Making an impression

Rubber-stamp maker sells products worldwide

The Daily Inter Lake

Six years ago, Sherri Tappan founded a stamp-making company in her garage with a couple of how-to books.

Today, Paper Inspirations is an international business. From Tappan's shop in Kalispell, the company ships tens of thousands of rubber stamps all over the world, from Singapore to South Africa to New Zealand to Norway. There are 800 accounts in the United States alone.

The business wasn't an overnight success - but it was close.

Tappan started a scrapbook supply store in 1997, but with five similar stores in the valley, she was ready for a new venture a few years later. Her background was in "production-type jobs," including cake decorating and jewelry making. She enjoyed scrapbooking, liked making creative products and believed manufacturing would be more profitable than running a specialty store.

Making stamps seemed a logical fit, but there was one problem.

"I didn't know anything about manufacturing rubber stamps," she said.

Tappan went to trade shows and bought stamp-making manuals. She also purchased a vulcanizer, a machine that uses heat and pressure to cure rubber, and read the book it came with to learn how to operate it.

Next, she made her first "catalog," a 10-page photocopied flier that she mailed to the contacts she'd made at the trade shows. Within three weeks, she had $40,000 in orders and three part-time employees to help her fill them.

"It was a nightmare," she said. "I worked very long hours. It was just figure it out as you go."

ONE OF THE first things Tappan figured out was that her equipment wasn't meant to handle so much production. It had to be replaced almost immediately.

There was also the issue of space. With four people and separate "departments" for wood, rubber and customer service, her garage's 800 square feet felt crowded. There was no room for extra inventory, so every stamp was made as the order came in.

"It was extremely unorganized," she said.

Even with the cramped quarters, Tappan and her employees filled the orders. They must have done something right, she said, because they still have many of those original clients. Even so, she'd rather not repeat those hectic first weeks.

"I look back, and I don't know how we did it," she said. "I must have been crazy. I don't know how we produced that."

With so many orders coming in, the business rapidly outgrew the garage. In January 2001, Paper Inspirations moved to the Meridian Business Complex. In the last five years, it has expanded from four suites to six, but it's never lost that initial, homey feel.

"It still looks like it's in somebody's garage. It's just a bigger space," Tappan said.

She and four others work in the Meridian shop. At one point, she had as many as eight employees, but thanks to a streamlined production process, Tappan says she no longer needs that many people.

"That's the funny thing," she said. "We produce three times more than we were when we had eight people."

Shelves enough to house Tappan's 1,000 designs make neat rows in the production facility. Some designs are taken from antique postcards. Others are Tappan originals, although she refuses to call herself an artist.

"I would consider myself creative, but not artistic," she said.

SHE CREATED her first original design under a tight deadline. An ad featuring her as-yet-uncreated stamp had to be finished in time to ship by 5 p.m. Tappan woke up the morning it was due and designed "Dance of the Butterflies," an intricate collage featuring butterflies and a woman's face, then made a sample in time to get it to a 2 p.m. photo shoot.

She used those pictures to create the ad, which was ready to go out with FedEx that evening.

"It was our best-selling stamp for two years running," Tappan said.

It's still a popular item, although other designs have eclipsed it. Paper Inspirations' current best-sellers are those with lettering and patriotic themes.

Nearly all the company's business is wholesale. Individual customers comprise just 3 percent of its overall sales.

Next spring, Paper Inspirations will add paper and miniature albums to its list of products. Tappan hopes to package them as kits, with coordinating paper and stamps.

The majority of the business will still be in stamps, however. In 2007, the company expects to ship 250,000 individual rubber stamps and 100,000 sets, she said.

Rubber stamps are the only products made at the Meridian shop, but the company does sell polymer stamps as well. Many stampers and scrapbookers prefer the clear polymer stamps because they can see exactly where they're placing each one, Tappan explained. Making polymer stamps is a highly technical and expensive process, so she uses an Indiana company instead of producing them in Kalispell.

She gets out-of-state help to make rubber stamps, too - a California company creates magnesium molds from her original designs. These become master molds until the stamps are discontinued.

"If we don't scratch them, they'll last forever," Tappan said.

Production molds made of Bakelite are created from the master mold. The synthetic resin is much more fragile than the metal plates, so the production molds are replaced when they wear out, usually after about six months.

Except for the magnesium master molds, all of the work is done in Kalispell.

When the stamps are finished, Tappan uses them to make samples for prospective clients. Although she used to be an avid stamper, these days most of her stamping is confined to sample making.

"I originally started with this because I love the hobby," she said. "I still enjoy it, but it's not what I want to do in my time off anymore."

On the Net: http://www.paperinspirations.com/

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com