Recently, the owner of Sticker Mule used his email subscriber list to send a note about his support of Donald J. Trump. In the note, he said people at his company supported Trump and others supported Biden. They were having a sale, and you could use the money to make a T-shirt with whomever you supported, and that is better than violence.
His message attempted to be bipartisan, but his preference for Trump was clearly expressed.
Many people were upset about it, especially on reddit. There was much backlash against Sticker Mule. Sticker Mule received so much attention and hatred that the owner took to email again. In his follow-up email, he stated that his support team had been dealing with a large amount of negative responses and even death threats. He said he had paid a 2.5k bonus to all his support employees, so the haters had done something great by giving his employees nearly 200k in bonuses. In his post on X (the modified version), he slipped and revealed some personal information in his screenshots, identifying the users.
As a result, the owner’s actions have significantly tarnished the reputation of Sticker Mule, leaving many customers and observers feeling concerned about the company’s future.
I have been using Sticker Mule to make my stickers for a long time. Their service has been excellent, and while their product selection wasn’t always where I wanted it to be (I wanted glitter stickers long before they offered them), they did a decent job. They also provide deals, so I would wait for a deal and buy stickers when the deals were offered. While I did MANY projects with them, I never bought much at full price, so I think my spending with them was not high.
Still, in the wake of this Sticker Mule situation, I wanted to know what else is out there. I’m not opposed to someone having a political belief, but I try to stay away from companies that openly express them. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of Trump and his agenda. I’m afraid to put any additional money into his presidential run, even indirectly.
This led me to do some research and put together an Airtable with data on all the sticker vendors I could find:
This table has a list of the vendors, locations if I could find them and the types of products they produce.
https://airtable.com/appDDusI21stzCrd9/shrR9HcYidUeiExzv
I’m debating putting together a set of tests for each of these products to come up with other criteria of evaluating stickers, but generally I just care that they last, can handle UV, and make it through a dish washer. This means I’m having trouble coming up with a good set of tests. Though now I’m also thinking about their interface and proofing process being a part of it.
In the mean time I’ll be trying some other vendors over Sticker Mule to see how they stack up.