Starlight Pins
Background
The first pin I ever bought was at a convention many years ago. It was a beautiful ultra ball pin inspired from Pokemon and from then on I started collecting pins as a way to remember my travels and events. Since that convention I have collected more than 50 different pins from various sources and artists.
At some point along my collection journey I started to think about creating my own pins and selling them myself. In mid 2024 I finally decided to give it a shot. The plan was to make a bit of side income with my own designs and later on also work with other creators to bring their designs to life as pins. The name Starlight came from Revue Starlight, one of my favorite anime, combined with my love for space, which is also where the star shaped logo and the very first pin came from.
Process
Pin Design
Designing pins is as easy as the design one wants to create. In terms of the actual process you simply need to create a vector formatted design where the strokes are placed where the metal is supposed to be and each of the colored areas is fully closed.
All of the designs were my own and I made them using a mix of Inkscape and Affinity. There wasn't really a fixed process. Most of the time I had an idea in my head and just kept trying different versions of it until I got to something I was happy with. The harder part was learning what actually works as a pin, since a design that looks great on screen does not always translate well to metal and enamel. Lines that are too thin either get lost or can't be produced at all, small details turn into blobs at pin size and every extra color adds to the cost and to the chance of something going wrong. The plating also makes a big difference. The Bauhaus pin below for example uses black plating, which gives it a completely different look than if it had gold lines. Most of this I picked up from various sites and guides online and the rest I learned by simply trying things out.
Manufacturing
Once I had my first few designs ready the next step was finding someone who could actually produce them. Pretty much all enamel pins are made in China, so the search mostly consisted of going through Alibaba and a few smaller manufacturers that other pin makers recommended. The tricky part is that every manufacturer promises the same thing: great quality, low prices and fast delivery. So the only real way to find out who is reliable is to order from them and see what arrives. I ended up trying a few different ones before I found one I was happy with.
When it comes actually making the pins there are also a few different types of pins to choose from. The most common ones are soft enamel and hard enamel. With soft enamel the color sits slightly below the metal lines, which gives the pin a bit of texture and makes it cheaper to produce, but it can also create some cool effects when used properly. Hard enamel is filled up to the metal lines and polished flat, so it looks a lot cleaner, but it is also more expensive. On top of that there are options like glitter, screen printed details, different metal platings and so on, each of which adds to the price. Most manufacturers also charge a one time mold fee per design and have a minimum order quantity, which is where most of the upfront costs come from and what makes small scale sampling not ideal.
The biggest issue overall was quality control. Colors are matched using Pantone codes, but even then a few of them ended up looking noticeably different from what I had designed and effects like glitter can end up looking weird due to the random nature of them. Small defects like scratches, dust in the enamel or spots where the enamel didn't fill properly were also fairly common, so I had to check every pin by hand before it could be sold. To give some context from my experience: Soft enamel pins ended up with a 2% imperfection rate (1% totally unusable), while hard enamel was closer to 4-5% (1% totally unusable).
Website
Since I was only going to sell online the website was the main storefront, so I wanted it to look good. I went with Shopify as it handles payments, the checkout and orders out of the box. Instead of using one of the premade themes I built a custom theme myself, which was more work, but it meant the site looked exactly how I wanted it to and I could keep it simple so the pins would be the focus. The site was English only and all of the product photos were taken by me (a few of them can be seen on this page).
I also wanted to ship globally, which turned out to be the most annoying part of the whole setup. Every country has its own rules for taxes and customs, so it was not just a matter of setting a few shipping rates. I had to figure out which taxes to charge where, how to fill out the customs declarations correctly and how to avoid customers getting hit with surprise fees when their package arrived. On top of that shipping a small pin across the world costs quite a lot compared to the price of the pin itself, which made pricing a bit of a balancing act.
Running a company
This was the part I was the least prepared for. Designing and ordering pins is the fun part, but as soon as you want to actually sell them there is a whole list of things you need to take care of first. Registering the business, figuring out taxes, writing an impressum, a privacy policy and terms and conditions, rules for returns and shipping and so on. None of this is particularly hard on its own (except international taxes, but thats another story), but when you are starting from zero you don't even know what you are supposed to be looking for, and most of the information online is either very vague or written for much bigger companies. A lot of my time went into reading through government websites and forum/reddit posts just to make sure I wasn't missing something that could get me in trouble later.
The commerce side was pretty similar. Shopify takes care of payments and the checkout, but that still leaves product photos, descriptions, pricing, shipping options, marketing and social media. For some of these I hired freelancers, which helped a lot, but it also meant I had to learn how to write proper briefs and keep track of other people's work. I tried out a few different project management tools to keep everything organized and at some point I realized I was spending way more time running the company than actually designing pins.
Result
Although this project had to be shut down, due to my lack of time and not being profitable enough to warrant the extra work, it still taught me a ton about running a business, what is important in creating a brand and where one should allocate their time when starting from scratch. In addition I also learned more about Shopify, hiring freelancers and various project management tools and processes.
Despite this I still love creating pins and the process surrounding it and if you are interested in getting some pins commissioned or working with me let me know under contact@robertstojanovic.com