Ordering Custom Pins Lead Time MOQ And What Drives The Price

What The Minimum Order Actually Means

The minimum here is 100 pieces per design. The important words are per design. A single artwork in one colourway is one design; the same artwork in three house colours is three designs, because each needs its own setup even if the die is shared. Understanding this early avoids the common surprise of a quote that seems to have tripled, and it usually leads to a better decision: consolidating four near-identical variants into one design is almost always cheaper than splitting a run.

Where The Time Actually Goes

Samples generally take 3-5 days and mass production generally takes 10-15 days after sample approval. What that schedule assumes is that you approve things promptly, because the two approval points, the vector proof and the physical sample, are the only places the clock stops for a reason outside the factory. In practice most late orders are late because artwork sign-off drifted, not because production overran. Building three or four days of your own decision time into the plan is more realistic than assuming instant approvals.

What Drives The Price Per Piece

Five things, roughly in order of impact. Size, because a bigger pin uses more metal and more enamel and takes longer to fill. Process, because hard enamel adds firing, grinding and polishing to every piece. Colour count, because each colour is a separate hand-filling operation. Plating, because antique and two tone finishes need extra handling. And quantity, because tooling is a fixed cost spread across the run, which is why the price per piece falls sharply between 100 and 500 and much more gently after that.

Rush Orders Are Real But Have Limits

Rush orders are accepted against an expedited fee. What that fee buys is priority in the queue and faster shipping, not the removal of physical steps: enamel still has to cure and plating still has to be done in sequence. If a date genuinely cannot be met, the useful answer is to be told that before you order rather than after. Give the deadline at enquiry stage and it becomes a constraint on the quote instead of a problem discovered halfway through.

Reorders Are Cheaper And Faster

The die and the approved colour reference are kept on file. A repeat order of the same artwork skips artwork review, proofing and die cutting entirely, which removes both a cost and several days. It also removes the risk of drift, because the second batch is checked against the same physical reference as the first rather than matched by eye. For any programme that repeats annually, this is the single strongest argument for staying with one supplier.

How To Get A Firm Quote First Time

Send the artwork, the quantity per design, the finished size and the date you need the goods in hand, plus the destination country. If you know the process and plating you want, include them; if not, say how the badge will be used. That is genuinely enough to come back with a real number rather than a range. One email address handles enquiries and answers within 24 hours.