As well as bands and musicians, I reach out to other people who, whilst they are not themselves involved in the ‘music scene’, still play a pivotal role in helping bands and artists to promote and market their services.

I recently got in touch with Paddy who runs a local company called ‘Badges 4 Bands’, whilst the name sort of describes what his company does, I still wanted to have a chat and find out more about the services he offers.

You’re a Devon based company called Badges 4 Bands, please tell me a bit more about how you got started and the thought process behind it?

I have been designing posters, flyers, t-shirts and badges for my friends bands and projects as a hobby for a few years and have been looking for away to get into print but with out huge start up costs, badges seemed the best way forward.

The button badge has been around for years but saw a dip in the past few years, are badges as popular now as they always were?

Button badges have been on the merchandise table of bands for years and continues to be an affordable starting point for bands to start selling merchandise. More established bands still like to get badges but as a free gift for their fans or when someone buys an album bundle etc.

Did you encounter any issues when starting the business up in the first place?

We have kept it very simple and do most of the work manually. We decided to go via this route as it seems the best way to ensure the customer gets the best quality possible rather than having an automated machine that turns out 100 pieces a minute, we want to make sure each and every badge is exactly what the customer imagines.

What type of equipment do you use to manufacture the badges?

As mentioned we have manual badge presses, we cut each design and and press them one by one. This may be time consuming but we are passionate about the quality and we can make sure each and every badge is perfect.

Have you considered branching out to include stickers, enamel pins and other items as well as badges?

We hope that as the business grows, our product range will grow with it. We would love to one day be the first point of contact for bands looking for merchandise and be able to offer them everything from badges, t-shirts, stickers and caps.

So, I’m interested in getting some badges made for my music site, talk me through the process…. Do you have a minimum order? If so how many is it?

We have no minimum order, but customers will find that our price per item reduces, the more they order, so a single badge is going to cost you £1 but if you order 100 badges they cost around 18p each. We want it to be as easy for anyone to order for us as possible. We have free templates available on our site or we are more than happy to resize and arrange the graphics to fit for no added fee. This means no matter what level of experience you have, you can order with us and be sure to get the best possible product.

If I were to re-order from you in the future, can I use the same template as before and save on additional costs?

As we have no set up fees we don't offer re-order discounts but we hope to launch a loyalty system later in 2020 to thank customers for returning to us.

Being a company that make badges for bands, please tell us about a few of your favourites that we can check out in 2020….

We love the local music scene and like to support local bands. We have a love for all things folk, rock, punk and metal but enjoy most genres of music.

So there you have it folks, all that you need to know about getting high quality button badges made for your band, label, promotion campaign, just about any event that you can think of, they’ll have an idea that is SURE to tickle your fancy.

Click on the following links to find out more about Badges 4 Bands.

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