S&H Green Stamps
S&H Green Stamps (also called Green Shield Stamps) were trading stamps popular in the United States from the 1930s until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry and Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson. During the 1920s two brothers named Beinecke married two women named Sperry that were cousins. In time, the Beinecke's became the owners of S&H Green Stamps. One of their offspring, Edwin Beinecke would later make a substantial endowment to Yale University, his alma mater, for the construction of a library to house a rare book collection. A condition of the donation was that the building had to be laid out in the same geometric pattern as an S&H Green Stamp book.
During the 1960s, the rewards catalog printed by the company was the largest publication in the United States and the company issued three times as many stamps as the U.S. Postal Service.[1] Customers would receive stamps at the checkout counter of supermarkets, department stores, and gasoline stations among other retailers, which could be redeemed for products in the catalog.
S&H Green Stamps had several competitors, including Gold Bell Gift Stamps (in the Midwest) Triple S Stamps (offered by Grand Union Supermarkets), Gold Bond Stamps, Blue Chip Stamps, Plaid Stamps (a project of A&P Supermarkets), and Eagle Stamps (a project of several divisions of the May Department Stores Co. of St. Louis, Missouri and offered, notably, by May Company stores, supermarkets, drug stores, gas stations, and dry cleaners in the Cleveland, Ohio area).[2]
History
Sperry & Hutchinson began offering stamps to U.S. retailers in 1896. The retail organizations that distributed the stamps (primarily supermarkets, gasoline filling stations, and shops) bought the stamps from S&H and gave them as bonuses to shoppers based on the dollar amount of a purchase. The stamps—issued in denominations of one, ten, and fifty points—were perforated with a gummed reverse, and as shoppers accumulated the stamps they moistened the reverse and mounted them in collectors books, which were provided free by S&H. The books contained 24 pages and to fill a page required 50 points, so each book contained 1200 points. Shoppers could then exchange filled books for premiums, including housewares and other items, from the local Green Stamps store or catalog. Each premium was assigned a value expressed by the number of filled stamp books required to obtain that item.
Green Stamps were one of the first retail loyalty programs,[3] retailers purchased the stamps from the operating company and then gave them away at a rate determined by the merchant. Some shoppers would choose one merchant over another because they gave out more stamps per dollar spent.[4]
The company also traded overseas. During the early 1960s, it initiated S&H Pink Stamps in the United Kingdom, having been beaten to their green shield trademark during 1958 by Richard Tompkins's Green Shield Trading Stamp Company.[5]
The program had its greatest popularity during the mid 1960s, but a series of recessions during the 1970s decreased sales of green stamps and the stamp programs of their competitors. The value of the rewards declined substantially during the same period, requiring either far more stamps to get a worthwhile item or spending money for an item that was barely discounted from the price at regular stores, creating a general downward spiral as fewer and fewer people saw them as worth the trouble.
In 1972, the company was brought before the Supreme Court for violating the unfairness doctrine. In Federal Trade Commission v. Sperry & Hutchinson Trading Stamp Co., the court held that restricting the trade of the stamps was illegal.
Sperry and Hutchinson was sold by the founders' successors in 1981, and was purchased from a holding firm by a member of the founding Sperry family in 1999. At that time, only about 100 U.S. stores were offering Green Stamps. Eventually, the company modified its practices with the advent of the Internet and now offers "greenpoints" as rewards for online purchases.[6]
S & H Solutions
The company operated S&H Solutions a sales training and incentives program developed for its own sales force but run as a separate profit center offering services to other employers.
On December 7, 2006, it was announced that S&H Solutions was purchased by San Francisco based Pay By Touch. The purchase price was in excess of $100 million in cash and stock. Pay By Touch suddenly shuttered its operations in 2008 and sold its assets to other corporations.
In popular culture
Stephen King attributes his first original short story idea to his mother's use of S&H Green Stamps. The unpublished "Happy Stamps" is about the counterfeiting of (the fictitious) Happy Stamps in order to purchase a house.[7]
In March 1969, Don L. Lee published a poem on Ebony magazine that finished with the sentence "Jesus saves, Jesus saves, Jesus saves — S&H Green Stamps."[8]
In the 1962 hit "Speedy Gonzales" by Pat Boone, the final words of the song, in the Speedy Gonzales voice, say, "Hey Rosita, come queeck, down at the cantina they're giving green stamps with tequila!"[9]
References
- ^ S&H Solutions | About S&H
- ^ Exploring St. Louis - Eagle Stamps
- ^ Advertising Age "Redeeming Qualities by Jennifer Lach"
- ^ York Daily Record "Remember: S&H Green Stamps By Melissa Nann Burke"
- ^ Richard Davenport-Hines (2004). "Tompkins, (Granville) Richard Francis (1918–1992)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
- ^ S&H greenpoints>
- ^ King, Stephen: "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft", Pocket Books, 2001
- ^ Black Don Lee: Ebony magazine, March, 1969.
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcFydf2W1RY
External links
- S&H greenpoints
- YOU Technology company website
- S&H Solutions
- Federal Trade Commission v. Sperry & Hutchinson Trading Stamp Co.
- Google Books Ebony magazine.