S&H GREEN STAMPS

Did you ever wonder what happened to S&H Green Stamps ?

I saved these stamps when I was a young Mother and always found it excited to have a couple of books full so I could go to the S&H Green stamp store to redeem them.

This was a great idea for consumers as well as for the stores and gas stations that give them out. 

Will they be coming back?

Read below to find the answer.

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, 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.
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.
 
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. In 1999, it was purchased from a holding firm by a member of the founding Sperry family. At that time, only about 100 U.S. stores were offering Green Stamps. Eventually, with the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the company modified its practices, and offered "greenpoints" as rewards for online purchases. The Greenpoints could be earned and redeemed at only a few stores, like Freshtown in NY State.

In 2013, the S&H Green Stamps brand was purchased by entrepreneur Anthony Zolezzi. His vision for S&H includes a reboot that will continue the nostalgic feel of the original game while bringing S&H into the 21st century. Zolezzi plans a refresh that includes using sustainability and health as the representative icons "S&H". “The focus will still be on collecting stamps and redeeming rewards’” says Zolezzi, “but in a modern way.” Zolezzi hopes to have the new program in place by Earth Day 2015^.