Pin-back buttons for Southold shops and counters

A small retailer with one register and a list of regulars usually wants something plain: a full colour button handed across the counter with the bag, printed with the shop's own mark, at a cost that can be worked out on paper before the order is placed. That is most of what these orders are. A loyalty pin for people who come back, a promo pin for a new line, a seasonal design that changes when the window display changes. The buttons are round, pin-back, and come in five diameters and no other shape.

Five diameters, and what each one tends to carry

The 1.5 inch button is $1.89 each. The 2.25 inch is $1.99 each. The 3 inch is $2.49 each. The rate you pay depends on how many of that one size are on the order. Nothing is hidden in the arithmetic: a rate from the band, a count, and one shipping figure. Below those sit two smaller sizes: the 1 inch at $1.49 and the 1.25 inch at $1.69.

The size decision is really a decision about how much has to be readable at arm's length. A 1.5 inch face holds a wordmark or a single symbol comfortably and not much beyond that. The 2.25 inch takes a wordmark plus a short line of supporting text. The 3 inch face is the one that can carry a full piece of artwork, an illustration with a name under it, a design with a border that still reads from across a room. Everything is printed in full colour from artwork you upload, so the limit is legibility rather than ink.

A 150 button order, worked all the way through

Say you want 150 of the 3 inch button. At $1.99 each, the 100 to 249 rate for that size, the buttons come to $298.50. Flat shipping for an order of that size is $14.99. The order is $313.49 before tax. From 500 to 999 of a size the rate is 30 percent under the listed one.

The published ladder, not a negotiation

Shipping is flat and banded by the total number of buttons on the order. Up to 100 buttons is $9.99. Up to 250 is $14.99. Up to 500 is $19.99. Up to 1000 is $24.99. The per button price is untouched by any of this, so the band is the only number that shifts as an order grows.

It is worth a look at where your count lands against those edges. An order of 110 buttons sits just over the first boundary and pays $14.99 in shipping, while 100 buttons pays $9.99. If the extra ten were not doing much work for you, dropping to 100 takes five dollars off the shipping line. It works the other way too. The two are a band apart: 240 at 20 percent under the listed rate, 250 at 25 percent under the listed rate.

Five neighbours sitting inside a nine mile ring

Southold has an unusual set of neighbours among the places we cover, in that all five of the closest ones are packed into a short span. Cutchogue is 4.2 miles away. Shelter Island is 5.3 miles. Mattituck is 6.9 miles. Noyack is 7.1 miles. North Sea is 9.1 miles. Every one of them falls inside a ring under ten miles wide.

That matters for a particular kind of order. If you know the owner of another shop a few miles down the road, or you run more than one storefront yourself, or a handful of independent businesses want a shared design for a joint promotion, the buttons for all of them can sit on one order. Shipping is banded by the total count on that order, not by the number of designs, so combining is where the arithmetic gets friendlier. Dividing the finished boxes among shops that sit that close together is a simple thing to arrange between owners.

Worth noting once, since the question comes up: the shop is 51.4 miles west of here, measured as a straight line and not as a road.

Putting more than one design on a single order

There is no rule that an order carries one artwork. You can run a loyalty design and a promo design together, or three variations of the same mark in different colourways, or one button for staff and one for customers. Each design is priced by the size it is printed at, and the totals simply add. A run of 60 at 2.25 inch and 40 at 1.5 inch is 100 buttons on the order, which is what the shipping band reads.

This is also the sensible way to test a design before committing to a long run. The ladder itself is fixed between orders, so a later run of the same count pays the same rate the first one did.

What you send us

Upload the artwork and we print what is there in full colour. The practical advice is about the round crop more than anything technical. A square logo drops into a circle with corners to spare, a wide horizontal wordmark usually needs to be stacked or set on two lines, and anything with detail near the outer edge should be pulled in, since the face of a button curves away at the rim. If you have a design that reads well on a sticker, it will usually read well at 3 inch and need a trim at 1.5 inch.

Who these orders usually come from

If you run a single shop with a loyalty idea: the 1.5 inch at $1.89 is the size most people land on for a giveaway pin, because it is small enough to hand out freely and still carries a mark.

If you are stocking a counter display to sell: the 3 inch at $1.99 gives the most room for artwork someone would actually choose off a card, and 150 of them is the worked example above at $313.49 before tax.

If you are coordinating with other independents nearby: one order with several designs keeps you in a single shipping band, and the towns nearest Southold are close enough that dividing the boxes between owners is easy to sort out.

A repeat order of the same size and the same count lands in the same band, because the bands are published and fixed.

Questions people ask before ordering

Does a bigger Southold order lower the price per button? Yes. There are three steps, at 100, 250 and 500 of a single size, worth 20, 25 and 30 percent. 1,000 of a single size is quoted by a person rather than priced automatically. The 1 inch is $1.49, the 1.25 inch $1.69, the 1.5 inch $1.89, the 2.25 inch $1.99 and the 3 inch $2.49 up to ninety-nine of a size, and a count of 100 or more of one size takes 20 percent off that figure. Quantity affects two things: the shipping band for the order and the rate band for each size.

What does 150 of the 3 inch size cost for a Southold shop? The buttons are $298.50, shipping is a flat $14.99 at that count, and the total is $313.49 before tax.

My Southold order comes to 110 buttons, is there a reason to adjust it? Possibly. At 110 you are in the band that costs $14.99. At 100 the band is $9.99. If those ten buttons are not needed, trimming the count saves five dollars on shipping. The three steps are 100, 250 and 500, counted per size.

Can one Southold order cover buttons for a second shop in Cutchogue? Yes. An order can hold as many designs as you like, and the shipping band is set by the total button count across the whole order, not by how many designs or how many shops the boxes are eventually split between.

Can a Southold order mix the five sizes on one invoice? Yes. Each size is charged at its own rate, chosen by how many of it you order, $1.49, $1.69, $1.89, $1.99 and $2.49, and the amounts add together. For shipping, only the combined count matters, so 60 of one size and 40 of another is a 100 button order.