There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t try to run an ethical business. This page highlights the True Costs™ of doing business in our current society.
Enamel Pins are small metal lapels that people wear to show some flair, support a cause, or express their personality. At their most basic, they are simply a piece of metal (usually Iron, Zinc, or Copper) stamped in a way to give some depth and are then filled with colored enamel (melted glass). It requires heavy machinery, skilled labor, and some serious heat to make enamel pins.
MATERIALS: $0.25 | 01kg
MANUFACTURING: $2.50 | 01kg
SHIPPING TO US: $0.25 | 01kg
TRANSACTION: $1.00 | 00kg
PACKAGING: $0.75 | 01kg
30% MARKUP: $1.67 | 00kg
ROUND UP TO 5: $2.75 | 00kg
TAXES: $0.83 | 00kg
SHIPPING TO YOU: $5 | 01kg
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TOTAL: $10.00 + Shipping | 05kg (We offset 10kg)
Hard Enamel Pins are stamped pieces of metal filled with colored molten glass. Usually zinc or iron are used to make our pins. The mining and processing of these metals happen all over the world and require heavy machinery and skilled labor. We don’t know where our metals originate.
The enamel in pins is glass mixed with a compound to get the right color. We don’t know where our enamel originates.
Together, in the quantity we use to make a pin, cost about $0.25 and 1kg of emissions to produce.
As far as we’re aware, there are no enamel pin manufacturers in the United States. Most pin manufacturers are located in China. The machinery used to press the metals and melt the enamel require a lot of energy and skilled labor. We currently order our custom pins through a 3rd party located in the UK, Made By Cooper. They order our pins through an unknown company in China.
Excluding the costs of materials, we pay about $2.25 per pin that takes about 1kg of emissions to produce.
Because our pins are made in China, to reach us, they have to travel an ocean or two to reach our offices in the United States. This means once completed, our pins hop on a gas guzzling ship and spend a few weeks on the open sea. Once mainland, the complicated shipping network takes over and after a few trips on a variety of deliver vehicles finally make it to us.
Made by Cooper does not charge us shipping, but from our calculations it costs them about $0.25 per pin to ship to us and that process costs about 1kg of emissions per pin to get here.
After you discover us and decide to purchase something we sell on the internet, the complicated and bloated machine of banking networks take a turn.
To sell a product online or physically and accept cards, business owners pay a transaction fee. For us it’s $0.30-.50 + 3-5% of the total per swipe depending on how you choose to pay us.
Transactions use such a negligible amount of energy that it’s not worth calculating for.
Together, transaction fees cost us about $1 and 0kg (not even a gram) of emissions.
Our pins are presented on a card made from recycled cotton shirts. We wrap them in recycled craft paper to protect them during shipping instead of using those tiny plastic bags. We ship them in compostable bubble package envelopes.
Most businesses will cheap out here and buy toxic for the planet supplies, materials that won’t break down for centuries because it’s cheaper to go with what the status quo. To go against the grain, unfortunately means to spend a little more so we still have a usable planet in the future.
These materials cost us about $0.75 per pin and about 1kg of emissions to create and get to us.
The domestic shipping network is complicated but very efficient. It’s absolutely wild that packages can cross the entire country and arrive on your doorstep in days. Unfortunately this process, the way we currently run it in the United States requires gas powered vehicles. There are no ways to request eco friendly shipping options.
We only use union labor to ship our products to you.
The average shipping cost of our pin orders is $5 and costs about 1kg of emissions to get to you.
We use a simple formula to calculate our retail prices. Part of that formula is our 30% markup. Once all other costs are considered, we add this markup and 100% of it goes to the artist/creator of the product.
The 30% markup for a pin is about $1.67 and doesn’t cost us any emissions to add.
Part of our formula to calculate retail prices is incorporating a simple round up to the nearest whole $5. We do this because whole numbers are great, but also to help cover our admin costs and help us expand our product lines and market so more people can enjoy what we do here.
With some products, rounding up only contributes a few cents, sometimes it’s a few dollars.
For pins rounding up adds $2.75 and doesn’t cost any emissions.
At Hinokodo we don’t agree with the marketing advice that says consumers don’t mind seeing added costs during checkout and prefer seeing a lower cost when adding a product to the cart.
This is some trickery we’re not a fan of. So we incorporate our taxes into the price of products.
For us tax is 8.25%, for pins that adds about $0.83 and doesn’t contribute any emissions.
Our Physical NFTs are not really NFTs in the traditional sense of this futuristic term. They are digital illustrations, that when purchased, are framed and shipped to you, along with an encrypted flash drive with all of the digital files used to make it, and a unique token.
MATERIALS: $200 | 01kg
MANUFACTURING: $6,335 | 01kg
SHIPPING TO US: $0 | 00kg
TRANSACTION: $300.30 | 00kg
PACKAGING: $30 | 01kg
30% MARKUP: $2,307.09 | 00kg
ROUND UP TO 5: $2.61 | 00kg
TAXES: $825 | 00kg
SHIPPING TO YOU: $15 | 01kg
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TOTAL: $10,000.00 + Shipping | 03kg (We offset 6kg)
We don’t currently have any apparel items announced and will calculate these costs when we do release anything.