30 Years

of Stickers

1979 Red Heart Grossman’s first sticker and the company logo.

1981 Giant Bear First oversized sticker. Everyone loves it! 1984 Opalescent Bubbles First stickers printed on opalescent stock. 1987 Children Simple, lively silhouettes.

 

Sticker orders dwindled dramatically.

Grossman was most concerned about her employees. “I’ve always felt like I work for my people, not that they work for me,” she says. Though they had to downsize and cut back, the team stood behind the products and managed to pull through. Grossman retained her diehard optimism and encouraged her staff to “be happy in bad times.”

Just as interest in stickers dwindled, interest in scrapbooking started growing, and Grossman’s designs filled the demand in this new medium. MGPC’s designers created new lines of stickers intended for the niche, such as graphic, geometric shapes and letters. By 1995, the company was back in the swing of things, moving into a bigger space that still serves as company headquarters.

Grossman notes that what began as simply putting together a photo album evolved into a more elaborate craft requiring embellishments, and though she’s in the business of making scrapbooking wares, she encourages scrapbookers to bring back simplicity, handwriting, and personalization.

Today, MGPC has just under 100 employees and is committed to making a minimal impact on the environment. Thanks to concerted efforts like using environmentally friendly inks and papers, recycling 185 tons of waste paper each year, and building their own in-house wastewater treatment facility, MGPC recently became a certified green business by the Sonoma Green Business Program. The company also won Pacific Gas & Electric’s Innovative Leadership Award for energy conservation.

Another important business philosophy for MGPC is to make a positive impact on the community. For its contributions to children in hospitals (well over 20 million stickers donated to ailing kids), the company received the Child Life Council’s

1991 Photographic Heart Flowers First photographic sticker.

1993 Hugs and Kisses First holographic sticker. 1994 Trim-A-Tree First design-your-own sticker. 1997 Design Lines Borders were the scrapbookers’ dream.

1997 Classic Black Alphabet Bestselling alphabet pack.

1999 Brocade Heart Grossman’s one-of-a-kind Laserweb machine produced this delicate, laser-cut sticker. 2000 Christmas Tree First hot-foil-stamped sticker.

 

Spirit of Giving Award. Toward its commitment to celebrating the talents of developmentally disabled adults, MGPC employs a number of people with disabilities in its assembly department.

After nearly three decades steering the sticker ship, Grossman recently stepped down and passed the torch to her son Jason, who was one of her first employees and has been with the company for 20 years. Jason started a successful subsidiary of MGPC in 1998 named Paragon Label, utilizing MGPC’s in-house printing plant to produce artful bottle labels for winemakers such as B.R. Cohn and Don Sebastiani & Sons.

“I’ve always felt like I work
for my people, not that they
work for me.”

With her newfound freedom, Grossman hopes to get back to designing stickers as well as pursuing other passions, like improving the lives of prison inmates. She’s collaborating on building a meditation and prayer space with fruit trees in a women’s prison.

Kitty McDermott-Okamura, owner of Pine Street Papery, where the stickers were first sold, reflects on years of doing business with Grossman. “It’s been a sheer pleasure,” she says.

And what advice does Andrea Grossman offer crafters striving to make a living from their passions? “Clean up your act. Make sure you have a quality product to offer.”

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Goli Mohammadi is associate managing editor of CRAF T. Her favorite sticker of all time, the big sparkly snowflake, is made by Mrs. Grossman’s.