I was searching and I couldn't find anything too specific on this-- and feel free to answer this privately/not at all-- but as someone looking to make their own pins, could I ask what a cost estimate is for a starter amount of pins? Is there any sites you could recommend for making them? Thank you!!
it really depends on what kinds of pins you make, what factory you work with, if you get a middle man, how many you order, etc.
if you order more pins it drives down the price per unit but the overall price will increase because you’re ordering more pins.
additionally, depending on whether or not you’re working with a middle man, they may tack on a small extra amount per pin for their services. if you make pins with complex processes like anodization, transparent enamel, screen printing, rose gold plating, etc. it will also drive up your price because most of the time those processes have to be outsourced to a separate factory and then sent back to the original one to be finished. special processes also increase the amount of defective pins you are likely to get for any given design.
my wife does all that side of the business -- finding manufacturers, managing the store, doing business stuff, etc -- i just draw the art, but i know she finds most of our manufacturers and the middle men we interface with thru alibaba, which you can google around and find guides on how to tell if a maker on alibaba is reputable or not.
in general, for a very basic pin design that you order 100 of (usually the minimum order), it would probably run somewhere between $1-2 per pin plus a $50 mold fee to make the pin in the beginning (plus an extra fee if you want a backing stamp, which i recommend doing) depending on the manufacturer and if you’re working with a middleman. as far as i know, we interface with a middleman in china. middlemen in the US tend to be more expensive, i’ve seen their price per unit be closer to $3-5 per pin.
for pins that use a lot of colors or are big or use special processes, your price per unit could basically double, but it really depends on your manufacturer and the amount of pins you order and your history working with that manu.
then you also have to take into consideration how many defective pins you are going to get. for simple designs/processes, sometimes we only get like 5 defective pins. sometimes someone at the factory wears a sweater that pills up and over half the pins, if not all of them, have sweater lint in them. for more complex pins with more colors/processes i’d expect anywhere from 10-50% of the pins to be defective, depending on your manu and how many processes they have to outsource.
also, none of this includes shipping and i don’t remember how much that is but pins aren’t super heavy so compared to literally everything else we make where shipping is several thousand dollars per order, it’s not so bad.
AS A FINAL NOTE... now there is also an additional 25% tariff on everything coming out of china, so after you do all your math and figure out costs, add an extra 25% to that and thank our president for not understanding how tariffs work.
