We may think that it is a new concept or sales idea, but there isn’t anything new about loyalty points or getting a gift for doing business with a local, regional, or national retailer or merchant. In the 1930s through the 1970s many small merchants offered S&H Green stamps. Yes, they would have double stamps for purchasing gas or items on a certain day or just a regular number of stamps for doing business with a local merchant. The local merchant would buy the stamps, then distribute them to customers when they made a purchase. The customers would then place the stamps in a redemption book to keep a count. Once the customer collected a certain number of stamps, they could redeem the stamps for everything from china and linens to small appliances and furniture from a S&H catalog or one of 600 redemption stores located in cities throughout the U.S. At the height of this program, S&H was printing three times the stamps as the United States Postal Service. I’m sure we have members that remember licking the S&H Green Stamps and placing them in the redemption book, along with looking at the catalog hoping that their parents or grandma would purchase something for the kids.

Written by Scott Moore, FEM Electric General Manager/CEO