Custom Die-Cut Stickers for Brooklyn, New York

Six square inches, five hundred times over

A 2 by 3 inch die-cut sticker covers 6 square inches, and at 500 pieces the rate is 22 cents per square inch, which puts each sticker at $1.32 and the full run at $660.00. That is usually the number a club organiser actually wants, because it is the one that divides. Five hundred at $1.32 each is a figure you can put in front of a committee, split across a membership list, or set against whatever sits in the club account. It also settles the shape question before anybody has drawn anything, since the area is fixed by the size you choose and the rate is fixed by the count, and the only thing left to do is multiply.

A lot of the club work that reaches us from Brooklyn looks roughly like that example. A crest, a slogan, a mascot or a founding year, sized to sit on a laptop lid or to wrap part of the way around a water bottle, ordered in one batch so that every member ends up with the same thing. The 2 by 3 inch rectangle is a convenient way to talk about the arithmetic, not a house size.

The rate falls as the count climbs

Everything here is priced per square inch, and the per inch rate is set by how many pieces are on the order:

• 1 to 24 pieces: 35 cents per square inch
• 25 to 49 pieces: 30 cents
• 50 to 99 pieces: 28 cents
• 100 to 249 pieces: 26 cents
• 250 to 499 pieces: 24 cents
• 500 pieces: 22 cents

Three things go into any total: the area of one sticker, the rate that matches the count, and the count itself. Because the rate steps down in bands rather than sliding, the interesting decisions tend to happen near a boundary. A club sitting at 48 pieces is paying the 25 to 49 rate; a club that decides it wants a few spares and lands at 52 is paying the 50 to 99 rate on every piece, not just on the extra ones. Organisers who are ordering for a roster they cannot pin down exactly often find it worth counting the roster twice before settling.

Size works the same way and is worth thinking about in square inches rather than in inches. A sticker 3 inches on each side is 9 square inches, half again as much area as the 6 square inch example, and the total moves with it.

An address doing the work a postcode usually does

We hold no ZIP code on file for Brooklyn. That is not a gap that causes any trouble, because an order is addressed by its street address rather than by a code on our side. Street number, street name, unit or floor or apartment if there is one, then the city, the state and the ZIP as you would normally write them on any envelope. Kings County covers the whole of it, but you do not need to write the county anywhere.

The practical version of this: give us the address exactly as you would give it to anyone else sending you something, including the apartment or suite line, and including a building name if the entrance is easier to find with it. Club orders in particular have a habit of going to a member's home rather than to anything with a sign on the door, so the unit number matters more than usual.

Thirty three miles, in a straight line

Our one shop is at 205 East Main Street in Huntington, and the straight line from there to Brooklyn is 33.0 miles to the south west. The same run of work goes to several places closer in than that: Manhattan at 7.5 miles, Queens at 7.6, Inwood at 10.6, Staten Island at 11.5 and Lawrence at 11.8, all measured the same way. If your club draws members from more than one of those, the stickers are identical no matter which address they end up at, because they all come off the same order.

The minimum, and what it is not

An order qualifies at 10 or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first. It is a qualifying threshold rather than a price floor, which means it is not a charge and it is not a rounding up of a small order. A club that wants a dozen stickers for its committee clears the first condition on piece count alone. A single large sticker can clear it on value without getting anywhere near ten pieces.

Artwork, and where the cut line ends up

A die cut follows the outline of your design instead of a rectangle around it, so the shape you draw is the shape you get. That has a bearing on the arithmetic, since the square inches are counted from the size you ask for rather than from how much ink is inside it. A tall narrow badge and a wide oval can occupy the same area and cost the same at the same count.

Tell us the finished size you want in inches. If the design has thin arms, long tails, or a gap that a cut would have to travel into, say so, and we will set the cut line where it holds together. If you are not sure what size a bottle wants, measure the flat part of it and work back from there.

Four ways a club run gets put together

The organiser collecting money up front. You want a per piece number before you ask anybody for anything, and the per piece number is the area times the band rate. Pick the size first, then the count, and the figure you take to the group is already fixed.

The club that has two designs. Each design is its own order and each one sits in its own band, so splitting 200 pieces evenly across two designs puts both halves in the 100 to 249 band rather than one order in the 100 to 249 band.

The treasurer working to a fixed pot. Run it backwards. Divide the pot by the area, then look at which band that leaves you in, and adjust the size down or the count up until the two agree.

The member ordering for themselves. Somebody who wants ten for a personal laptop is over the piece minimum on their own and pays the 1 to 24 rate. Nothing about the order changes except the band.

Questions club organisers ask us

Is a ZIP code needed for a Brooklyn order, given you have none on file for it? No. Write the street address, unit, city, state and ZIP exactly as you would on any envelope, and that is what we work from.

What does a run of 500 of the 2 by 3 inch sticker come to for a Brooklyn club? Six square inches at the 500 piece rate of 22 cents is $1.32 a sticker, so $660.00 for the 500.

Our Brooklyn club only needs about 40 stickers, is that enough to place an order? Yes, 40 clears the 10 piece threshold comfortably. Forty pieces falls in the 25 to 49 band, so the rate is 30 cents per square inch.

Our Brooklyn members are spread across Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island, can one order go to several of them? Each order carries one address. Place a separate order per destination, or send the whole batch to one address and let the organiser hand them out.

Does artwork for a Brooklyn club order have to be built at 2 by 3 inches? No. That size is only the worked example. Give us the finished dimensions you want and the cut follows your outline at that size.