Custom Die-Cut Stickers for Riverhead, New York

How small can a Riverhead order be before it stops being worth placing?

Smaller than most people expect. An order qualifies at ten or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever of the two you reach first. That is not a price floor and it is not a minimum spend written in softer words. If you want ten seals for a product line you are still testing on friends, ten seals is a real order. If the line has settled and you want 250, that is a real order too, at a lower rate per square inch.

Most of what we cut in small counts is a seal. A little printed circle or square that closes a box flap, holds a sheet of tissue paper shut, or sits across the seam of a pouch so the person opening it can see that nobody opened it first. It is the least glamorous thing a small product maker buys and the one they notice hardest when it is wrong. What follows is how the price is worked out, how the size is counted, and how an order headed east from the shop is handled.

How a square inch turns into a price

Die-cut stickers are priced by the square inch, and the rate per square inch falls as the piece count climbs. 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 numbers decide everything: the area of one sticker, and how many you want. Area first, then the band the count falls into, then the two multiplied. It is plain arithmetic, which means you can work out any size you are considering yourself, on paper, before you ever open a cart.

The step between 24 and 25

Here is the example worth keeping in your head. A 1.5 by 1.5 inch seal is 2.25 square inches. Order 24 of them and the rate is 35 cents, which makes each one $0.79 and the 24 together $18.90. Order 25 and the rate drops to 30 cents, which makes the same seal $0.68 each and the 25 together $16.88.

One more sticker, and the order costs less than it did. That is the whole shape of the pricing in a single jump. The same thing happens again at 50, at 100, at 250 and at 500, though never quite so sharply as it does at that first step. If your count is sitting one or two short of a band edge, the sensible move is usually to go over it rather than under.

Five covered neighbours, all inside seven miles

Riverhead is 38.4 miles east, straight line, of the shop at 205 East Main Street in Huntington, and the mail for it carries the 11901 ZIP. What makes the area unusual on a map of Suffolk County is how tightly the surrounding places we also cover are packed around it. Flanders is 3.4 miles off. Calverton is 5.7. Westhampton is 6.4, Remsenburg-Speonk 6.9, and East Quogue 7.1. Every one of the five nearest sits inside 7.1 miles.

That matters for anyone who makes something in one place and sells or stores it in another, which is common enough among people running a small line out of a garage, a spare room or a rented unit. You are not choosing between separate service areas. The rate card is the same number of cents per square inch whether the box goes to a home address, a workshop, or a friend's place a few miles over.

Getting a small mark to read at an inch and a half

A seal is small, and smallness is unforgiving. At 1.5 inches square you have

2.25 square inches to work with, and a logo built for the top of a website will usually arrive at that size with its thin strokes closed up and its small type turned to mush. The marks that still read at that size are simple: a single heavy word, an initial, a solid shape, a line drawing with generous gaps in it.

Send the artwork at the size you actually want it cut, and say so. The cut line follows the outline you give, so a circle stays a circle and a rounded square stays a rounded square. If your product line has four variants and you want a different colour for each, that is four pieces of artwork, and the piece count for the rate is the total across all of them, not four separate small orders.

Four people this page is really for

The maker with one product. You have one item, one box, one seal, and no reason to buy a thousand of anything. The band at 25 exists for you. Work in 25s and 50s until the line tells you it wants more.

The maker with a small range. Three or four things, each in its own colourway, each needing its own closure. Add the counts together before you look at the rate card, because the band is set by the whole order, and four sets of 25 is 100.

The person who sells in person and by mail. Two different jobs for the same sticker: closing a bag you hand over, and closing a mailer you do not. One design usually covers both, which keeps the count in one band instead of splitting it across two.

The person testing a name. You are not sure the line is called what it is called yet. Ten pieces is a real order. Print ten, put them on ten boxes, look at them for a week, and change your mind cheaply if you need to.

Questions we hear before an order goes out

If my Riverhead order is sitting at 24 seals, should I just add one more? Almost always, yes. At 24 the rate is 35 cents a square inch and the total is $18.90. At 25 the rate falls to 30 cents and the total is $16.88. You get an extra sticker and pay less for the order.

Why is a 1.5 by 1.5 inch seal on a Riverhead order counted as 2.25 square inches? Because the rate is charged on area, not on the length of a side. One and a half multiplied by one and a half is 2.25, and 2.25 multiplied by the rate for your band gives the price of a single piece. A seal twice as wide and twice as tall is four times the area, not twice.

Does a ten piece Riverhead order clear the minimum, or do I need to reach $10? Ten pieces clears it on its own. The minimum is satisfied by either the count or the merchandise value, whichever you get to first, so a ten piece order qualifies even though the merchandise sits under $10.

I live in Riverhead but keep my stock in Flanders. Where should the order go? Wherever you want it. Both are inside the area we cover, and Flanders is only 3.4 miles from you, so it makes no difference to the price which of the two addresses goes on the label. Put the one where somebody will actually be to take the box.

Is a Calverton address handled the same way as a Riverhead one? Yes. Calverton is 5.7 miles away and sits on the same rate card, as do Westhampton, Remsenburg-Speonk and East Quogue. You are also welcome to collect instead, at no charge, from the counter in Huntington if you happen to be coming this way.