Popular California sticker company to make Utah its new home, after 43 years

An undated panoramic photo of Kanab. The southern Utah town will be the new home of the Mrs. Grossman's Paper Company starting in the spring. The California sticker company announced it was moving to Utah this week.

An undated panoramic photo of Kanab. The southern Utah town will be the new home of the Mrs. Grossman's Paper Company starting in the spring. The California sticker company announced it was moving to Utah this week. (Tim Quesenberry, Shutterstock)


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SALT LAKE CITY — A beloved California sticker company says it's moving to Utah after over 40 years in the Bay Area, as it downsizes and shifts operations.

Mrs. Grossman's Paper Company, which was founded in 1979, is slated to make the Beehive State its new home this spring, according to an update on its website posted this week by the owner of the company, Jason Grossman. Its headquarters are currently located in Petaluma, California, which is about 40 miles northwest of San Francisco.

The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California, reported Tuesday that the company's new headquarters will be located in Kanab.

Grossman wrote in the public letter that the COVID-19 pandemic caused major shifts at the sticker company. Its direct-to-consumer operations increased while its wholesale business dropped. During this time, it was dealing with "constantly increasing" overhead costs in California.

Moving to Utah is a part of the changes. Grossman wrote that the company already purchased a building for its new location and plans to move its operations there sometime mid-spring. The company also decided to end wholesale operation and focus on its website sales and sticker club subscription service.

"With redirected effort in these two areas, we plan on offering a lot more on our website and boost our club offering," he wrote. "In 2022, you will see some products that we are currently out-of-stock of come back while also adding products that we have not had in many, many years."

Andrea Grossman, Jason Grossman's mother, originally founded the sticker company from her California home in 1979 after she was unable to find anyone who made red heart stickers to tack onto Valentine's Day gift wrap, the company's website notes.

The company is credited with sparking a sticker craze that developed in the 1980s, selling colorfully designed stickers that were printed onto rolls, like ribbon. People magazine even featured the company in 1984, noting that stickers were mostly just found on produce before Mrs. Grossman's was founded.

"These days, the under-12 set is snapping up virtually anything in sticker form and affixing it to notebooks, lockers, tennis shoes, T-shirts, socks and assorted body parts," the outlet wrote at the time.

The company grew and moved to Petaluma in 1995. It employed as many as 200 people at one point, according to the Press Democrat. The newspaper added that Mrs. Grossman's was well known in the community because of the factory tours that it provided for schoolchildren in the area. Those, they wrote, ended in 2019 when the company closed retail operations.

KSL.com was unable to reach Grossman for comment. However, he told the Press Democrat that California was becoming too expensive and that "Utah is loving me to come in, with open arms."

The company posted a drawing of a bear sticker mascot driving a van past red rock cliffs of Zion National Park to its Facebook page Thursday.

The post garnered loving feedback from its followers, many of whom either shared experiences related to their old sticker factory tours or that they looked forward to purchasing stickers online.

"My 9-year-old still talks about our tour that we did years ago," one person wrote. "Thanks for the memories!"

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Carter Williams is an award-winning reporter for KSL.com. He covers Salt Lake City news, as well as statewide transportation issues, outdoors, environment and weather. Carter has worked in Utah news for over a decade and is a graduate of Southern Utah University.

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