The Marketplace: Revolt Among the Stampers

One day, 11,374 years ago, a flint-chipper named Og, whose wife had unsympathetically thrown his collection of tiger teeth out of the cave, began giving one tiger tooth to anybody who bought two of his flints for ten clams. Soon Og found that he was selling flints by the bushel and running so low on tiger teeth that he had to get more—even if it meant hunting tigers. This was a nuisance and expensive; to cover the cost, he raised the price of his flints to 15 clams a pair. And to his astonishment, nobody seemed to care; they went right on buying his flints instead of the ones his competitor, Blug, was selling at the old price (until Blug began to give away tiger teeth too). Og is honored today as the inventor of the Premium and discoverer of the great Something-for-Nothing Syndrome.

These crude Stone Age beginnings, developed and glorified by U.S. know-how, have produced the trading stamp. Like Og’s tiger teeth, trading stamps are a nuisance, and expensive for the retailer, but they give the housewife so much pleasure that she is willing to pay for it. First there is the sticky-tongued fun of pasting them in books and watching the books accumulate. Then there is the happy trip to the trading center with its shining array of treasures that seem to be free. And then the glow of self-congratulation at shrewd and prudent shopping.

Heating Pads & Houses. These warm feelings seem to have married the trading stamp to the U.S. economy for better or worse. Some 375 billion stamps will leave their glue on American tongues in 1962. They will be issued under about 300 different names, but 90% of them will come from one of the eight big stamp companies: S & H Green Stamps, Top Value, Plaid Stamps, Gold Bond, Frontier, Blue Chip, King Korn, Triple S. The goods for which they were redeemed in 1961 amounted to approximately $800 million worth (at list prices), and included 14% of the heating pads, 8% of the toasters and 4% of the coffeemakers sold in the U.S. Stamps may be issued along with any transaction—buying a toothbrush, a new car, a new house, opening a savings account. In a few sordid instances, pastors have been inspired to issue stamps to Sunday churchgoers.

A Cancerous Practice. But around the nation, there are signs that the flood of stamps has reached its crest and is beginning to ebb. Biggest area of discontent is among filling-station operators. Unlike most retailers, who can pass the stamps’ cost on to the consumer in higher prices, gas stations have a price-determined product and a low profit margin. For them, the stamp craze has become a nightmare.

“If someone gave me a bushel of stamps free. I’d stick them in a corner so they wouldn’t dirty up my place,” snorts Filling-Station Owner James E. Boka of Detroit, who gave up trading stamps and claims that his business has improved because he can now give better service. Executive Secretary John W. Nerlinger Jr. of the Petroleum Congress calls the stamps “a cancerous business practice.” For every penny he spends for a stamp, he argues, the service-station owner must somehow “reduce the quality of his service or cut a corner in the back of the shop.” Some filling-station men are joining forces in revolt. Thirty of them recently agreed to abandon stamps in the Denver suburb of Englewrood, and in Buena Park near Los Angeles, a group of 70 stations has organized a stamp boycott. Most filling-station men, however, are still afraid to follow their example. ”We’d like to get rid of the stamps,” says the operator of a large Dallas service station. “But the stamp people come down the street and tell us they’ve sold the other stations on stamps, and they don’t mind telling us they’ll run us out of business if we don’t use stamps too.”

D Prices. The nationwide department-store chain, W. T. Grant, recently decided that stamps were not worth the trouble, will cut off its stamp program early next year. Even in the food business, citadel of U.S. stamp-happiness, there are signs of incipient revolt. In some areas of the country, notably New England and the Midwest, a new phenomenon has arisen: the discount grocery, stripped to base essentials without gimmicks or stamps, like the 67,300-sq.-ft. Warehouse Market in Dallas. “Almost all the grocery stores in the country give stamps now,” says Warehouse Market Manager Glenn Scribner, “but we can save our customers from 3% to 7% by not giving them, and we do a large volume of business.”

Other discount groceries are affiliated with regular discount department stores. One of them, Consumers Mart of America, opened a full-sized grocery department in its new Chicago store three years ago, with no frills, no stamps, and prices about 15% below the supermarkets’. Business has been so good that they have opened ten more in California, Illinois, Florida and Arizona. The National Tea Co., a chain of 900 stores that dispenses S & H Green Stamps, has opened 17 D (for discount) food stores in the Midwest within the last eight months. Says President Norman Stepelton: “Our D prices are about 15% lower than our National Tea prices, and the public seems to love it.”