Die-cut stickers for Herricks, New York

Garden City Park sits 0.9 miles out, Williston Park, Searingtown and Manhasset

Hills each sit a mile away, and Mineola is 1.3 miles off, which puts Herricks in the middle of a tight ring of Nassau County places this shop prints for. Orders from that ring tend to arrive looking much alike: a name, a number, a small run of decals, and someone coordinating on behalf of other people rather than buying for themselves.

This page is built around one of those orders, a youth sports team decal run of the kind a team manager puts together, and around one practical quirk that shows up every time an order is placed under this name.

Why the street address does the work here

There is no ZIP code on file for this name. That is not a problem, it just means the postal code is not the thing that identifies the order. What identifies it is the street address: number, street, Nassau County, New York. Fill those fields in exactly as the mail arrives at the address where the box should land. If the checkout asks for a postal code, use the one that appears on a piece of mail sitting on the counter. Nothing in the pricing, the cutting or the packing turns on that field, so there is no advantage in guessing at a tidier looking number.

The same applies to the name in the address block. Put the person who will actually take the parcel, not the team name. A box addressed to a squad and nobody in particular is a box that has to be chased.

How the per square inch rate falls

Die-cut stickers are priced by the square inch, and the rate per square inch goes down as the count goes up. The bands are: 35 cents at 1 to 24 pieces, 30 cents at 25 to 49, 28 cents at 50 to 99, 26 cents at 100 to 249, 24 cents at 250 to 499, and 22 cents at 500. The band applies to the whole order, not to the pieces above the line, so crossing a band pulls the price down on every piece in the run.

A 3 by 4 inch decal, priced at two counts

Take a 3 by 4 inch decal, the shape a team order usually lands on. That is 12 square inches.

At 40 pieces, the count falls in the 25 to 49 band, so the rate is 30 cents per square inch. Twelve square inches at 30 cents is $3.60 each, and 40 of them is $144.00.

At 50 pieces, the count crosses into the 50 to 99 band and the rate drops to 28 cents. The same 3 by 4 inch decal is now $3.36 each, and 50 of them is $168.00.

Read those two lines together and the shape of the pricing is obvious. Ten more decals add $24.00 in total, well under the per piece price at the smaller count, because the whole run repriced. If a roster is sitting at 44 and you are wondering whether to round up, that is the arithmetic to do.

The minimum, and what it actually is

An order qualifies at 10 or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first. It is not a price floor and it is not a fee. A run of 8 larger decals clears it on the dollar side without reaching 10 pieces. A run of 12 very small ones clears it on the piece side without reaching $10. Only an order under both figures falls short, and that is a narrow gap to land in.

Artwork, and the line the cutter follows

A die cut means the sticker is cut to the outline of the design rather than left as a square. A logo with a clean outer boundary cuts cleanly. A logo with long thin spikes, hairline serifs or a one pixel gap between two elements has to be interpreted, and interpretation is where a decal stops looking like the file you sent. If the mark has fine detail, a slightly larger size gives the cutter more to work with, and the price moves with the square inches, so you can see the cost of that decision before you commit to it.

Send the highest resolution version you have, and say in the order notes whether lettering should be cut around or sit inside a solid shape. That one note heads off most of the back and forth.

Where the shop is from here

Everything is printed and cut at one storefront, 205 East Main Street in

Huntington. Herricks is 16.4 miles south west of that address in a straight line, which is close enough that free local pickup is a real option rather than a technicality, and far enough that most people have the box sent. Shipping is within the United States. Checkout takes guests.

Four people who place this kind of order

The manager running the roster. You are ordering against a list that is not final. Price the count you expect, note where the band edges fall, and decide whether the count you are hovering at is worth pushing to the next one.

The parent who ended up with the artwork. You did not ask for this job. The file you have from three seasons back may not hold up at decal size, and it is cheaper to find that out now than after the cut. Send what you have and flag anything you are unsure about.

The person holding the money. A per piece figure means nothing without the count beside it. Work in totals, because a quote at 40 tells you very little about a quote at 50.

The club with more than one squad. Two squads at 25 decals each, ordered separately, sit in the 25 to 49 band twice. The same 50 as one run sit in the 50 to 99 band. If the artwork differs only by a number or a colour, ask before you split the order.

What people ask before they order

Our Herricks address has no ZIP code on file under that name, so what goes in the postal code field? Use the code your mail arrives under. The street address, the county and the state are what identify the order, and none of the pricing or the packing depends on that field.

If a Herricks team goes from 40 decals to 50, does the extra ten just get the lower rate, or does everything reprice? Everything reprices. All 50 pieces move to 28 cents per square inch, which is why 50 of a 3 by 4 inch decal is $168.00 rather than $144.00 plus ten at the old rate.

We only need 8 decals for the Herricks coaching staff. Is that under the minimum? Not necessarily. Eight 3 by 4 inch decals at the 1 to 24 rate are well past $10 of merchandise, and the minimum is 10 pieces or $10, whichever comes first.

Can one Herricks order be split so some decals go to a manager in Mineola and the rest to Garden City Park? One order goes to one address. Place it twice if the boxes need to land in two places, and price each one on its own count, because each is its own run for band purposes.

Does a Herricks decal cost the same whatever shape we cut it to? The rate is applied to the square inches the design occupies, so a 3 by 4 inch footprint is 12 square inches whether the cut path is a rectangle, a shield or an outline of the mark itself.