"WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THESE
GREAT OLD STAMP COMPANIES?"
By Joan Wear/6-10-03

This Page Has Been Visited Times
as of 11/18/03

How many times have we wondered whatever happened to one or more of our favorite old stamp companies? Too often, so the search began.  With the help of two friends, Joannie Hooper and Kendall Fegley, a call for help went out to stampers through various stamper's chat groups. The response was Tremendous, and it seems just about every stamper has at least one stamp company they hope to find with this research, and if they were not still around, we wanted to know why!

Several hundred emails came in, so to get them in some kind of order, I decided to put them on a webpage, to keep them and the incoming information, as straight as possible.  The list grew like wildfire, and before I knew it, there were over 140 stamp company names listed. In less than a week, there were over a thousand hits to the webpage, just from word of mouth!  We ALL wanted to know where we might still be able to find a favorite company!

As names were added to the list, it became like a walk down memory lane, something many stampers who were reading the list emailed to tell me, as well. Unfortunately, many of the companies we hoped to find have gone out of business, Like Arizona Stamps, Too!, that was purchased by Mail Expressions, who later themselves went out of business. On the positive side, even though many original owners couldn't remain in business, they were able to sell their wonderful line of images to someone else, so stampers worldwide could continue to enjoy them.  The problem is, most stampers don't have a clue as to who may have purchased the line of stamps they are looking for, so that is what this research is trying to answer.  Though the list is too long to show here, it can be seen in its entirety on my website at www.joanwear.com.

Ann, the second owner of 100 Proof Press, tells this story of her purchase of Detailed and a•Muse•ing Rubber Stamps. "In both cases the owners were burnt out on running a small side business in addition to their regular jobs.  The plates from a*Musing Rubber Stamps were being used as a coffee table when I approached them, and Diane Muse was still filling the occasional order, but not advertising or promoting her business in anyway." Ann adds, "100 Proof Press is a good home for lost images."

Anne-Made Designs is now owned by Vicki Davis, owner of Stamping Sensations. Vicki still sells Anne's images exactly the way Anne did. Anne sold her company due to health problems with severe diabetes. (She could use all of our prayers.) If you have been looking for  Perfectly Said or  WubbaStampa, Vicki has purchased them as well.

Fortunately, many of the favorite old stamp companies are either still around, or at least their stamps are:  Alextamping, Ann-ticipations, Carmen's Veranda, Catch A Faling Star, Double D Rubber Stamps, Guadalupe Fun Rubber Stamps, Inkadinkado, Just For Fun, Ken Brown, Rubber Stamps of America, Paper Angel, PSX (though it is in the process of changing hands), Ready Made Rebus (now selling on ebay), Rubba Dub Dub, Stampscapes, Stubby Stampers, Viva Las Vegastamps, Good Stamps Stamp Goods and many others. Plus, new stamp companies are born every year, and if we are lucky, some of them will be able to acquire the images of companies who couldn't make it for one reason or another.

To understand 'why' so many of our favorite stamp companies weren't able to stay in business, one has to look at some hard, cold facts of life. Some had to close or sell due to health reasons, family problems and a few owners have even passed away. The colder side of the coin isn't pleasant for any of us to read, but it happens daily in the business world, no matter what the business might be.

There seems to be somewhat of a pattern in why many stamp companies went out of business.  Most had financial problems of one kind or another. A few tried to 'grow' too fast. Apparently, if one wants to start any kind of business, taking a course or two in business financing is a good place to begin.

Sadly, another problem stamp companies have had to deal with is
theft, mainly at the stamp conventions, though Viva LasVegastamps reports that he has a lot of shoplifting right in his store as well. It seems that some people actually pull the rubber right off of the wood mount, then replace the mount on the store shelf!  This also happens at the conventions. Since most stamp companies are basically small family owned businesses, loss of merchandise and therefore, income, can have a major impact, not only on their financial stability, but on their enthusiasm to continue to try to remain in business as well.

As the owner of Viva LasVegastamps recalls, "The Queen Mary Convention was a bad nightmare. I never did recover my money, and I never did find out who did it. I had a broken arm and was unable to do the show and sent others in my place. They said a woman showed up and said she was supposed to work for me (not to my knowledge). They didn't get a name from her or anything, but all the money disappeared and it certainly soured me on conventions and caused a lot of havoc with my creditors."

Peggy, owner of the now closed Eccentricks, recalls, "We noticed shoplifting increased at an alarming rate. We lost $350 in merchandise at one show alone, and I know other companies who suffered the same. One, Connors Collectibles, had their entire cash box lifted after a show, amounting to several thousand dollars."

Peggy continued, "For us, the decline started when it seemed everyone was hosting a stamp convention in just about every city. We used to make big-time bucks at the Carson convention and a couple of others. As more conventions were added, less people attended the traditional “biggies” and consequently we made less and less money. It was too expensive to travel to a lot of shows, especially with attendance only being minimal and sales barely covering our expenses."

Ann, owner of 100 Proof Press adds her thoughts to this part of the problem in the stamping industry today, "I don't bother to travel to do shows out of Ohio anymore due to the expense and getting there to face 50+ (just too many) vendors with flat sales.  Show promoters getting greedy and having two shows a year in one town just kills the market in that area.  Having like 16 shows a year in CA alone is just absurd.  But until stamp companies band together and decide to support only certain shows, making the convention industry viable again, shows are no longer worth doing. I miss meeting my customers in the show atmosphere, but I cannot justify the high cost and low return if I am to stay in business."

Peggy of the former Eccentricks adds, "At the same time the number of shops selling art stamps increased, along with the number of companies making them. This really cut down the number of our sales, because each shop had a limited budget for purchases, and a lot of us got left out. 

Next was the constant demand for new, new, new. Every year we had to come out with a new catalog and 30 to 40 new designs. The start up costs were very high and woe to you if your new designs weren’t in the “hot new trends” category. Lastly, scrapbooking put the final nail in our coffin. Art stamps was always an expensive hobby, but people paid the price because it was such a great outlet for creativity. Scrapbooking offered that same creative outlet, but was less expensive.

That’s our story in a nutshell. Art stamps was always a side line for us, so we folded up that tent and went back to concentrating on our core business of selling custom stamps through the office products industry." 

Ann sums it up with, "It would be great if RSM would publish an article like this. Reduction of shows would benefit everyone. Customers complain that 'none of the good companies come to _____.'  That is generally because the area is saturated with shows, or the number of vendors is high.  Good companies get their choice of which shows to do, whereas small, less well run shows don't draw the big names.  There is just not enough money to be made to justify the expense!"

Peggy's experience is probably pretty typical of many stamp companies, as the high cost of adding new images to their lines was voiced by several companies, as well as all of the convention problems Peggy and Ann, and other companies as well listed. We stampers do have a voracious appetite for new images! Back in 1988, when I first started stamping, the choices of stamps was pretty limited. We used to have to think up more than just one way to use some of our stamps, especially in scenic stamping.  Newer stampers have no idea how hard it was to 'find' scenic images!  The top of a tree had to double for a bush, for example. You REALLY had to use your imagination back then!  Fortunately for us scenic stampers, companies caught on to the appeal for creating scenes, and today, entire catalogs can be dedicated to scenic images.

The History of stamping is very interesting, too.  Did you have ANY idea that rubber stamping and the Dental Industry are connected?  I didn't, either, until doing some research. How many years do you think rubber stamps have been around?  Maybe thirty or forty years? I was Shocked to discover that rubber stamps were invented around the year 1844!

Before rubber stamps, there were metal printing stamps, according to an article by Golding Handcrafts in New Zealand, that were usually made of brass. Many were in the form of 'seals.'  Seals were usually quite elaborate and used with wax to seal documents.

After seals came the rubber stamp, made for business purposes. There is some controvery as to just who was the first to produce rubberstamps, but is seems to be an American invention. In fact, it was Charles Goodyear (I am assuming of the tires), who basically accidently discovered the process by which rubber is cured. He was experimenting in his kitchen, so the story goes, when he dropped a mixture of rubber and sulphur on to a hot stove, and to his surprize, found it was still 'flexible' the next day. He dubbed the process 'vulcanisation' after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

Now, here is where the dental industry comes in. Vulcanized rubber was used to make cost effective dentures, by having it set in plastic molds.  In those days, dentists had round vulcanizers called 'dental pots.' Eventually, these dental pots would be used to manufacture the first rubber stamps! 

In 1866, James C. Woodruff started experimenting with a vulcanizer, trying to make some alphabet letter moulds. He asked his uncle, who happened to be a dentist, for help, and after additional experiments with a dental pot, the first rubber stamps were created, along with the birth of rubber stamp companies in 1880, some of which still exist today.

Of course, all of these stamps were for businesses, but around the year 1919, a German artist by the name of Kurt Schwatting, started using 'artistic' stamps at colleges. Artistist stamps apparently didn't really catch on, until around 16 or so years ago, when California became the Mecca of the art stamp world, and continues to be until this day.

With stamp conventions, workshops and demonstrations by ultra talented stampers like Kevin Nakagawa, owner of Stampscapes and Amy Kinsch of Beeswax and countless others,  the stamping world has exploded into a huge industry in countries all over the world. Stamp companies will come, and some will sadly go, but artisitic rubber stamps are here to stay!