How do we do it?

It occurred to me recently that I spend a lot of time sending people links to companies, products, and explaining processes for starting up a patch or pin line. So I took some time and compiled a few resources here for you. I’ll periodically update this as I come across neat things - but for the most part, this is all stuff Kitfox has used or done in the past during various stages of running a retail patch business.

Types of Patches & Pins

 
 
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Embroidery

This is what almost everyone thinks of when they imagine making patches regardless of industry. Often made in small batches, and in many cases can be made on home embroidery machines rather than outsourcing to a manufacturer.

woven patch

Woven

These are a great option if your artwork has too much detail for embroidery - but you still want a warmer feel than PVC. These are made with a large weaving machine, and cut with a laser cutting machine before being attached to velcro.

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PVC

The bread and butter of Kitfox, most of our firearm and automotive patches are made of PVC. These require a CNC machined mold, typically a large computerized PVC dispensing machine, and commonly a hot water table to cure the PVC. They are then sewn on to laser cut velcro backings.

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Enamel Pins

Enamel pins can either be hard enamel (left) or soft enamel (right)

Hard enamel is best for lower detail pins, as the metal and enamel are buffed down for a smooth finish.

Soft enamel is best for higher detail because the small shapes are not ground/buffed down.

There are definitely other types of patches and pins out there, but these are the most common that Kitfox deals with.

Where to start? — Design Tools & Software

 

Our Design Tools

  • Pencil/Pen & A Sketchpad

  • iPad Pro & Apple Pencil

  • Mac Mini

  • Wacom Cintiq 16

Software & Apps

  • Adobe Illustrator (Mac & iPad)

  • Procreate (iPad)

  • Alternatively you can use Affinity Designer

  • Skillshare (affiliate link, 14 day free trial)

You’re obviously not limited to the same design tools that we use. Wacom offers a wide variety of pen tablets and I’ve used a number of them building up to finally getting a Cintiq. I used an Apple Magic Trackpad for technical illustrations for years.

If you’re struggling with sketching ideas, I highly recommend taking some of the doodling and sketching courses on Skillshare. Skillshare also offers a variety of other classes on the three apps we recommend that are worth exploring so that you are well equipped for all stages of developing your idea.

When I’m developing an illustration to turn into a pin or a patch, I often start in a sketchpad or on occasion I start in Procreate on the iPad.

Once the sketch is ironed out, I’ll bring it into Adobe Illustrator and begin turning it into a vector. All of our manufacturers require final artwork to be in a vector format - whether you work with a manufacturer directly, or through Kitfox, knowing how to turn your artwork into a vector will be a valuable tool in the long run.

Art Cards & Packaging

Once you have your design off to manufacturing, you usually have a couple weeks to get the remaining pieces together for packaging.

I’ve put together a short list of online printing resources, vendors for packaging supplies, and a couple miscellaneous tools I’ve found along the way.

When I first started producing patches and pins, I printed all of the art cards out myself with a Canon PIXMA PRO-100 Inkjet Printer (now discontinued) and cut them on a large fabric cutting mat with a metal ruler and x-acto knife. It was super time consuming, and likely cost the same as professional printing when ink and paper was truly factored in.

I actively use the printers and vendors on this list for various needs in my business, but especially for art cards and other packaging.

Our pin art cards are standard and Moo size business cards. Our patch art cards are generally printed as postcards.

Online Printers

Packaging Vendors

Tools

How to sell your products

 

There are so many really awesome e-commerce hosts out there now, and with pretty inexpensive startup costs you could have your own e-commerce website set up inside of a week.

It’s nice to have a place where you have the ability to collect customer information for shipping and avoid having to keep track of it all in a notebook. Don’t get me wrong, people do it that way and manage to sell patches - but it’s not the only way, and you’ll save yourself loads of time and stress by utilizing a web store.

Patch and pin collecting groups on Facebook are a great way to advertise your work - and get an idea of how big of a market there is for your ideas.

 
 

We’re big fans of Squarespace and Shopify - but some other ways to sell your pins and patches include Facebook Collector Groups, bigcartel, Etsy, the list goes on.

Squarespace

We use Squarespace to host the WWKF website, and have used it in the past to host small e-commerce sites.

Squarespace is great when you have a content heavy website, and a small and cohesive collection of products. For example, if you are an artist who needs a portfolio first and a place to sell prints and other goods second, Squarespace fills that need near perfectly.

Shopify

Shopify is the home of the Kitfox Design Group e-commerce website where we sell our patches, stickers, and apparel.

This platform is posed more for e-commerce first. It does e-commerce, inventory tracking, shipping, all so perfectly — but adding additional pages for purposes other than basic information is very time consuming and lack luster without coding experience.

Shipping & Related Supplies

 

This is our most asked about topic hands down. So many questions about what mailers we use, the labels, the printers, so hopefully this little section answers your burning questions about shipping & handling.

Label & Packing List Printers

We started our e-commerce adventures using a Monochrome laser printer made by Brother. You can print thousands upon thousands of labels and packing lists with these printers on one toner pack - and the toner can be purchased online super inexpensively. We used label sheets in the beginning, and have retired these printers to printing sketches and packing lists.

Fast forward we’ve tried a few thermal label printers. We ended up settling on the Brother QL-1110NWB model because we can print labels from our iPhones/iPads, as well as wirelessly across our headquarters from any computer. Also worth noting, it is one of the approved label printers for Shopify. If you have any trouble setting up your Brother label printer I highly recommend this YouTube video.
The ROLLO label printer is a great alternative.

Shipping Labels

This is a simple one, below are some links to the different labels we have used or friends have used with positive experiences. Remember to check shipping costs for all of these options when figuring out your end shipping cost for your products

Laser Printer Labels — 8.5”x5.5” half sheet labels:

Thermal Labels — 4”x6”

The enKo labels for the Brother thermal require changing the size of the label in your print settings to a 4x6, as well as drilling a small hole in the plastic feet to make sure the printer recognizes the rolls. It’s way easier than it sounds, and saves you a lot from having to buy the Brother branded labels.

 

Shipping Methods

It’s important to know that patches cannot be shipped First Class Letter mail which is an un-trackable method, similar to stamped letters - at a bare minimum ship your patches via First Class Package. Besides wanting a trackable option for customers, envelopes containing patches cannot run through the machines for First Class Letter mail.

We ship nearly everything via USPS First Class Package, unless it meets the weight threshold of 16oz to push it into Priority. There are size limitations as well, so make sure you pay attention to that if you use larger mailers for any of your products.

Mailers / Envelopes

We use a wide variety of mailers and envelopes depending on what kind of product we are shipping. We like to use 6”x10” mailers at a minimum, as we’ve found that they get lost way less frequently.

Pins / Patches:

Stickers:

Get slightly smaller chipboard than the poly mailers you choose - I buy larger sheets and cut them down for stickers because we use these for a few different products we don’t want bent.

 

Postage

If you’re using Shopify, it’s easy to process your shipping labels from within their system and at the current moment we have yet to find a better way to keep everything in check if you’re in the Shopify ecosystem.

If you’re using Squarespace, Bigcartel, or some of the other e-commerce hosts, we highly recommend Shippo for importing orders and processing your postage. You pay per label rather than a monthly fee, so it’s much easier to manage your expenses this way. There is also not a limit, which you can quickly meet on other postage systems. Shippo also has a great customer service chat, which makes everything about them even better.

It’s also worth noting that the Post Office, UPS, and FedEx all have ways to source free shipping supplies. USPS only provides free Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express boxes, but if you will be sending priority mail at a high volume it’s worth looking into their mailers, boxes, and tubes. All of them require an account, and FedEx and UPS may require a certain shipping minimum before providing you with free shipping supplies.

Storage and Workflow

We’ve gone from a fold out wall mounted desk, to a downtown office space, and most recently into a full fledged “headquarters” located in an industrial park. This didn’t happen overnight though.

Product and shipping supply storage is a space dependent and trial and error type situation but my biggest recommendation is to find a space that you can dedicate to storing your products and your shipping supplies because it will make your life so much easier.

Don’t stress out about having a beautiful workspace right out of the gate, ours changes so frequently as we grow that there is no way to have a hard and fast “this is how you should do it” but I also want you to know that we didn’t get here overnight.

 

We now have a dedicated warehouse room to store our products and shipping supplies. We use a combination of wire shelving and large metal shelving for storage and shipping benches.

But we grew into this workspace over a number of years. In the beginning my shipping supplies were stored on a single $14 metal shelf from IKEA, and products lived in Sterilite Shoeboxes on a wire shelf in my closet.

The key that I want to triple underline is simply having a dedicated space, even if that space is a corner in your living room — losing your tape because you had to shove it in a drawer when company came over to eat at your kitchen table gets tiresome.

Have More Questions?

We’d love to expand this page into a series of helpful pages. If you’re stuck, or have an idea for a topic that we could either expand on or write about in general, please let us know with this form! :)

 
 

We hope that this page has been helpful for you. We’re happy to answer additional questions should you have them — and always happy to provide custom quotes for new projects. Head on over to our contact form if you have art ready and need help navigating manufacturing!