Postage Stamp Mania

Consumers are designing their own postage stamps for the holiday seasons using USPS-approved vendors Zazzle.com, Endicia.com and Stamps.com—the latter sold 3.5 million custom stamps between May and September; Zazzle.com reports as many as 100,000 orders arriving daily.

Babies, pets and self-portraits of card writers top the list of graphics (suggestive images are strictly banned). During the initial launch of consumer Websites for producing stamps, companies offering the service had some initial snafus and had to halt operations when stamps carrying obscene or otherwise inappropriate images—such as unabomber Ted Kaczynski or former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa—were produced.

Graphic Arts Monthly produced its own holiday stamp (shown) at Zazzle.com. GAM's associate art director Sundeé Koffarnus says the process was easy and the Website offered plenty of customer support. Koffarnus uploaded an image of a photo she took, selected the layout—vertical or horizontal—and positioned the image. The stamp incorporates a 3-D bar code. Zazzle claims its stamps offer the largest image area for graphics versus competitors.

While consumer interest in producing stamps heats up, so to is competition between stamp vendors. Stamps.com is suing Endicia and PSI Systems Inc., alleging the two companies infringed on 11 of its patents, covering, among other things, its Internet postage technology. Endicia Internet Postage is a service from Envelope Manager Software, a maker of desktop mail software. PSI Systems Inc. is an engineering, software and management consulting firm.

Separately, USPS loosened rules on who appears on its official stamps—parties shown must be deceased five years instead of 10. www.zazzle.com, www.endicia.com, www.stamps.com, www.usps.com