Green Stamps Stick Around in Age of Yuppie Consumers

Word that S&H; Green Stamps is in hot pursuit of the yuppie market came as a great relief to a 78-year-old monk in Stockbridge, Mass.

It’s not that Brother Alphie covets the racy red roadster, the raccoon coat or other luxury prizes that staid Sperry & Hutchinson Co. is using to lure the yup-and-coming.

What heartens Brother Alphie more than any solid brass executive yo-yo (six books) is the conversion of lick-and-stick Green Stamps to peel-off seals.

Since the Association of Marian Helpers began soliciting and cashing in trading stamps about 103,000 books ago, proceeds have bought two pipe organs, a marble statue of St. Francis, a Jeep and a station wagon for nuns.

Now the order is saving up for an elevator that would give the elderly and handicapped access to their shrine.

“Sometimes for weeks on end, I’d be doing nothing but putting stamps in books,” said Brother Alphie. “I use a spray adhesive.”

The switch to seals may also be good news for shoppers in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., S&H;’s best customers with 927,107 redemptions logged last year. (The worst location is Kansas, where trading stamps are banned under a 1957 law.)

But S&H; isn’t expecting everyone to embrace the changes, which include the option of eliminating stamps and books altogether with a special credit card to tally gift points.

As long as there is any demand, the old-fashioned stamps will be available, said Mary Pollack, vice president of marketing for the Madison Avenue company.

“People want convenience,” she said, but S&H; still has “many accounts and consumers with a great affinity for lick-and-stick.”

Ninety-one years after its first customer traded a book of stamps for a wrought-iron lamp, S&H; is hoping to revive interest in an industry beleaguered by busy lives and supermarket coupons that drain promotional budgets once used for stamps.

After peaking in 1969 with $369 million in sales and more than 100,000 stores nationwide giving Green Stamps, the company is down to 7,500 stores clustered mainly in the southeast and sales of about $200 million.

In all, nearly 75 million books, equal to nearly 90 billion Green Stamps, were redeemed last year for 7 million gifts with a retail value of more than $160 million.

Junk drawers, purse bottoms and trash bags collect stamps, too. Eight percent of all S&H; stamps are never redeemed.

The issuance rate has never changed--one stamp per dime spent. It takes 1,200 stamps to fill a book, which can be redeemed for $1.20 cash, with S&H; chipping in an additional 60 cents per book for non-profit organizations.

“Our gifts were never out of step with the times,” Pollack said, “just the method.”