Custom Die-Cut Stickers for Fort Salonga, New York

A band standing behind a merch table with a stack of records and a cash box is usually trying to answer one question: what goes on that table next to the records that costs less than a shirt, packs flat in a backpack, and still sends someone home holding the name. Stickers are the usual answer. A small label arrives at the same question from the other side, with several artists to keep supplied and one art budget covering all of them. Both are ordering the same object: a shape cut to the edge of the artwork, in a run size that matches how many people are actually going to be in the room. That is what most of a Fort Salonga order looks like when it reaches us.

Everything is printed and cut by us at one storefront on East Main Street in Huntington, so the person answering a question about a cut line is standing next to the machine that makes it.

A cluster you can almost see across

What stands out here is how tightly Fort Salonga is packed against the places next to it. East Northport is 2.4 miles away. Northport and Kings Park are both 2.7. Centerport is 4.3, and Commack is 4.8. Five separate places, every one of them inside a 4.8 mile span, all covered by the same sheet of rates and the same shop. Our own counter is 5.7 miles off in a straight line, due west.

That closeness does real work on a music order. Bands are rarely all at one address. The person who draws the art, the person who fronts the money and the person whose garage ends up holding the boxes are frequently at three different ones, and in this part of Suffolk County those three addresses often sit within a couple of miles of each other. One order, one set of rates, one place to hand it over, with no second quote to square up because two members live on opposite sides of a line drawn on a map.

The rate falls as the count rises

Die-cut stickers are priced by the square inch, and the rate per square inch comes down as the quantity goes up. It is 35 cents from 1 to 24 pieces, 30 cents from 25 to 49, 28 cents from 50 to 99, 26 cents from 100 to 249, 24 cents from 250 to 499, and 22 cents at 500.

Worked through on a real size: a 2 by 3 inch sticker is 6 square inches. Order 50 of them and you are in the 28 cent band, which puts each one at $1.68 and the run of 50 at $84.00. Order 100 of the identical design and the rate steps down to 26 cents, so each sticker is $1.56 and 100 of them is $156.00.

The second figure is the one worth sitting with. Doubling the count from 50 to 100 does not double the bill, because the rate moved underneath you while you were counting. For a label deciding between printing enough for one artist and printing enough for two, the arithmetic usually argues for the larger number, and the edges of those bands are where that decision actually gets made.

Ten pieces or ten dollars

There is a minimum and it is not a price floor. An order qualifies at 10 or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first. Two routes through the same gate. A short run of a physically large design can clear the dollar side before it ever reaches ten pieces, and a run of very small shapes clears the piece side long before it reaches ten dollars. Nothing forces you up to a count you did not want in the first place.

Drawing the cut line

Die cut means the cut follows the outline of the artwork rather than a rectangle drawn around it. A logo with a tail on the last letter keeps the tail. A skull with horns keeps the horns. This is the part worth thinking about before you send the file, because the outline is a decision, not an afterthought. A keyline offset out from the art gives the shape a margin and keeps thin points from ending in a hair. Artwork that is mostly text reads better as one connected block than as a row of separate floating letters.

Size, and therefore price, comes from the overall width and height of the piece: the 2 by 3 inch example is 6 square inches whether the silhouette inside it is a plain rectangle or something with fingers on it.

Four ways this order tends to arrive

You are a band putting out a first run and you have exactly one design you like. Run the numbers at 50 and at 100 before you commit. The step between those two bands is where most first orders quietly lose money, and the gap between them is smaller than it looks.

You run a small label with three or four artists on the roster. A single Fort Salonga order covering all of them lands in a lower band than three separate orders would, and the per piece figure that comes back applies across the whole count rather than to each artist's slice of it.

You are doing all of it yourself, art included, and the budget is whatever last month's sales left behind. The minimum is the thing to read carefully. It gives you two ways in, and the dollar route is usually the friendlier one when you only want a handful of a large design.

You handle the mailorder side and stickers go into the envelope with the record as the thing that makes the package feel considered. Small sizes are cheap per piece precisely because the square inch count is low, so this is the case where ordering deep into a higher band costs least per unit.

Questions we hear before an order goes in

We are a two person label in Fort Salonga and we want 50 of a 2 by 3 inch design. What is that? Fifty pieces puts you in the 28 cent band. A 2 by 3 inch sticker is 6 square inches, so each one is $1.68 and the run of 50 comes to $84.00.

If we push that same Fort Salonga order from 50 up to 100, what happens to the per piece price? It drops from 28 cents to 26 cents per square inch. The same sticker goes from $1.68 to $1.56, and 100 of them is $156.00.

Our members are scattered across East Northport and Kings Park. Can that still be one Fort Salonga order? Yes. Those places are 2.4 and 2.7 miles out, they are covered by the same rate sheet, and the quantity bands read off the total on the order rather than off anybody's address.

We only want a few for a single Fort Salonga release, not ten. Is that possible? Probably. The order qualifies at 10 or more pieces or at $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first, so a small number of a large design can qualify on the dollar side without reaching ten pieces.

Can a Fort Salonga order be picked up at the shop instead of sent? Yes. Local pickup at the Huntington storefront is free, and it is the same counter where the printing and cutting happen.