How Stickers Are Making The World A Better Place
Who doesn’t love stickers? AMIRIGHT? There are so many cute stickers and they’re the perfect decoration to put ANYWHERE! Computers, your phone, your car, those big hydroflask water-bottles (I mean, I wouldn’t be caught DEAD with a boring water-bottle… would you?). It’s a proven fact - stickers are the ultimate inexpensive decoration!
**From Left to Right: My daughter’s computer, my daughter-in-law’s water bottle, and my clipboard.
I’ve actually got a long history with stickers. I’m a child of the 80s and we had sticker books. I had this really special sticker binder-book with tabs and page protectors. And it was LOADED with stickers! I had puffy ones, holographic ones, fuzzy ones, scratch-and-sniff ones… ALL.THE.STICKERS! I bought sticker grab-bags at the Hello Kitty store... and when the new Lisa Frank designs arrived at Roses or Sky City, I would BEG my Mom to take me! We even traded stickers with each other and different types of stickers had different values. For example: I would trade one holographic sticker for 2 regular stickers, but if someone wanted one of my puffy stickers, they had to offer AT LEAST 2 holographic stickers. Those were totally back-of-the-schoolbus deals...
**These aren’t mine, but they’re similar.
Ok, after typing that previous paragraph, I realize what absolute dorks we were in the 80s… THANK GOD everyone was though.
Moving on now. So after Bernie Sanders and his ADORABLE mittens completely stole the inauguration a few weeks ago, I couldn't be left out. I sat down THAT NIGHT and worked up a fun illustration of him in his little paper mask, grumpy furrowed brows, and sweet 1980s knit mittens... and y'all went completely WILD for him! I had so many comments and direct messages on Instagram that I decided ON A WHIM to order up some "Grumpy Bernie" stickers (just to see what would happen). Y’all… they sold like CRAZY!
I just want to pause here for a moment to acknowledge the fact that almost two years ago my oldest daughter told me I needed to start designing stickers. "Everyone buys stickers, Mom"... And this is one ”I told you so” that she's having a really good time with.
And it honestly didn't take much energy either... I worked the little drawing up in no time, had them ordered, and almost all of the stickers sold out in just 24 hours... and they didn't even arrive until a week later!
In all fairness, stickers were something I wanted to design and offer in 2021 (it was one of my business goals), but I kinda got the cart before the horse (as my Daddy would say). So I guess I went about this the wrong way. USUALLY when you offer something new, you do some market research first, then you work up some designs and tweak them until you have them the way you want them. Then you order them and take product photos BEFORE you market them. Then you have a big marketing push and launch your new designs to get people excited about them BEFORE you put them on sale.
SO… here’s my quickie after-the-fact market research:
I'm thinking forward to new designs and I wanted to ask you what YOU wanted to see. Political stickers? Cute animals (birds, bugs, etc.)? Boho designs? Fun quotes? Seasonal sticker sheets? Thank You labels? Stickers made with your custom illustrations? Stickers made with your custom house or business illustration? Pet portraits? All of the above?
**breathing in a bag and trying not to get overwhelmed thinking about all the ADORBS stickers I’m going to design…