How They Did It: The Business of Buttons
How a Rochester family turned a school project into a $3 million business.
Company: Affordable Buttons
What they do: Manufacture customized buttons
Website: affordablebuttons.com
Success: In 1994, Linda Christopherson, along with her three children, started a home-schooling project. That project has morphed into Affordable Buttons, one of the nation’s largest button manufacturers with more than 50,000 clients and $3 million in annual revenue. The Rochester-based operation was recently recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in the country.
How they did it:
It started out with one small button machine and a few hundred round button parts. Now they employ 35 full-time and 55 seasonal employees who produce and ship between 30,000 and 40,000 buttons a day.
What’s the key to their success?
Affordable Buttons has experienced consistent growth based on a combination of developing customized technology, inspiring their employees and saying yes to clients when others say no.
Another factor in their success came in the form of a big break. Florida-based Devsher Importers hired Affordable Buttons to create a button that read “Too Blessed to Be Stressed.” That button was distributed nationally as a point-of-purchase item at Walgreens.
Affordable Buttons operates on a philosophy that every client, big or small, is treated exactly the same. This philosophy has pushed the company to innovate the button-making process, developing its own proprietary software system that allows them to cater to clients of any size.
Their forward thinking has led to an exceptionally fast turnaround time (same-
day shipping) and buttons that look better than the competition’s (non-reflective and scratch-resistant).
Affordable Buttons has shipped buttons to every U.S. state and many countries. There hasn’t been a single high-profile political candidate they haven’t produced a button for. Based on single purchases of political buttons, they’ve been able to successfully determine the results of tight elections before the pollsters. With the upcoming elections keeping them busy, Affordable Buttons is on a record pace to break $4 million in sales in 2011.
