Die-cut stickers for Coram, New York

If I take a packaging seal from sixty pieces up to a hundred, does the per piece price really move enough to be worth it? It does, and the whole thing is plain arithmetic. Die-cut stickers here are priced by the square inch, and the rate steps down as the count goes up. A 2 by 3 inch seal is 6 square inches. At 60 pieces the rate is 28 cents a square inch, so that seal is $1.68 each and the run is $100.80. At 100 pieces the rate drops to 26 cents, the same seal is $1.56, and a hundred of them come to $156.00. You spend $55.20 more, you get forty more seals, and every seal in the box costs twelve cents less than it would have.

Coram falls inside Brookhaven Township in Suffolk County, and its mail moves through the 11727 ZIP. The customer this page is written for is the small product maker: someone with a line of two or three things, boxes or pouches or jars, who needs a seal that closes the package and carries the name.

Five places nearby, none of them far

One practical thing about ordering from here is how tightly the surrounding places sit. Gordon Heights is 2.1 miles away. Selden is 2.2. Farmingville is 3.1, Terryville is 3.2, and Middle Island is 3.3. Every one of those five is within 3.3 miles in a straight line, and we cover all of them. That matters in two practical ways. First, if you make in one place and pack in another, the two addresses are close enough that splitting an order between them is rarely worth the trouble. Second, if you share a bench with someone else who needs seals, combining the two counts into one order pushes you further down the rate ladder, which is where the money is. A Coram address and a Selden address on the same run is a normal thing to ask for.

Reading the rate ladder before you commit to a count

The full set of rates runs like this. From 1 to 24 pieces you pay 35 cents a square inch. From 25 to 49 it is 30 cents. From 50 to 99 it is 28 cents. From 100 to 249 it is 26 cents. From 250 to 499 it is 24 cents. At 500 the rate is 22 cents. The useful habit is to check where your intended count sits relative to the next break. A count of 95 and a count of 100 are only five pieces apart, but they sit in different bands, and the whole order reprices, not just the last five. The same is true at 24, at 49, at 249 and at 499. None of this is a discount you have to ask for; it is simply how the price is worked out.

The minimum, and what it is not

An order qualifies at 10 or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first. Those are two separate doors into the same room. A large seal can clear the $10 in fewer than ten pieces. A small one will usually reach ten pieces before it reaches ten dollars. Either way you are through. It is not a price floor, and it is not a minimum spend that gets rounded up. Clear the line on either count and you pay the arithmetic and nothing else.

Size is the lever, not the sticker count alone

Because the price is per square inch, the dimensions of the seal move the total as hard as the quantity does. The 2 by 3 inch example is 6 square inches. Take it to 2 by 2 and you are at 4 square inches, a third less area and a third less money at the same rate. Push it to 3 by 4 and you are at 12 square inches, double the original at any band. A die-cut shape is measured by the rectangle it sits inside, so a circle, a rounded badge and a long thin strip all price from the space they occupy rather than from the outline itself. If a run is coming out higher than you expected, the first thing to try is trimming a quarter inch off the size, not cutting the count.

Twenty and a half miles of straight line

The shop is a single storefront at 205 East Main Street in Huntington, where everything sold here is printed and cut. Coram is 20.5 miles east of it, measured in a straight line rather than by any road. That number is here so you can judge whether collecting in person is sensible. Local pickup is free and you choose it at checkout in place of a shipping method.

Four ways this tends to get used

If you are sealing a boxed product, the seal usually crosses the opening flap and does the job of both closure and label. Give the artwork the name, and leave the variable information, batch or scent or size, to a separate mark, because reprinting one small element is cheaper than reprinting the whole seal.

If you are running three or four variants of one product, the sensible move is one seal design ordered in a single count rather than three small counts. Three runs of 40 sit at 30 cents. One run of 120 sits at 26. The design does the distinguishing somewhere else on the package.

If you are packing into mailers rather than boxes, a long narrow seal across the join is common. A 1 by 4 inch strip and a 2 by 2 inch square are both 4 square inches and cost the same, so shape is a free choice inside a given area.

If you are testing a product before committing to a full print run, the 1 to 24 band exists for exactly that. It is the highest rate per square inch, but on a handful of pieces the absolute number is small, and you see the seal on the real package before ordering a larger count.

Questions people ask before they order

Can I collect a Coram order in person instead of having it sent? Yes. Local pickup is free, and you select it at checkout instead of a shipping method. The counter is at 205 East Main Street in Huntington.

My seals are 2 by 3 inches and I am ordering a hundred to a Coram address. What is the total? Six square inches at the 100 piece rate of 26 cents is $1.56 each, so a hundred comes to $156.00 in merchandise.

I only need 60 seals for a Coram product line. Is that enough to place an order? Comfortably. The minimum is 10 pieces or $10 of merchandise, whichever you reach first, and 60 pieces clears it on both counts.

My workshop is in Coram but I pack at a second address in Selden. Can one order go to the Selden address? Yes. It is priced as one run at the band your total count falls into and sent to whichever single address you enter at checkout.

Do I need to do anything special addressing a Coram order in the 11727 ZIP? No. Enter the street address, the town, the state and 11727 as you normally would. The Brookhaven Township and Suffolk County lines make no difference to how the order is handled.