THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505230103
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EARNING A LIVING IN VIRGINIA BEACH
SOURCE: BY LORI A. DENNEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Holly Edley's rubber stamp business is a stamper's paradise, literally.
The business, which Edley named Stampers Paradise, offers rubber stamps, stencils and ink pads that are sold through home-based parties.
``It's a whole new world people don't know about,'' said Edley, referring to the stamps. ``You don't have to be a true artist to make things look incredible with a small effort.''
The stamps, which carry sayings or are shaped like animals, flowers, shells and other items, can be used for a variety of things including decorating stationery, cards, personal checks, walls, canvas totes, curtains, lamp shades, menus, books, clothes, hats and even tennis shoes.
For paper stamping, a water-based ink is used and for fabrics a permanent ink is used. The stamps can be cleaned with a mild soap and water.
``It's affordable and very personalized,'' said Edley, an Atlanta native.
Edley stocks a variety of popular stamps - including dolphins, suns, moons and stars - and can order any stamp from one of 23 West Coast suppliers.
In her Red Mill Farm home, Edley has thousands of stamps displayed.
There are stamps with cute sayings like, ``The weather is here, wish you were beautiful'' and the more practical ``happy anniversary'' and ``happy birthday.''
There are stamps of almost every animal known to man, as well as funny characters, flowers and decorative borders.
Customers can order stamp sets with the alphabet, or even stamp books. She also sells name and address stamps and custom-made stamps.
The stamps are priced according to their size. The smallest, a 1-inch stamp, starts at $4 and goes up to $9 for the largest, a 3-by-5 inch stamp.
Edley sells two types of ink - a dye ink in rainbow and solid colors and an embossing pigment ink that leaves the stamp's image slightly raised on paper. The ink pads range from $3 to $5.50.
When Edley does a home-based party, the hostess receives a discount on stamps. The atmosphere is informal and most of the party-goers gather around a kitchen table while Edley discusses the little tricks of using stamps such as creating multi-color designs by using markers. Or, using a black ink for the stamp's border and then later filling in a color with marker.
With brass stencils, ranging in price from $2.50 to $8, Edley can show a customer how to do an embossed design on paper.
Typically, she'll bring the most popular, or best selling stamps to a party and then offer the guests 23 catalogs to browse through.
Edley officially began her business in 1994. She came across the idea a year before when she happened upon a small stamp display in a local toy store.
``I thought that there must be something that can be done with this on a larger scale,'' she said.
As the mother of two young sons - 2-year-old Brandon and 4-year-old Ryan - Edley was ready to find something dealing with ``adults'' and a job that would fit the part-time schedule she wanted.
After some investigating, she found that the West Coast was where the stamps were most popular and also where most of the distributors were.
She then went on to investigate several established home-based businesses and how they were run.
She said she took the best concepts from each and incorporated them into her business. She now has four distributors working for her. Edley has gone so far as to concoct a ``starter kit'' of stamps and pre-printed business forms for distributors.
She decided that the home-based business idea was not only best for her children and her schedule, but also good because the overhead was low and she didn't have to buy a huge stock of stamps.
With this business, she said, she orders what she knows is popular.
Because she attends craft shows, she has begun to network with others interested in starting the same kind of business in places such as Boston, New Hampshire and Florida.
She didn't get into the business to make a million dollars, she said, ``merely to find something I enjoyed doing. It's a little therapeutic.''
Some of the more unusual requests for stamps have been for sign language alphabets and Hebrew alphabets.
A couple of stamps she sells, a train and a pig, make sounds when they're stamped. Those are $14.
``I love what I'm doing. It's a very creative job for me,'' said Edley, who has plans to attend a national rubber stamp convention in Boston this year. MEMO: To reach the Stampers Paradise, call 721-5811.
ILLUSTRATION: It's a whole new world people don't know about,'' Holly Edley
says of the thousands of stamps she has displayed in her Red Mill
Farm home. ``You don't have to be a true artist to make things look
incredible with a small effort.''
Staff photos by CHARLIE MEADS
by CNB