Postage stamp programmes
Since 2014, Stapps has coordinated the annual postage stamp
programme for the Caribbean Netherlands, including, since
2016, that of St Maarten.
Stapps suggests themes for the stamps, coordinates the stamp
designs, arranges the printing and distributes the stamps to
the various sales channels.
Stapps also arranges the delivery of the annual collections to
subscribers. And Stapps keeps an eye on the expenditure and
revenue. To sum up: Stapps provides a full-service solution.
Personalised stamps
Post services often issue personalised postage stamps too.
Personalised stamps offer post services flexibility, as they
can then respond to current affairs and sell ongoing series in
addition to their annual postage stamp programmes. Post
services can generate extra revenue from personalised postage
stamps.
Are you looking for a successful marketing concept? Stapps can
deliver.
One-off issues
In addition to these complete postage stamp programmes, Stapps
provides, on request, non-recurrent issues of stamps.
In 2020, C-Post, Curaçao’s post office, commissioned Stapps to
design that year’s Christmas stamp series.
Following a collab with design agency Studio Excello, six
stamps were issued, including the corresponding first-day
covers and a first-day-of-issue postmark.
Stamps with NFC
Stapps created a humming bird postage stamp with an NFC tag
(Near Field Communication) for the island of Saint Eustatius.
Nowadays, most smartphones feature an NFC tool that
automatically connects to NFC tags. The NFC tag on this
postage stamp contained a video with fun background
information about the humming bird.
NFC stamps are popular among collectors so, not surprisingly,
this one is no longer available.
Gold postage stamps
Stapps has created extremely profitable concepts for issues of
gold postage stamps for various post offices (Correos, CTT,
Luxembourg Post, Guernsey, etc).
The all-time favourites are the 24-carat gold stamps featuring
Johan Cruyff for Correos and for FXDC Post, the Caribbean
Netherlands’ post office. Both stamps sold out in under an
hour.
Check the
Stapps webshop
to see which gold stamps are still available.
Tailor-made solutions
Every client wants something different. For Deutsche Post,
Stapps made a gold stamp measuring a whopping 3 x 5.5 cm -
definitely not your run-of-the mill stamp size.
The packaging, the capsule and the inlay on the box also
needed to be altered to accommodate its size. A
made-to-measure sleeve was slipped over the box as the
finishing touch and the gold stamp was ready for sale.
And it proved a success: Deutsche Post ran out of stock within
two months.
Collectables
As well as official postage stamps, the collectors market also
includes issues for which postal services have no obligation
to deliver, such as postmarked stamps and gold replicas of
postage stamps which cannot be postmarked anymore.
These collectables caught the eye of Oman Post, too, and they
asked Stapps to make a series of gold stamps (i.e. without the
denomination of its value) to mark the occasion of the 40th
anniversary of the Gulf Cooperation Council. They did want
them quickly, however, because the celebration was only two
months away. Nonetheless, Stapps delivered: six gold stamps in
fabulous packaging and... on time.
Postage stamp platforms
PostEurop (formerly CEPT) is a partnership of European public
postal organisations whose main task is to ensure the
smoothest possible mail traffic between countries. The
affiliated postal organisations also issue a joint PostEurop
stamp with a central theme each year. In 2019, this theme was
birds.
In this context, Stapps launched a bird-themed marketing
concept to stimulate cooperation between the various postal
organisations and to boost stamp sales.
Every single bird stamp could be scanned with an app, which
would then immediately play the song of the bird in question.
After scanning a stamp, users were redirected to a mobile
landing page in the language of the postal organisation in
question, where they could order the stamp they had scanned,
as well as all the other bird stamps.
No fewer than twenty postal organisations took part in this
project, with the Norwegian bird stamp proving to be the most
popular.
