Cost-Saving Tips for Custom Enamel Pins
These 7 cost-saving tips range from rush fees to pin type to packaging and take little to no effort.
How to Avoid Rush Fees and Save Money
“You want it bad, you’ll get it bad”, is a common saying in the purchasing world. Most people don’t want to wait for their pin to be produced, so they rush it. But rushing the process can have a negative impact on product quality.
Rushing also increases the overall cost of a custom pin. Many custom pin companies will charge you up to $50 to rush your order through the system. So, not only does this pose a risk to quality, it also increases your overall cost.
Cost Savings Impact
If you order 100 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins, you would likely pay about $308 for the order. If you rush the order, the $50 rush charge added would increase your total cost to $358 or a 16.2 percent increase.
Recommendation
Most pin orders require 3 weeks from order to delivery. By planning ahead and allowing adequate lead time you can save up tso $50 and 17.5 percent on your order. It is worth the wait.
How to Save Money with Shipping
When I ask customers the question, “When do you need your custom pin order?” they often answer “yesterday”. As a culture we don’t like to wait so we pay unnecessary costs to get things fast, even if we don’t need them that fast.
This is why overnight shipping has become the norm. Overnight shipping is expensive and dramatically increases your costs and reduces your profits.
Cost Savings Impact
As an example. If you order 100 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins and shipped them from Utah to Florida you would pay roughly $13.78 with UPS Ground or $64.24 with UPS Overnight. This is a $50.46 or 366 percent increase in cost by choosing overnight shipping.
Recommendation
The answer is obvious, allow the 3 weeks from order to delivery and avoid having to pay for overnight shipping.
Choose Soft Enamel over Hard Enamel for Cost Savings
There are 3 factors that motivate our buying decisions: price, quality and delivery. Most people want all 3, the lowest price, the highest quality and the fastest delivery.
As a long time business owner in the pin industry I’ve learned all 3 options are near impossible to deliver. Either you sacrifice quality for price and delivery or you reduce price by sacrificing quality and delivery. You can get two of the three factors.
However, there is one little known secret with custom pins that most people don’t fully understand and it deals with quality. This secret tip allows you to get all 3 factors when ordering pins.
For years hard enamel pins have been promoted as the highest quality pin, and I won’t lie they do have an extra level of durability. But, the slight difference in durability between soft enamel pins and hard enamel pins isn’t worth the increased cost. Both pins will last forever, the quality is really just a preference issue.
Cost Savings Impact
Using the 100 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins as the example you would pay about $308 for the hard enamel pins. If you ordered the same 100 qty, 1 inch pins but as soft enamel pins you would pay $285 a difference of $23 dollars or 7.5 percent.
Recommendation
While some people struggle over the decision between soft enamel or hard enamel I always recommend ordering the soft enamel unless you prefer the look of a hard enamel pin. Soft enamel pins will provide you a quality pin and save your money.
How to Avoid Mold Costs and Save Money
You cannot produce any physical product without some sort of setup fee. The question isn’t whether it has a mold fee. The question is who pays for the mold fee. So yes, there is a mold cost for creating a custom enamel pin.
Most enamel pin companies that brag about a lower unit price do this to draw you in, and then they add a mold fee at the end. Some call it bait and switch. The reality is you should never pay for a separate mold cost.
A custom pin mold typically costs about $50, you want to make sure you aren’t being charged separately for the mold cost.
Cost Savings Impact
Using the 100 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins at $308 as the example, if you tacked on a $50 mold charge on top of that your total charge would be $358 or a 16.2 percent increase in cost.
Recommendation
Whenever buying custom pins, always ask the custom pin vendor if they charge a mold fee, if they do, you need to compare the costs including the mold fee to any other quotes to ensure you are comparing apples to apples on total cost.
How to Artwork Charges and Save Money
Thomas J Watson Jr. an American businessman, diplomat, Army Air Forces pilot, and philanthropist.said, “Good design is good business”.
Custom pins are no different. It all starts with a good design. A well designed pin results in a great pin that is tradeable and saleable.
What you may not understand is you do not need to pay for artwork.
Don’t hire your friend or neighbor to design something for you. Most people and most artists are not great pin designers. There is an intricacy to pin design that most artists have never dealt with so they create something that isn’t produceable.
Pin companies will produce your custom pin artwork for free. They do this because they know the only way to sell you a pin is to show you what it will look like. They are experts and design for free.
Some pin companies try to limit the number of revisions by charging you $25 per revision after 2 revisions. You should never accept this, they want to sell you the pin, and you can usually negotiate out of any revision charge. Or better yet just find a company that has free unlimited revisions.
Cost savings impact
Using the 100 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins at $308 total as the example. If you add a $25 change charge on top of this you would pay $333 total or 8.1 percent more than you should.
Recommendation
Find a pin company that offers unlimited free revisions and take advantage of free artwork. You will get a better design that is unique, less money and more tradeable and saleable.
Utilize Quantity Breaks and Save Money
The more you buy the more you save.
This statement holds true when ordering custom enamel pins. Many companies offer quantity price breaks at 100, 300, 500 and so on. The more you buy the lower the unit price.
But buying more just to get a price break isn’t always an option because the total cost is still more.
But there are still some things to consider to save money.
Let's say you only need 180 pins, in this case it may make sense to increase your quantity to 200 to get the 200 piece price break. The overall increase in cost is likely very tiny.
Or what if you need 125 pins, you could push your number to 150 qty and then ask the pin company to split the difference between the 100 and 200 piece price. This would likely give you 25 more pins and you would even pay less than what you would pay for 125 qty at the 100 piece price.
Another tip to consider is moving from 100 qty to 200 qty. The biggest per unit price drop is always between 100 and 200 qty. If you can take advantage of that decrease you will increase your savings.
Cost savings impact
Using the 100 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins at $3.08 per pin as the example. If you increased to 200 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins your per unit price would drop to $2.50 per pin, a $0.58 cent drop or 18.8 percent drop in price. While you are paying more in total, if you are selling the pins this automatically increases your profit per pin by $0.58 cents.
Recommendation
Whenever possible move to the next higher quantity break to take advantage of a lower price point. If you are in between breaks negotiate with the pin company to split the difference and offer you a unit price between the two breaks.
Increase Profit with Backer Cards
Packaging, packaging, packing is just as important as location, location, location in real estate. Presentation is everything and changes the overall perceived value of something.
What is unique about this particular tip is that it isn’t a cost saving tip rather it is a profit generating tip because it increases the sale value of your product. If you are selling your pins individually, having a backer card with a colorful branded message increases the perceived value. You can charge more for the pin.
A loose pin may command a $5.00 price point, a pin on a branded backer card could easily command a $10.00 price point.
So of all the tips and tricks, custom backer cards bring more to the bottom line than any single cost cutting tip if you plan to sell your custom enamel pins.
Cost savings impact
If you purchase 100 qty, 1 inch hard enamel pins for $3.08 per pin you likely could sell the loose pin for $5.00 or a 38% gross profit. But if you created a unique backer card that cost roughly $1.50 per card this would increase your overall cost to $4.58 per pin, but now you could sell the pin/backer card for $10.00 at a 54.2 percent gross profit.
Recommendation
When selling custom pins, always invest in the packaging by adding a custom backer card as it dramatically increases the perceived value and allows you to charge more for the custom pin.
