This morning I woke to an email from a Lieutenant that wanted to make some coins for his wedding. At first, it looked like a very normal request that we would get on any given day. Then I noticed the TO: field in the email. It was to everyone in the top searches of Google for “Challenge Coins”. The list included “Challenge Coins Plus”, “MilCoins”, “NWTMint”, “Challenge Coins Direct”, “Coinable”, “We Make Coins”, “Coin Force”, “Delta Challenge Coins”, “Richmond Designs”, “All About Challenge Coins”, “Coins for Anything”, “Symbol Arts”, “eMilitary Coins”, “Honor Coins”, “Mo2vate”, “World Class Medals”, “Cyclone Coins”, and the list keeps going. I list these to make the point of the article. What amazes me though is I haven’t even heard of some of these companies before so I hope this customer chooses wisely.
I don’t mean to imply that any of these companies are bad, but I am sure some are less than established and don’t have any kind of reputation, but I can easily be wrong. To be fair there are a few heavy hitters on this list which brings me to a point. I don’t mind seeing the shotgun blast like this. In fact, I encourage all of my potential clients to get a quote and go compare. I mean we even offer a quote checklist to help and we are the only company that does.
One major thing that is often a very secretive thing that the industry does NOT want the customers to know is that 80% use the same factory to make coins in China. The other 20% haven’t figured out which one that is yet. While it sounds funny, it’s very true.
The unsuspecting customer will choose in the difference in artwork and price only. Of course customer service plays it’s part as well. So to make a difference many challenge coin companies will hire specialized artwork to zing the customer in thinking their coin will be better than another company, and we do this too. See if you received the same artwork from everyone it would be a bit suspicious and hard to make a decision. So like almost all other challenge coin makers we have an in-house design staff to make our artwork unique. The truth is though that you will receive the same end result as 80% of the other companies you could of chosen.
So if the artwork is meant to hook you into making your custom coins with us, what does the other 20% do? They let the Chinese artist or whatever country they use create the artwork because they don’t know the trick of hiring an artist.
The pricing is the other major factor. All the companies that receive this shotgun coin request will charge all kinds of different prices, but receive the exact same quote from the factory floor. Well the next obvious question is why are some charging so much compared to others. It just comes from a magic number of what it costs them to do business and how much profit they want to take in. Again there will be no difference in the end result of 80% of the companies, the 20% will usually have a lower quality because they haven’t found the one factory in China that makes the best coins…and for that the customer suffers.
So why write this and let cats out of the bag? I say why not. I gain nothing or lose nothing from telling this and informing the customer of what goes on after a shotgun email for quotes. This Lieutenant will receive almost 20 different quotes for exactly the same product. All the companies will be trying to put a quote together and some will do artwork and pay someone to make it, at a loss in most cases because only one company will actually do the order.
All of this is happening in the background as you sit and wait for the responses to come in. This is also the biggest reason U.S. Challenge Coins only does a quote and never artwork because wasting 4-5 hours of a designers time is not good for business. Many other companies are moving to this as well. I foresee in the future a shotgun blasted email that will receive 99% quotes only with no artwork until a commitment is made.
Sticking Points:
- Majority of Challenge Coin Companies Use the Same Factory.
- Prices Vary ONLY at the Company Level, NOT the Factory.
- Artwork is Produced to Entice a Customer to Shop There.
- Shotgun Emails are Good for the Customer, Not the Challenge Coin Company.
- In Many Cases Your Quote Includes a VERY Large Payday for the Business.
- In 99% of ALL Coin Jobs the Customer Never Wins Because they Don’t Know
