You see them every day: driving to work, taking a drink, opening your laptop. Stickers and decals from your recent trip, plastered somewhere you look routinely, reminding you of a favorite place or time. Portable, versatile and affordable, stickers are the smallest way for tourists and travelers to make a big statement about where they’ve been. The staying power of stickers and decals — and similarly stickable emblems like buttons, pins, magnets and patches — makes these small-ticket items easy add-on sales for souvenir retailers anywhere.
“Everybody seems to like stickers,” says Bob Harju, owner of Pumpernickel Press, a greeting card company that recently expanded its product line to offer stickers, pins, patches and other souvenirs. And there are a few reasons why, he notes.
“It’s an inexpensive, lightweight item you can stick in your suitcase with no problem,” says Harju. “They’ve come flying back as a big thing over the last 10, 15 years, and everybody’s sticking stickers everywhere.”
Adhering to trends
In 2015, nearly 20 years after launching Pumpernickel Press, Harju saw an opportunity to expand his product line when he licensed vintage-style travel poster art from the Anderson Design Group (ADG) in Nashville. Because there were already other licensing agreements in place for posters and apparel featuring ADG’s nostalgic artwork, Harju had to think smaller — like “souvenir products that go on a spinner fixture in a store,” he says. “Stickers were one of the categories that we felt would be fairly easy to produce in the U.S. and be the most appealing right off the bat.”
Yellowstone Gift Shop has broadened its sticker and pin selection to appeal to travelers.
Pumpernickel Press introduced Tourist Courts — a souvenir product line featuring ADG’s vintage poster art depicting all 63 national parks along with national monuments, historical sites and other destinations. The collection started with postcards, stickers, magnets and coasters. Then, as retail buyers started asking for more products, the line expanded to include pins, patches and other products. In terms of bestsellers, “magnets and stickers are right there at the top,” Harju says.
Around the same time that Harju launched Tourist Courts, Joe Stringari noticed stickers spiking in popularity at Yellowstone Gift Shop, where he works as general manager. “It was always part of our inventory, but somewhere in that 2016 time period, stickers really took hold,” says Stringari. “The college kids started putting them on everything, whether backpacks or water bottles, to personalize their gear. That really fueled the market.”
Over time, the assortment gradually expanded. When Stringari started buying merchandise in 2012, Yellowstone Gift Shop carried one sticker line along with souvenir decals from Brass Reminders. Since then, he’s added three more sticker vendors to his line-up — which now includes Blue 84 and Steamboat Stickers in addition to half a dozen of his apparel vendors who “have also ventured into the sticker business.”
Attracting attention
When visitors stop by the gift shop located inside the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock, many head straight for the stickers. “Most people, when they come in, that’s what they ask me for immediately: ‘Stickers, patches, where are your magnets?’” says manager Courtney Young. “Stickers and patches are probably some of our most purchased products.”
Young points shoppers toward an eye-level shelf where clear containers hold collections of Arkansas-themed stickers and patches, respectively. Most of the products feature the state’s flag, shape or domed capitol. Others portray outdoor scenes that highlight state parks, lakes, rivers and landscapes of The Natural State.
“Those are some of the most purchased, most asked for items because when you come to Arkansas, you want to remember that you came to Arkansas, so you get something with the flag or the state that you just visited,” says Young, who designs the stickers herself through StickerYou, and buys patches from Rock City Outfitters.
At the Arkansas State Capitol Gift Shop, patches feature the state flag, parks and other icons that represent the state.
Stickers, decals, pins and patches are placed front and center at I Love DC Gifts, a souvenir shop located across from Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. “Literally, when you first walk into the store, depending which door you walk into, you’ll see the decals, stickers and patches first, or you’ll see the pins first,” says Khalid Ismail, who co-owns the store with his father. Their family also owns another souvenir shop called Stars & Stripes inside Pentagon City Mall, in addition to another business, Alamo Flag Co., which makes the American-made flags and state- and country-themed lapel pins and patches sold in both retail stores.
Although these items “aren’t as big of a sale because they’re smaller, we do sell a lot of them,” Ismail says. “They’re very popular; they always have been, and I think they always will be.”
Ageless appeal
Young adults, from teens to 20-somethings, tend to be “the main purchasers for stickers, patches and pins,” Young says. She says parents will buy stickers for younger kids, while adults in their 40s and 50s veer toward apparel.
Pins, however, are popular even into the golden years. “The older adults are loving the pins. That’s the number one product they ask for,” Young says, especially for legislators or other state employees. “They want to show people that they represent their state, so Arkansas-themed pins are important for the people working here.”
While pins provide a professional accessory, patches offer a more casual badge that customers can add to jackets, bags or hats. Areas like Yellowstone, for example, attract large groups of motorcycle riders “and they like the patch game, as well,” Stringari says. Plus, there’s not much room on a motorcycle to haul huge souvenirs.
The same is true on tour buses. “Customers on tour buses don’t have tons of room,” Stringari says, “so items like magnets and stickers fit very nicely in their pockets and they’re not taking much room in their luggage.”
Though these emblematic expressions may be small tokens with relatively low price points, they can make a powerful statement and leave a lasting impression. That’s why Ismail and his father might spontaneously give a few free stickers away to customers, “because I know they’re going to throw it on something they’re going to use every day, and it makes me feel good knowing they can look at that and know they got it from this store,” he says. “When you go in with the intention of just wanting to make money, you’re never going to succeed, but our purpose is making memories. If you give someone a sticker, it doesn’t cost much; but to them, it’s memorable.”
