The Long Journey to a Sustainable Sticker Product

Getting to this photo took far longer than I expected.

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know I love stickers. So when I opened the stationery shop last year, I always intended to add stickers as a product at some point. I thought it would happen last summer, along with the birthday collection but as my parameters (and world events) kept shifting, I just couldn’t find the exact right sticker.

The main issue, of course, is that I intend every item in the stationery shop to be as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible and your standard vinyl sticker just doesn’t quite meet the level of sustainability for which I am striving. So even at the beginning of my supplier research, I was looking for sticker manufacturers who printed with environmentally friendly inks and didn’t use vinyl or paper with plastic coating as the backing.

I thought I had initially found one in Sticker It . In fact, if you’ve ordered from the shop in the last year, you’ve probably received one of the test batch of stickers I ordered. These were printed on paper, and while great for giveaways, they weren’t durable enough to be a shop product. I also tested Sticker It’s eco-friendly glitter and hologram stickers, which are truly amazing, and for a time I thought I might actually go with those. However, Sticker It is based in the UK and while initially I put a full order on pause due to the uncertainty of the tariff situation, that pause helped me realize that I either wanted to find a vendor much closer to home (like my magnet vendor, who does offer stickers but unfortunately only vinyl ones) or, if that wasn’t possible, find a small, environmentally focused business elsewhere the US (like my card printer).

This is absolutely no knock on Sticker It, by the way, I have been very impressed with their environmentally friendly line of stickers and would recommend them if your needs are not the same as mine!

This is also not a dig at any shops that do source items from overseas -- it actually turns out that a lot of the best sustainable products come from vendors based outside the US (to say nothing of items like yarn dye and yarn itself that are very hard to source bulk wholesale from US based vendors). If I had not put that restriction on myself, I would have had stickers in the shop months ago (and probably sustainable writing pens, which I’m still working on sourcing). But because my shop is supplementary to my editing work, I have the luxury to take my time sourcing new products, and if I can support other US based small businesses at a time when tariffs,  Amazon listing products without permission, and rising costs in general are threatening our survival, it seemed like the best thing to do.

And then in September, my husband and I took a vacation to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to visit the Yerkes Observatory (already featured on the blog). After our guided tour, I walked into the guest shop to find a display of bamboo stickers. The display case sign indicated they were produced in the US, that they were waterproof and flexible, and, being bamboo, environmentally friendly.  I bought a sample and tracked down the company. Turns out they are a small family business in Hawaii  offering both their own designs and custom printing. And while yes, Hawaii is a long distance for a product to travel, it’s still half the distance from the UK to Chicago and gives me the chance to support a fellow US based small business.

I had the Craft All sticker test printed as a proof so I could check that their printers could handle the detail and color in the design, and when they passed that test with flying colors, I placed a full order. And now they’re available for you to enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look at what goes into sourcing an environmentally friendly product for my stationery shop. It’s not easy with the parameters I’ve set for myself – and there are definitely days I question whether I could relax those parameters just a bit – but ultimately I think it’s worth the effort to source sustainable products from US based businesses so I can get the best quality items to you, however long it takes.