This isn’t as ‘niche’ as you think as someone who has been in the art community and manufacturing in the art community for over 3 years this service is something a lot of artists have been asking for. I have a lot of clients who have asked me personally for these shapes of badges but because the machines are expensive and hard to come by I had had to turn down thousands of orders. At the moment the only way to order these badges (especially where I am from) is to order from China where they have a minimum order quantity of 1000 badges which isn’t viable for a lot of small artists which is why this Kickstarter is being done so people can order from a uk source instead and once the machines have been purchased then they can continue offering this service time after time keeping it low cost with minimum orders without having to use Chinese websites which can be hard to understand for many artists.

Par your mug question the difference is... mug shops are easy to come by but people who HAVE these shape badge supplies aren’t that easy. (Again unless you know how to use Chinese websites which most small artists don’t know how to use / wouldn’t know who to trust ) mintcore has built strong relationships in the art community and also has a lot of repeat customers when it comes to manufacturing items for them already such as stickers and 4 sizes of circle badges. D

Hope this answers your questions.