What quantity should you order for a first deployment?
Ten, then a hundred, then the real number. Every mistake described in this section costs almost nothing at ten tags and a great deal at a thousand. The temptation to skip straight to volume comes from unit pricing, and unit pricing is the smallest cost in a deployment.
Three stages
Ten tags to validate the product. A hundred to validate the process. Then the quantity you actually need.
Each stage answers questions the previous one could not, and each is cheap relative to what it prevents.
Skipping to volume is tempting because the unit price falls with quantity. That saving is small next to the cost of a thousand tags that are the wrong product, and smaller still next to the cost of installing them.
What ten tags buy you
Confirmation that the chip and tag type are what was ordered. Confirmation that your content fits the free space. Confirmation that the tags read on the phones your audience actually carries.
A physical test on the real surface, left for a week. Corners lifting, adhesive not wetting, moisture at an edge: all visible within days.
And an answer on batch consistency. Ten tags reporting the same chip and the same free space is a different signal from ten that do not.
This stage costs almost nothing and eliminates most of the ways a deployment goes wrong.
What a hundred buy you
The process, which ten tags cannot show you. How long writing actually takes per tag, where the tedium creates errors, whether your verification step is workable at pace.
A realistic failure rate for your own handling, which is different from the supplier's rate because it includes everything you do after delivery.
Whether printing, laminating or converting breaks tags, and at what proportion. One sample surviving a laminator tells you very little.
And whether the deployment plan survives contact with the site. Mounting a hundred tags reveals access problems, surface variation and gestures that do not work.
Ordering the real quantity
Order the number you need plus a margin for losses in handling, printing and installation, plus a reserve for replacements.
Keep the reserve from the same batch. A replacement tag from a later delivery may be a different reference, which is exactly the inconsistency that makes a deployment hard to maintain.
Put the chip reference and tag type on the order, so the volume delivery can be checked against the same specification the samples met.
And check the volume delivery too. The samples were selected by someone who knew they were samples.
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth ordering ten if the price is per hundred?
Yes. Even paying a hundred tag price for ten samples is trivial against ordering a thousand of the wrong product.
What margin should I add for losses?
Enough to cover your measured loss in printing and installation, plus replacements. Measure it during the hundred tag stage rather than guessing.
Can I skip the hundred tag stage?
If the deployment is small and the tags are easy to reach, often yes. If installation is expensive or the site is hard to revisit, it is the cheapest insurance available.
Should the reserve come from the same batch?
Yes. A replacement from a later delivery may differ in ways that are invisible until it behaves differently.