Die-cut stickers for North Great River, New York

"Can we get merch stickers made for one release without committing to a run we will never sell through?" That is usually the first thing a band asks, and the answer is yes. Pricing here works per square inch, and the rate steps down as the piece count goes up, so a hundred stickers are priced by the same method as a thousand, just at a different rate. Ordering for an address in North Great River does not oblige you to buy more than the design needs.

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

Huntington, so an order from this corner of Suffolk County arrives the same way any other does: artwork, a finished size, a number of pieces. What follows is how the money works out, and what the surrounding coverage means for a group whose members are scattered across the township of Islip.

The rate card, in plain figures

Die-cut stickers are priced per square inch, and the rate falls as the order grows. At 1 to 24 pieces the rate is 35 cents. At 25 to 49 it is 30 cents. At 50 to 99 it is 28 cents. At 100 to 249 it is 26 cents. At 250 to 499 it is 24 cents. At 500 it is 22 cents. Two things set your price and nothing else does: how big the sticker is in square inches, and how many of them you are having cut.

A four inch square, worked all the way through

Take the size most people land on for a merch sticker, 4 inches by 4 inches. That is 16 square inches. Order 100 of them and the rate is 26 cents, which puts each sticker at $4.16 and the run of 100 at $416.00. Push the same design to 250 pieces and the rate drops to 24 cents, so each one is $3.84 and 250 of them come to $960.00. That second run is two and a half times the pieces for a little over twice the money, which is the whole reason the bands exist. If you are sitting just under a break point, look at what the next band does to the per piece figure before you settle on a number.

Ten pieces or ten dollars, whichever comes first

An order qualifies at 10 or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first. That is a minimum for the order to go through, not a price floor, and it is deliberately low. A proof run of a single design, a handful of stickers to see the cut line in your hand before a full pressing, a small batch to hand out at a table: all of that clears the bar.

Five neighbours inside 2.7 miles

North Great River sits 14.6 miles south east of the shop in a straight line, inside ZIP code 11752 and inside Suffolk County. What makes the area unusual for our purposes is how tightly the surrounding coverage packs in. Islip Terrace is 1.1 miles away. Central Islip is 2.0 miles. Oakdale is 2.2 miles. Bohemia is 2.6 miles. East Islip is 2.7 miles. Every one of those five is inside 2.7 miles, which is a shorter gap than most people walk their dog.

That matters for a band or a small label more than it would for most buyers, because the people involved in a release rarely share an address. The person who drew the artwork, the person whose spare room the boxes end up in and the person running the merch table can be in three different places on that list and still sit within a couple of miles of each other. The order needs one address, so put it wherever somebody will genuinely be there to take delivery.

The shape you draw is the shape that gets cut

A die-cut sticker is cut to the outline of the artwork rather than to a rectangle around it, so the silhouette you hand over is the silhouette you get back. The square inch figure comes from the overall footprint of that shape, which is why a 4 by 4 inch design is counted as 16 square inches. If you are watching the budget, the lever is the footprint, not the complexity of what sits inside it.

Getting the finished order into your hands

Local pickup at the shop is free if you would rather collect than have anything sent, and orders ship anywhere in the United States otherwise. For a group whose members all live within a few miles of each other, pickup is often the simpler arrangement, because one person can take the whole run and split it at practice rather than paying to send boxes to several addresses.

Who tends to order this way

If you are in a band putting out a first release, you are probably buying one design at one size and want to know what a realistic count costs before you commit. Start at the 100 piece band, see the per piece figure, then look at 250 and decide whether the drop is worth the extra outlay.

If you run a small label with several acts on the roster, each act needs its own design, and every design is counted on its own footprint and its own piece count. It is worth deciding early whether you want modest runs across the roster or a deeper run behind one or two.

If you are a solo artist with a single logo, the minimum is the part to watch. Ten pieces is enough to place an order, so you can put a small batch through, hold the cut shape in your hand, and scale up once you know the outline reads the way you wanted.

If you are the one packing mail orders, a sticker is an insert rather than a product. Small footprints keep the square inch count down and the higher piece counts are where the rate gets kind to you.

Questions that come up

How much is a 4 by 4 inch sticker for a North Great River band ordering 100? Sixteen square inches at the 100 to 249 rate of 26 cents is $4.16 each, so 100 pieces come to $416.00.

If a North Great River order goes up to 250 pieces, does the lower rate apply to all of them? Yes. At 250 pieces the whole order is priced at the 250 to 499 rate of 24 cents, which makes the same 4 by 4 inch sticker $3.84 each and $960.00 for the 250.

Does a 10 piece order from North Great River really qualify, even under $10? Yes. The order qualifies at 10 or more pieces or at $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first, so ten pieces is enough on its own.

Our singer is in North Great River and the rest of the band is spread between Central Islip and Oakdale, so whose address do we use?

Whichever one suits you. All of those places are covered, they are all within

2.7 miles of each other, and the order simply needs one address where someone will be able to receive it. Free pickup at the shop is the other option.

Is the rate for North Great River different from the rate quoted to Islip

Terrace or East Islip? No. There is one rate card. Price is set by the square inch footprint of the design and by how many pieces you order, and the address on the order has no effect on either figure.