New Pin Releases and June 24th Workshop Coverage, Workshop 3

New Pin Releases and June 24th Workshop Coverage
Page 5 of 7

Jim turned it over to Martha for a quick announcement on a new pin event. "In August we're going to have another pin event, and it's called Mickey's Top Secret Mission. The event will be August the 18th and possibly the 19th. We don't have all of our information to share with you. Right now it remains a top secret). If you are on our mailing list you will get more information on this mission and if you choose to participate, we'll be very happy... Right now it's all very top secret... but, it's going to be very exciting and I think you're going to really enjoy it. This event is going to be held at DCA, Disney's California Adventure."

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Pins for the Mickey's Top Secret Mission event

Jim then showed off the artwork for the event's pins, joking, "This is all top secret, so I can count on you not to tell anyone. Mickey is our top secret agent and he's going on a top-secret mission... Each pin has a really fun element to it. It either has glow in the dark or it has motion or a spinner. The karate action Mickey will actually have karate action... each one has a very fun little element to it and we're all excited about them." In closing Jim showed a new product line - character lanyards. Each of the fab-5 heads dangling from a color-coded lanyard which will be embroidered with the character's name. He also mentioned that they were working on a wider lanyard. Following Jim, he introduced Mario.

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Mario explains the process of pin making

Mario Fiumani - Chief Executive Officer of Pins USA
Mario brought along a videotape and some props to teach the audience the basics of pin design and manufacture. "One of the things I don't think that people realize... all of the pins that you have on, with the exception of actually what's called the photo process, are actually hand made. And when you actually see how this is done I think you're going to get a whole new appreciation for the amount of work that actually goes in to producing one of them."

Mario began his presentation from the beginning of the process. "From an art standpoint, about half of the art is generated either from ourselves the vendor or any of the other vendors that Disney uses. However, Disney has the final say... approval for color correctness and character integrity. Sometimes DDG (Disney Design Group in Orlando) will actually provide us with the artwork... and we'll go into production from there." He added, "But sometimes Jim and myself and our creative team will get together and brainstorm about the different types of designs we'll implement."

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EPCOT pin - look familiar?

Mario then began his tour of the process of art to pin with the artwork for a design called the "mechanical". It's a sheet that contains images of the pin in black and white line art, a color representation and the corresponding PMS colors. The mold will be made from the line art on a machine called a pantograph in which the operator follows the 4-times model with one hand while engraving the mold with the other - a complicated process which requires great attention to detail as the pins are getting more and more complicated. A copy of the pin is made which is four times the size of the finished product - 8-inch etching will be used for a 2-inch pin.

Mario passed an original mold around noting that, "This one mold may make anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 pins. If it's a real large run sometimes we'll actually make 5 or 6 of these molds, because the last thing you can do is wait for a new mold to be made if you're in the middle of a production run." Molds are quite heavy and engraved into a single piece of steel. There are also stamping and cutting and punch molds - that cut the parameter of the pin - that must be produced for each pin. Many times more than one cut or stamp will be made in the pin to remove unwanted material from the design. "Sometimes we'll make 5, 6 or 7 cutting for one pin," Pins must be kept in register, both the front design and the back-stamp must be in proper register to the placement of the post.

Once the model is created and the mold is made and stamped into brass the pin must be colored. "This is the part that still amazes me." Mario noted. "See this little hypodermic needle, like they use to have blood taken, this is what's used to put enamel into the pins, by hand." He then went into a bit of definition - the differences between cloisonné, hard enamel and photo etched. Pin USA has its factories in China and may have as many as 1,600 employees in one factory. And in any given day a worker can do between 70 and 90 pins - the market is huge. "The turn around time is getting shorter and shorter. It used to take about 3 months to get pins here, now it's sometimes 3 weeks to 4 weeks."