Custom die-cut stickers for Southold, New York

Fifty 4 by 4 inch die-cut stickers come to $224.00, because at 50 pieces each one is $4.48. Take the same artwork to 100 pieces and each sticker is $4.16, which makes the hundred $416.00. The step is not applied only to the pieces above fifty. It is applied to the whole run, so the second fifty costs noticeably less than the first fifty did. That is the sum most groups are trying to do in their heads when they decide how many to ask for, and it is worth putting on paper before the quantity is settled.

Everything here is printed and cut at one storefront, 205 East Main Street in Huntington, New York. Orders from the far eastern end of Suffolk County reach us the same way orders from a few streets away do, as a file and a piece count.

Where the price actually comes from

There are two numbers in every quote and no others. The first is the finished size of the sticker. The second is the price that your piece count earns. On a 4 by 4 inch sticker that runs $5.60 at 1 to 24 pieces, $4.80 at 25 to 49, $4.48 at 50 to 99, $4.16 at 100 to 249, $3.84 at 250 to 499, and $3.52 at 500. Multiply the price each by the count and you have the order. Nothing else is layered on top, so you can test a change before you ask anyone about it: shave half an inch off a design and see what it saves, or move a run from 49 pieces to 50 and watch the price fall a step. A group with a fixed budget can work the sum backwards just as easily, starting from the money it has and ending at a size and a quantity that fit inside it.

Five places within reach of one another

The useful thing about this corner of the county is how tightly the places we also print for sit against each other. Cutchogue is 4.2 miles from Southold, Shelter Island 5.3, Mattituck 6.9, Noyack 7.1, and North Sea 9.1. Every one of those is inside a nine and a bit mile radius. For a group whose helpers are scattered across several of them, that closeness matters more than it looks. One artwork file, one piece count, one order, and the boxes can be split among people who are not far apart. Counting the whole group as one order lets the price reflect that, rather than letting three or four small orders each sit higher up the ladder than the combined run would have earned.

How small an order can be

The minimum is a qualifying threshold, not a price floor. An order qualifies at 10 or more pieces, or at $10 of merchandise, whichever of the two comes first. A large design in a small quantity can clear the $10 side without getting anywhere near ten pieces, and a run of ten little stickers clears the piece side on its own. This matters most when a group wants a trial run of one design before committing its real budget to it.

Sizing the artwork before you price it

Since size is half the sum, the size decision is the price decision. Settle the dimensions first. A die-cut shape that is not square is still priced on the box it sits inside, so a tall narrow shape can price very differently from a square of similar visual weight. Send artwork at the size you want it made, keep the detail large enough to hold up at a few inches across, and leave a little room at the edge so the cut line has somewhere to sit that is not on top of a letter.

Distance, pickup and where it goes

Southold is 51.4 miles east of the shop in a straight line. If someone from the group is coming this way anyway, local pickup is free and the order can be collected at the counter. Otherwise it ships, within the United States only, and the ZIP code that usually goes on the label out here is 11971. Put a person's name on the shipping address rather than only a group or a committee, because a box addressed to an organisation and nobody in particular is the one that gets put down somewhere and forgotten.

Who tends to order a run like this

A fundraising committee is usually working from a target, not a quantity. It knows what it needs to raise and what it thinks a sticker will sell for, and the piece count falls out of that. The price ladder is the part worth showing the whole committee, because ordering 100 rather than 50 changes the margin on every sticker sold, not just on the extra fifty.

A parent organising a spirit run tends to have the opposite problem: a firm head count and a design that is still being argued over. The head count fixes the step. That means the price each is already known before anyone agrees on the artwork, and the only thing left to settle is how big the sticker should be.

A team or club treasurer usually wants one order covering several groups at once. Pooling them is almost always the better arithmetic: three sets of thirty of one design sit at $4.80 a sticker on their own but clear $4.48 together, and a larger pooled run reaches further down the ladder still.

A parent buying a small quantity for one class is served by the minimum rather than the steps. Ten pieces qualifies. So does $10 of merchandise. Neither requires the rest of the school to be involved.

Questions we get asked

Our Southold order is 60 stickers. What does that cost? A 4 by 4 inch design at that count is $4.48 a sticker.

Is it worth taking a Southold spirit run order from 50 pieces up to 100? On a 4 by 4 inch sticker, 50 is $4.48 each and $224.00 in total, while 100 is $4.16 each and $416.00. The extra fifty are charged at less than the first fifty cost, because the lower price is applied to the whole run rather than to the portion above ninety nine.

Should our group place one Southold order of 100 or two orders of 50? Two orders of 50 are each billed at $4.48 a sticker. One order of 100 is billed at $4.16 throughout, $416.00 for the hundred. The single order is the cheaper arithmetic every time the pieces are identical.

Do helpers in Cutchogue or Mattituck need to order separately from Southold? No. Those are 4.2 and 6.9 miles away and we print for all of them, but the price is set by size and piece count, never by where the order came from. Combining them into one run is what moves the step.

What is the smallest Southold order you will take? Ten pieces, or $10 of merchandise, whichever the order reaches first. It is a qualifying threshold and not a minimum spend, so a small run is priced on the same two numbers as any other.