Custom Pin-Back Buttons for Stony Brook, New York

The person placing this order is usually a workplace organiser with an awareness month on the calendar, a rough headcount, and one graphic that a committee has already signed off on. What they want is easy to describe and slightly fiddly to execute: turn that single approved image into a pile of wearable buttons, one for every colleague plus a few spares, at a figure they can put in front of whoever approves spending. This page is written for that order as it gets placed from a Stony Brook workplace, and it takes the questions roughly in the order they come up.

Five sizes, and the rate each one starts at

There are five round pin-back buttons and nothing else. The 1 inch is $1.49 each, the 1.25 inch is $1.69 each, the 1.5 inch is $1.89 each, the 2.25 inch is $1.99 each and the 3 inch is $2.49 each. The break applies to the whole run of that size, not only the buttons above the line. The first button on an order costs exactly what the last one costs. Do not inflate an order hunting for a discount. Do check whether your count for one size is a few short of 100, 250 or 500, because those three numbers are real.

Size comes down to how much has to fit inside the circle. The 1.5 inch holds a symbol and a short line of text and reads as a lapel piece rather than a statement. The 2.25 inch is the general purpose size and takes a logo plus a couple of words comfortably. The 3 inch gives you room for a full lockup, a line of supporting text and a campaign hashtag underneath. All five print in full colour from artwork you upload.

What a real order adds up to

Say the committee settles on 101 so there are spares left in the drawer. At the 1.5 inch size that is 101 buttons at $1.51 each, 20 percent under the 1 to 99 figure, which is $152.51 in buttons. Flat shipping for an order of that size is $14.99, so the order comes to $167.50 before tax. That is the whole calculation. There is no setup line, no artwork line, and no minimum to clear before the price behaves itself.

The two sets of boundaries sit on the same three numbers and are counted from different totals. The tiers are set by the total number of 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.

The quantity line worth a second look

Look again at that 101. Ordering 100 instead would keep the order inside the $9.99 shipping tier and save $5.00 on postage. The button itself still costs $1.89, the same as every other button on the order, but crossing the tier line adds $5.00 to the postage. That is worth knowing before you submit, not after.

This is not an argument for always rounding down. If you genuinely need 101 you should order 101. But a headcount that lands just past a round number is usually a guess dressed up as a number, and the same check is worth running at the top of every shipping tier.

Where this sits, and the two neighbours at the same distance

This town sits 13.9 miles east of the shop in a straight line, inside Suffolk County and the Town of Brookhaven, covering the 11790 and 11794 ZIP codes.

There is a quirk worth pointing out to anyone in Stony Brook coordinating across more than one site. St. James and East Setauket both sit 2.0 miles away, in different directions, at exactly the same distance. Setauket is 2.8 miles out, Port Jefferson Station 3.6 miles, and Centereach 3.8 miles. For a workplace split between a main office and a satellite, this matters less than it looks like it should, because the answer is almost always to place one order rather than two. Splitting a run across designs is free as long as the designs are the same size. Order the full count together, then divide the box between the sites however your internal distribution works.

Mixing sizes on a single order

Nothing stops you putting more than one size on the same order. A common pattern for an awareness month is a 1.5 inch for general staff and a 3 inch for whoever staffs a table or a lobby display, where the design needs to read from further away. Each size is charged at its own band, set by its own count, and the shipping tier is worked out from the total button count across the whole order rather than size by size, so a run split between two sizes that comes to 100 buttons still sits in the $9.99 tier.

Getting the artwork right before you upload

Buttons print as a flat circle and are then formed, so the outer edge of your design curves around the rim. Keep text and any part of a logo you care about away from the very edge, and let background colour run all the way out so there is no white halo. On the 1.5 inch, anything below the size of ordinary body text starts to fight you, so a ribbon symbol with a short caption reads better than a tagline squeezed small. If a run goes out in two sizes, supply artwork twice rather than letting one file be scaled both ways, because text that works at 3 inch rarely survives the trip down to 1.5 inch.

Four people who tend to place this order

The committee lead who owns the whole campaign wants one number to take into a meeting. You do not have to ask for the discount, because the count applies it.

The employee resource group volunteer is usually working against a small approved budget rather than a headcount. Divide the budget by $1.49, $1.69, $1.89, $1.99 or $2.49, take off the shipping tier, and you have your maximum quantity without any guesswork about discounts that do not exist.

The office manager covering several shifts needs the headcount plus a reserve, because buttons go missing between a morning and an evening shift. That reserve is exactly where the tier boundary bites, so set it first, then check which side of 100, 250 or 500 you landed on.

The person coordinating with an outside charity partner has a supplied logo and firm rules about how it may be used. Since everything prints from the file you upload, the partner's approved artwork goes on the button as it was given to you.

Questions we get asked

Does a larger Stony Brook order lower the price per button? Yes, and the saving applies to the whole run of that size. A hundred of one size is the first point it changes, and it changes again at 250 and 500. The per button figure is set by the size and by how many of that size you order. The thresholds are 100, 250 and 500 of one size, and they are the only places the rate moves.

Our Stony Brook office needs 101 buttons. Is there a reason to order 100? Yes, a small one. At 101 the order falls into the $14.99 shipping tier. At 100 it stays in the $9.99 tier, so dropping one button saves $5.00 on postage.

Can a single Stony Brook order include two different button sizes? Yes. Each size is billed at its own rate, worked out from its own count and the shipping tier is calculated from the combined button count on the order, not size by size.

Half our staff sits at a satellite office near Stony Brook rather than in it. Should we place two orders? Usually not. Each size climbs its own ladder, and 100 is the first rung. Divide the box between the two sites yourself.

Which size suits a Stony Brook workplace running an awareness month? The 2.25 inch is the safe default for a general staff handout. Go to 1.5 inch if the design is a simple symbol and a word or two, and to 3 inch if the artwork has a logo, a line of text and a hashtag that all need to be readable at a distance.