Custom Die-Cut Stickers for North Massapequa

A community group putting on an event usually has one person holding the whole thing together. They book the room, count the chairs, chase the sign up sheet, and then find out that name badges and giveaway stickers are their job too. That person is hardly ever a designer. What they have is a logo somebody drew for the group a long time ago, a rough headcount, and a budget the members voted on. What they want is a plain answer on shapes, sizes, counts and cost, so they can hand real numbers back to the committee. If you are the person doing that in North Massapequa, this page is written for you.

What a badge and swag run usually looks like

Most of these orders are two or three items rather than one. Badges come first, a cut shape carrying the group name with room for a first name, either filled in by hand or printed per person if you already have the list. Then the plain logo sticker, the one that ends up on a laptop lid or a notebook and that people actually take home. Then something tied to the event itself, a date, a slogan, a mascot the group has used for years. Splitting a run across two or three designs costs less than most organisers expect, because the rate is set by how many pieces are on the order, not by how many different designs are in it.

Sizes, shapes, and where the cut falls

Die cut means the shape is cut to the outline of your artwork rather than to a square drawn around it. A badge shaped like your group crest comes out as the crest. Two things are worth knowing. Artwork with thin spikes, long tails or very fine gaps between letters wants a little padding around it. And anything you care about, a name, a year, a phone number, should sit away from the edge, because a cut line has a small amount of movement in it.

Artwork, when the logo is older than the committee

Plenty of groups are working from a logo that exists as one small image pulled off an old newsletter or a photograph of a sign. Send what you have. If a file is too small to hold up at the size you want, we will say so and say what would fix it, usually either a larger copy of the original or a redraw of the outline. Better to hear that before the committee votes on a number than after.

Working out the cost before the meeting

Stickers are priced per square inch, and the rate per square inch falls as the piece count rises. It is 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.

Take the size most badge and handout runs land on, a 3 by 3 inch sticker, which is 9 square inches. At 120 pieces the rate is 26 cents, so each one is $2.34 and 120 of them is $280.80. Push the same design to 250 pieces and the rate drops to 24 cents, which makes each sticker $2.16 and the run of 250 comes to $540.00. That is a little under twice the money for more than twice the count, which is the calculation worth putting in front of a committee arguing about whether to order for the people who signed up or for the people who might turn up.

There is an order minimum and it is small. An order qualifies at 10 or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever it reaches first. It is not a price floor, just the point at which an order is an order.

Addressing an order where we have no ZIP on file

North Massapequa is the unusual case in our records: there is no ZIP code stored against it on our side. That sounds like a problem and it is not one, because nothing in an order is keyed to it. Put in the street address, the way you would write it on an envelope, and that is what the order travels on. The one thing to avoid is guessing. If you are not certain which ZIP belongs on the line, use the address you actually receive mail at rather than picking a neighbouring code because it looked close enough.

Where the printing happens, and what else is close

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

Huntington, which sits 13.1 miles due north of North Massapequa in a straight line. You are welcome to collect an order there at no charge instead of paying to have it sent, and orders that are shipped go anywhere in the United States. We print for several places within a couple of miles of you as well, including Massapequa Park at 1.4 miles, South Farmingdale and Plainedge at 1.7 miles each, and North Wantagh at 2.1 miles, which matters when a group draws its members from more than one neighbourhood.

Four organisers who order runs like this

If you chair a volunteer committee, price two counts rather than one before the meeting. A committee will always ask what the bigger number costs, and the answer lands better with the arithmetic already done.

If you are running a fundraiser table, the logo sticker is the piece that does the work. It goes home with people who did not stop to talk.

If you organise the same event every year, keep the artwork file you sent. A reorder of an unchanged design is the simplest kind of order there is, and the rate still depends only on the count you place this time.

If you are ordering for a group you are not a member of, a parents association, a league, a neighbourhood association, get the piece count signed off in writing first. The count sets the rate, and it is awkward to change once a run is placed.

Questions we get asked

Our group has no ZIP code listed for North Massapequa, so what do we put on the order? The street address, exactly as you use it for mail. Nothing in the order depends on a ZIP being stored on our side, and a guessed code causes more trouble than a blank one.

We need 120 badges for a North Massapequa event. Is it worth going up to 250? On a 3 by 3 inch sticker, 120 pieces is $280.80 at 26 cents per square inch and 250 pieces is $540.00 at 24 cents. That is $259.20 more for 130 more badges, at $2.16 each instead of $2.34. Worth it if the extra 130 get handed out, not if they sit in a box.

Our North Massapequa committee only needs 8 pieces. Is that too small to order? It can still qualify. An order needs 10 or more pieces or $10 of merchandise, whichever comes first, so 8 larger stickers that clear $10 of merchandise are fine. Eight small ones that do not clear it are not, and the fix is to add two.

The organiser for our North Massapequa event lives in Plainedge. Can she be the one who collects the order? Yes. Whoever collects does not have to be the person who placed the order, and Plainedge is 1.7 miles from you. Have her bring the order details with her.

Can one North Massapequa order mix badge sizes and still reach the 250 piece rate? Yes. The band is set by the total number of pieces on the order, and each piece is then priced on its own square inches. A run of 250 mixing a 3 by 3 inch badge with a smaller logo sticker is charged at 24 cents per square inch throughout.