During your teen years, do you remember buying pin buttons, tying them up on your bag and then flaunting them like a boss? I remember doing this with the badges of “High School Musical”and “Camp Rock.” Good old Disney times!
Growing up these designs got replaced with “Google” and “Kpop” badges!
Here, one thing is for sure that unlike windows phones, pin buttons are here to stay. They are not going out of fashion.
The market demand for selling buttons started way back in the 16th century when pin buttons made their debut in American politics. People used to wear them to show which political candidates they support. Fast forward to today, pin button business is targeted across various fields like:
- Political campaigning
- Fundraising events
- Promoting businesses
- In entertainment industry
- Welcoming new family members
- Wedding seasons and more!
So, if you are thinking of starting a business for selling buttons online, let me tell you that the scope is wide. This guide will help you know how to get started, step by step guide to sell buttons online.
A Quick Roadmap of This Post:
- Find your target audience
- Types of materials required
- Decide budget
- Everything you will need to sell buttons online
- Don’t Forget the USP: Selling Custom Pin Buttons
- Printing Methods & Infrastructure set up
- Marketing strategies
Find your target audience
Any business needs to have a specific target audience. And that is your first step. Think and ask yourself. Will you sell buttons directly to customers or collaborating with companies i.e. whether you want to cater to the B2B or B2C audience or both with a marketplace?
You can select either one of them or go with both of them. In my opinion, it is better to start selling buttons online with B2C and later target your business for the B2B segment. This will give you some room to extend your button making business and sell pin buttons that your customers love. Another major reason behind knowing your target audience is, it gives you more clarity on the type of product you want to create, understands customers’ requirements, and market trends.
Types of materials required
When wondering on how to make button badges, it is important to know that they are available in various sizes. With different shapes, and designs each of them requires different material. There are multiple things which go into making and selling pin buttons. Most pin buttons are made with metal materials, acrylic paints, white clays, hot glue gun, fabric scraps for cotton pin buttons, wooden materials to make wooden badges, and more.
The materials you use completely depend on the type of pin buttons you are planning to sell. So, first define which shape and size of pin buttons you want to sell. Depending on this, get materials, create designs and start selling buttons online.
Decide budget
Having a constraint over a budget is a must thing. It is important to define your budget as it will help you create a roadmap for which vertical requires more attention and money. Additionally, it even helps your investors and partners to be on the same page. Apart from this, you can even have a strategic planning for next quarter or a year.
Plenty of things go when starting button making business. From licensing, logistics, vendor management, and more. Let’s see each of them in brief:
Registration and licensing:
Starting any new business requires you to register it and get the required licenses. For this reach out to the necessary officials department in your state or city and get the paperwork done.
Logistics and vendor management
The main aim of selling buttons online is that customers can order it from the ease of their home and get easily delivered. And to provide this facility it is important to connect with logistics and vendor management companies. Connect and sign the deal with the right vendors. They will help you to deliver your pin buttons to customers timely.
Regardless of selling buttons online or offline, they have their own rules and regulations. So, make sure you have all the required licenses and your business is registered.
Searching for a technical partner to sell button business online? See how PrintXpand can make your store different from others with a product designer tool.
Everything you will need to sell buttons online
Today there are various options to sell pin buttons online. For example, you can create your Instagram or Facebook store and start selling. All Free, no major capital required. However, these platforms tend to get major algorithm updates and it is getting tougher with competition. Overall, it is not your domain, and hence doesn’t give you much control over things.
As a solution, set up your own website that you can create as per your requirements and preferences. Design, colors, buying funnels everything can be created as you need. Here’s how:
Select a platform
There are more than a thousand online platforms which help you to build your store for button making business online. Platforms like Shopify, Magento, Joomla, Drupal, etc. helps you to build an eStore, and each of them has their merits and drawbacks. And with multiple options available it is very obvious to get confused. Hence, in such cases it is important to choose the right development platform that caters your needs. For example, if you have a limited budget Shopify offers everything you will need. However, for a fully-functional website, Magento could be your choice with a little more investment.
Finalize primary features
Every eStore has a certain set of features which makes them unique and more likely to use. Depending on your business model define a set of features you want for your business and implement them. You can include some of the basic features like: sign in options, add to cart, wish lists, multiple payment options, multiple language support, etc. All these features are very basic modules which your application needs.
Choose development partner
There are multiple ways you can use to develop an eStore be it freelancers or tech partners. I would personally recommend you to reach out to tech companies like us which help to create websites and eStores for selling buttons.
We have an experience of over 10+ years and expertise which can solve your issues faster. Developing one website requires teams from different departments which make it easy to collaborate and create. We have the expertise you need to have a stellar website. At PrintXpand, we have a team of experts that work closely on developing your eStore. We could be your tech partner to help you take care of your web development project end to end. For information, we can also have a one-to-one conversation. To know more about the tool, you can first go through the product designer tool below.
Don’t Forget the USP: Selling Custom Pin Buttons
Every business has its unique selling point to attract customers, retain them, and for selling buttons or any other products. Similarly, you too will need a USP to get more customers. Today there are thousands of stores offering the products already that you are thinking of starting your business in. Well, that’s okay but it is important to have something that sets your store apart from others.
Especially with products like pin buttons, everyone has their own choices. Some want pretty designs based on their aesthetics, some companies like to create ones based on their business.
So rather than you work on those designs, why don’t you let your customers design and prepare their products before ordering?
Integrating a product designer tool with your website will open doors for customers to show their creativity. Using the tool customers can create designs of their choice and place an order right from there. Here’s how the interface looks like:
With the readymade templates, clipart designs, text formatting it becomes easy for customers to design the products. The interface is simple that even a naive can prepare products in minutes and order. When customizing pin buttons, it is important to have good options for colors and designs. With that customization becomes more creative and easier. If you consider choosing a product designer tool for your business, make sure it has features like social media import, great options for designs, easy interface.
Also, it has to be a complete mobile responsive tool so that customers can design the products from anywhere in minutes!
Why is it the solution to go for?
- It helps business to connect with customers personally
- Customers can show their creativity
- The exclusive custom designs can help increase sales
- It lets customers connect emotionally with products
Just imagine, your customers come to your store and create their own custom designs with this tool. This is helping businesses to grow their customer base and provide better customer service.
Printing Methods & Infrastructure Setup
Managing the production and distribution of pin buttons can be time-consuming and complicated. That’s where end-to-end web-to-print solutions come in.
This solution can help you to manage your print operation entirely online. With web-to-print solutions, you can easily create and manage their eStore, handle order processing and fulfillment, and even automate your production processes.
At PrintXpand, we offer customized web-to-print solutions that can help your pin button business to create and manage its eStores with ease. Some of the key features of our solutions include:
- User-friendly design tool to create custom pin button designs
- Real-time inventory management to avoid stockouts and improve customer satisfaction
- Automated production processes to save time and money while improving product quality
- Multi-store support for businesses with multiple locations or brand names
- Responsive design for seamless user experience on any device
- Quote management to easily generate and manage customer quotes
- User management to control access and permissions for employees and customers
- Artwork approval to ensure that only high-quality designs are used for production
- Third-party integration to connect with other software and systems for seamless workflows
- Tailor-made website design to match your brand and enhance your online presence.
Take the first step towards building your custom pin button business today! With our expert assistance and tailored solutions, you’ll be on your way to success in no time!
Once you receive an order from your web store, our solutions will automatically process the order and assign jobs. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and frees up your time for other tasks. As you’ll receive a print-ready file you just need to print them on the buttons.
There are majorly two types of printing methods used in the button business i.e. inkjet printing and laser printing. Each of them has its merits and demerits.
- Inkjet Printing:
The Inkjet printers are high in resolution. That is mainly based on the type of material the company is using so make sure to use graphics or presentation paper. This type of ink does not spread or remains thick. The cost of an inkjet printer is affordable but ink and paper are a bit costly.
The disadvantage it has is it is a bit slower than laser printers. Another thing is you will need to let the prints dry fully or else the button will start rusting.
- Laser Printing:
For this, Laser Printers are a go to solution for printing button business. It is a bit expensive compared to an inkjet printer. The major benefit of having laser printers is that its quality does not depend on the paper and this saves you money in the long run. Apart from this, remember to have buttons placed perfectly or else they are likely to fall down inside the machine. And this may hamper the overall results of your good design.
You can either invest in any of the laser printers for your business or tie up with any printing business. Take further decisions only depending on your requirements.
Marketing strategies
Taking your business online is not the only thing that you need to do once you start, you need to market it to make it well for more sales. There are various marketing strategies for your button making business. As you are taking your business online it is important to make your marketing strategies strong. There are multiple ways you can market your business online like: influencer marketing, endorsements deals, collaborations with influencers/brands, uploading your products on other sites, social media marketing, and more
Let’s see some of them in brief:
- Digital marketing:
Digital marketing includes SEO and PPC techniques. SEO is an organic method to rank your content on Google whereas PPC is a bidding method to rank your website. Both of them have their pros and cons. If you are looking for instant growth and rank on Google then PPC is your answer. However, organic marketing gives you great results in the long run.
While on the other hand if you are looking to get organic traffic on your website then SEO is your solution.
- Social Media Marketing:
Social Media platforms are the perfect place to directly stay in touch with your customers. Here, using different third party tools you can promote your business to users. Using the right advertising tools, you can narrow down your users’ search, understand their needs, and promote targeted customers.
- Collaborating with influencers:
This is the new way companies have started promoting their products. Companies are reaching out to social media influencers to promote their products and services. This new approach is winning over companies at much lower cost and helping them target their audience efficiently.
Out of all these marketing strategies, define which one do you wish to use, why, and how you can start them. Answering these questions will help you to plan and execute your marketing strategies.
Wrapping up:
To start selling pin buttons it is clear that you need a solid plan, stellar website with USP of customization. Not to mention it has huge scope in the market. These pin buttons have been ruling since decades and will continue. When starting selling buttons online can be challenging but with the right tech partner you can.
At PrintXpand we are helping our clients set up their eStore from scratch and serve their customers better with our product design tool. With over a decade of experience in the industry we make sure to make your business remarkable among your competitors. Our product designer tool is our flagship product helping businesses to get the best for their customers. We have helped many companies set up their web to print stores from scratch and business successfully. To know more about it, you can get in touch with us and we will guide you throughout the journey!
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