The Best Pins at the Best Price
Custom pins come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes and are used across an entire spectrum of teams covering everything from local clubs to global corporations. Our job here at Signature Pins is to help you come up with the perfect artwork for your team and deliver high-quality pins with time to spare, no matter where you plan on using them or how many you need.
As one of the industry’s top custom pin makers, we have years of experience crafting unique pins with beautiful designs and have all the inside knowledge you need to craft a winning design at the best price possible. If you’re looking for a way to save money on your order of custom pins, without sacrificing customer service or high-quality designs, we’re here to help.
Understanding Unit Price
The cost of custom lapel pins is based on unit price, which is the amount of money you pay for each pin. Keeping the cost down on your order is all about keeping the unit price of your pins down. Once you know what factors change the unit price of pins, it’s easy to see where you can take advantage of our free options and save some money on your order.
The basic things that change unit price are the type of pins you choose, the size of your pins, and the quantity of your order.
The least expensive custom lapel pins we offer are die struck and soft enamel pins. But choosing a die struck or soft enamel design doesn’t mean you’ll end up with a low quality lapel pin. What you’ll get is a budget-friendly custom pin design with classic appeal that starts at the lowest unit price.
The size of your pins will also affect the unit price. Larger pins require more materials to make, so they start at a higher unit price. Also, pins larger than 2” in size come with a flat fee for an oversized mold, but more on that in a minute.
The last thing that changes the unit price is the quantity of the order. The unit price of pins goes down as the quantity of pins goes up. An important step in saving money is knowing how many pins you’ll need before finalizing your order, so if you think you might end up needing more pins or plan on making a second or third purchase sometime later in the year, it might be a better idea to order all the pins at once.
As an example, let’s say you put in an order for 100 soft enamel pins that are 1.25” in size. The unit price is $2.70, so the entire order is $270. During the year, you run out of pins twice and resupply by ordering a second and third order of 100 pins each. In total, you would spend $810 for 300 pins.
If you’d ordered all 300 pins at once, the unit price would have gone down from $2.70 to $1.67. That means that you could have gotten all 300 pins for $501, saving you over $300.
Options That Carry Flat Fees
On top of unit price, there are sometimes flat fees that can increase the cost of your pins. For example, if you purchase a pin that’s over 2” in size, an oversized mold fee will be applied to your order. Silkscreen pins and offset print pins, no matter the size, come with flat fees to cover the extra steps in production, namely color set up and plating.
Flat fees don’t change the unit price of pins, so the cost of silkscreen pins may look comparable to a die struck or soft enamel design. But with the added flat fee for color set up, silkscreen pins are more expensive.
Ordering pins with special presentation options like cardstock or premium attachment options like keychains or cufflinks will also incur flat fees as well.
As long as you stick to the size range of 0.75” and 2”, die struck and soft enamel pins start at the lowest unit price and have no flat fees.
Adding Custom Options Without Breaking The Bank
Armed with all this information about unit price and flat fees, it’s easy to see that the best way to save money on your order of lapel pins is to choose a die struck or soft enamel design, stick to sizes 2” and under, and consider ordering more pins at once so you can take advantage of the price breaks we offer on larger orders.
There are all kinds of ways to make unique and interesting designs using our free options as well. Soft enamel pins, for example, come with up to seven colors without increasing unit price, giving you plenty of room to create vibrant designs. You can also create custom shapes at no additional cost, and all pins come free with either a butterfly clutch or rubber clutch.
We also offer upgraded customization options like gemstones, cutouts and glitter enamel. While these options increase unit price, there are ways of adding them into your design without breaking the bank.
Adding gemstones, cut outs or glitter enamel to your lapel pins will change the unit price of your design, similar to how an increase in size will. Gemstones and glitter enamel increase the unit price of a pin by $0.25 per gemstone (depending on the size of the gemstone) and/or glitter color used in the design. Cut outs add $0.10 to the unit price for each cut out section in the artwork.
Even a small $0.25 increase in unit price can have a big effect on the cost of your order. However, choosing a smaller size for your pins can offset the increase in unit price enough to keep you within your budget.
The best way to illustrate this idea is to look back at the example order from earlier. You’re getting ready to order 300 soft enamel pins all at once so you can take advantage of the price breaks in unit price for larger orders. With a unit price of $1.67 for the 1.25” pins, the whole order will cost $501. You love the design but really want to add a splash of red glitter enamel which would increase the unit price by $0.25. The increase in unit price to add glitter enamel would make the pins $75 more expensive.
Not all designs lend themselves to smaller sizes, but in this instance, going from a 1.25” pin to a 1.00” pin could be enough to stay within budget. While the same 1.25” design without glitter enamel costs $576, when you take the size down to 1.00” it only costs $543 with glitter enamel.
Finding the right balance of size and custom options is a great way to adjust unit price and stay within your budget. If you’re having trouble getting the design just right in a way that meets your budget, let us know, and we’ll help you create a beautiful pin at the perfect price.
Know Your Budget and Get Creative
Just because you’re looking for ways to save money, doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice quality or customer service. Artwork and revisions are always free, as well as overnight shipping, so no matter what kind of design is right for you, you’ll only pay for the pins themselves. Our Signature Pins team is happy to help you come up with the perfect design that meets any kind of budget so you can get creative and have fun without having to stress about pin cost.
