZIP from somewhere nearby because a form seems to want five digits, you have introduced a mismatch between the two halves of the address, and mismatches are what make a parcel sit somewhere unhelpful. Write the address the way the post reaches you and leave it at that. If a field will not accept a blank, say so in the order notes rather than inventing digits for it.

The same logic applies to pickups, where the address barely matters anyway. The order is held under your name.

Five sizes, and the count that sets the rate

Round pin-back buttons in five diameters, and nothing beyond that. The 1.5 inch is $1.89 each. The 2.25 inch is $1.99 each. The 3 inch is $2.49 each. Full colour throughout, 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.

From 500 to 999 of a size the rate is 30 percent under the listed one. Forty of the 1.5 inch pays $1.89. Four hundred of it pays $1.42, which is the 250 to 499 rate. The 1.5 inch reads as a small accent on a lapel or an apron strap. The 2.25 inch is the size most people picture when they say button, and it carries a short line of text at a readable scale. The 3 inch gives you room for a logo plus a line of copy without either one getting crowded.

Pick on how much has to fit and how big you want it to look, not on cost. The gap between the smallest and the largest is a dollar a button.

Where the quantity actually matters

Quantity changes exactly one thing on the order, and it is shipping. The tiers run by total buttons on the order: up to 100 is $9.99, up to 250 is $14.99, up to 500 is $19.99, and up to 1000 is $24.99.

That means the boundary is worth a glance before you check out. An order of 100 buttons ships at $9.99. An order of 104 ships at $14.99, for four extra buttons. If you are sitting just over a line and the extra handful is not doing anything for you, trimming back to the round number saves five dollars. If you genuinely need them, take them, because the per button price is unchanged either way and the tier is the only thing that moved.

Here is a worked example. Forty of the 1.5 inch button at $1.89 each is $75.60 in buttons. That sits inside the first shipping tier, so shipping is $9.99 and the order comes to $85.59 before tax.

Getting artwork onto a round button

A button is a circle, and circles are unforgiving about edges. The outer rim of the printed disc wraps around the shell, so anything sitting hard against the edge of your file will bend out of sight. Keep text and the important part of a logo away from the perimeter and let backgrounds run right off it.

Upload the artwork at the size you want it printed rather than scaling a small file up. Full colour means you are not limited on the palette, but fine hairlines and very small type will be reproduced exactly as small as you drew them. If you have one file for all five sizes, check it at the smallest one, because that is where a design usually gives out first.

Who these orders tend to come from

If you run a shop counter with a loyalty scheme, buttons are the piece of it people actually keep on a bag. A single design in the 1.5 inch works as the giveaway and the 2.25 inch as the version staff wear, at $1.89 and $1.99 respectively, each counted on its own for the discount.

If you are stocking a seasonal storefront, order against what you expect to move, and know that the break at 100 of a size is real and applies to the whole run.

If you sell at a market stall or a table, the 3 inch is the one that reads from a few feet away. It holds a logo and a line of copy at a size somebody can take in while walking past.

If you look after more than one small retail location, work out your total first. The shipping tier is set by the whole order, so a combined run on one order sits in a lower tier than the same buttons split into two.

Questions we get from this stretch of the county

Is there a ZIP code for Northwest Harbor I should be using at checkout? No. There is no ZIP on file for it. Enter the street address and the place name as you would write them on an envelope, and leave the ZIP field alone or note it in the order comments if the form insists on something.

Can I collect an order instead of having it shipped out to Northwest Harbor? Yes. Local pickup is free and it is held under your name, so the address on the order matters much less. The only thing to weigh is the 61.2 mile straight line against a flat shipping charge.

What does a 40 button order for a Northwest Harbor shop counter come to? Forty of the 1.5 inch at $1.89 each is $75.60. Shipping for that quantity is $9.99, which brings it to $85.59 before tax.

If I order more than 100 buttons for a Northwest Harbor storefront, does the price per button drop? It does, in three steps. 100 of one size earns 20 percent off, and it comes off every button of that size rather than only the ones above the line. 1,000 of a single size is quoted by a person rather than priced automatically. What changes is the shipping tier: 101 buttons through 250 ships at $14.99 instead of $9.99.

Which other places near Northwest Harbor are on the same coverage list? East Hampton North at 3.9 miles, East Hampton at 4.1 miles, Springs at 4.4 miles, Noyack at 6.2 miles and Shelter Island at 6.8 miles. All of those distances are straight line from here.