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.
