Can I ask where you get your enamel pins made?
i’m sorry but i don’t share my manufacturers. i’ve said this before but it would undercut the value of my wife’s work since her job is finding/talking to manufacturers, along with running the store. we are 50/50 in this business (we became an LLC this year!) and drawing is only part of the work and i don’t want to take credit for or undermine all the work she does. (i also have no idea who our manus are because that’s her job!)
however, i am happy to give you some advice!
if you’re looking to get started with manufacturing, i would recommend googling and reading some guides for how to shop safely on alibaba and then start looking there. look at different products and make note of the types of terminology used to describe them so you can refine your searches. make sure any manu you’re looking at has a gold rating and has been up for at least 2 years. a reputable manufacturer will also not balk if you ask to visit their factory (and you don’t have to follow through). also, MOQ stands for minimum order quantity and it’s SUPER important. i’ve had a lot of cases where devin will find a really cool item we want to make and it’s only like $1 per item and then the MOQ is 2000 and we cry.
if something seems too cheap and too good to be true, it probably is, and either it’s a scam or they’re not properly compensating their workers. devin and i personally do not haggle with manufacturers because any money we save would probably come out of the workers’ pay and we’re not about that.
a lot of manufacturers also make many types of products so if you can find a good one then usually you are finding a manufacturer for more than just one type of item. once you have a good and reliable manu you can trade their info with other artists who have info you want (if they want your manu).
it’s way easier to break into more types of manufacturing once you have one solid bit of info to trade. a lot of people don’t want to give up their manu info without some sort of trade because not having anything means you haven’t taken the time or initiative to do your own hunting/digging and it shows a lack of commitment. most of us have spent a lot of time/money finding good manus and trading manus is business… but it’s also incredibly social. if an artist feels like someone is being rude/undervaluing their work (i.e. someone walking up to your table at a con, looking at your art, and saying “WHO’S YOUR MANU??” no preamble, no relationship, and they usually walk away immediately whether you give them the info or not), they probably won’t want to share their info.
there’s also sometimes people who don’t share their info because they either payed to get it or because they traded for that info and were asked not to share it. also, many people will think “i worked really hard for this, why should i give it to you for free?” i think a lot of young artists see this as a sort of hazing (and maybe there is some of that), but labor has a value and spending hours and many dollars to find a good manu is clearly valuable labor or you (and many others) wouldn’t be asking for it.
also, the people giving out info freely typically are either using manus everyone already knows about or that are big enough that sharing their information isn’t likely to cause a drop in quality/turnaround time from flooding them with orders (i see this happen over and over again, it happend to our pin manufacturer a while back, it happened to Acorn Press and Vograce, tho the latter is big enough that they recovered way faster). when you share information, unless you have an NDA (not likely), the information spreads exponentially and if a factory is flooded it’s likely that they will either become slow or drop in quality. sometimes they will train in new people and eventually hit that good equilibrium, sometimes the quality or turnaround becomes so bad that they lose most of the clients they gained.
i’ve seen several twitter threads going around listing manu names and it’s always bad info. Zapp will let you do 50 minimum order for enamel pins but they’re just an over-charging middle man and the quality control is lacking. Acorn Press is TINY and was closed down for like a year because they couldn’t handle the orders they received from marketing themselves too well at cons. a lot of people know about PrintNinja for books – i’ve even used them myself for MP! volume 1 – but they are, again, a middle man interfacing between you and a factory and the quality is… mediocre and depending on your opinion on trophy hunting you may be ideologically opposed to the family that runs the company. i can’t remember what else gets listed, probably StickerGiant or StickerMule, which are fine since their scope is so limited and they’re big enough to handle the flood, but i think there’s some sort of drama or something attached to one of them… i don’t remember what tho. regardless, most manus that get shared online are either western middle men (some are good but they generally trade quality control and communication labor for upcharging you) or US manufacturers (some that can handle the flood of people, some that can’t).
OH one last thing – if a company (like, say, Walmart, Home Depot, or Microsoft) is openly traded on the market you can apparently call them and pretend to be a shareholder and ask what factories they use and i think Disney even lists their pin manufacturers online (they have to be, like, Disney certified, it’s a whole thing). i haven’t personally called up Target corporate to ask who their manufacturers are but i think it is a hilarious concept and if you do this you should let me know how it goes.
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