There’s this sticky situation…
Since the dawn of stickers, athletes and fans have slapped stickers on helmets, skateboards and stop signs. Whether they’re rep’in their favorite brands, adding flair to their gear, or decorating an old dresser, there’s never a shortfall of sticker hungry people—especially in the action sports industry. Brands like Nike, Burton and Red Bull do their best to keep up with the sticker loving demand by continuously making stickers for fans like us can rep them.But how do these brands get their sweet stickers in the hands of fans?
- Give them out at events
- Sell them online or through retail stores
- Fill and return a fan’s self addressed envelope
There must be better way…
Meanwhile…
The founders of Kuborra (Jesse Cooke and Matt Prindle), an action sports clothing company, ran into this same problem of easily getting their dope stickers in the hands of fans who wanted to slap them on their snowboard. Around the same time, they worked closely with a friend’s company, Conscious Box, who used an interesting business model to send a monthly box of “green” products to eco-curious consumers.
On clicked the lightbulb and Sticker Stork was born!
By using a similar model to tackling this problem, Sticker Stork offered an alternative and easy service to help brands spread their stickers to the masses and help fans get their sticker fix.
Sticker Stork connects action sport brands to current and new fans—via stickers!
How Are Babies Made?
We all know how… storks fly miles across landscapes and rooftops to deliver safely bundled newborns on the doorstep of a happy couple. Just the same, Sticker Stork commissions those storks to deliver packages of stickers from various brands to your doorstep… or something along those line.
To convey this little known fact, capturing a sticker’ified paper stork delivering stickers made too much sense to ignore for the logo. So after settling on the design style and color-ful scheme, this is where we happily landed:
To explain the how both sticker fans and brands would benefit from Sticker Stork’s service, we decided to make two separate motion graphic videos.
One for the fans:
And one for the brands:
With most of the assets and guidelines in place, it was time to design and develop our first subscription-based e-commerce website. Piece by piece we added the necessary functionality for subscribers to create an account, manage their shipping and payment details, and even share Sticker Stork with their personalized referral links.
Try. Fail. Learn.
This project was a first for us in many ways. So trial and error became our best friend as we ate this elephant one bite at a time. We reorganized layouts, switched platforms, found + fixed glitches… we quickly learned to have the flexibility to experiment, recognize when we made a mistake, learn and move on to the next bite. And although our deadline for the project was approaching quickly, there was a sense of freedom that came from being comfortable making mistakes—knowing that they would only bring us closer to the final product we had visioned.
In the end, we’re extremely happy with what we produced. We hear the brands and sticker fans were happy with it as well :)
The moral of the story.
Since the inception of Sticker Stork, my co-founder Jesse and I have moved on to solving bigger problems. Throughout the process, reflecting back to my first business venture, I’ve noticed having a clear understanding of what problem is being solved makes all the difference in a business venture. It gives a clear and aligned direction for everyone involved and adds a powerful layer of drive and focus because you know you’re working towards providing value that doesn’t already exist.
Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. – Michael Dell
