Five days a week on the far side of town, factory workers mold, bake and mount millions of rubber stamps that are used by homemakers and hobbyists to preserve family history, personalize greeting cards and, yes, decorate the living room walls.
In the 12 years since Stampin' Up! relocated from Las Vegas, Shelli Gardner's catalog-based business has swelled to a $220 million-a-year enterprise with 500 employees and a sales staff of 42,000. Surprised? So are other CEOs, especially when they learn Gardner is only 43, never graduated from college, hasn't read a single Stephen Covey book and had but one ambition in life: to be a good mom.
Yet that caretaker instinct is exactly why Stampin' Up! is such a success, employees say, and why others in Kanab covet their jobs.
Every birthday, baby and wedding merits a handmade card from Gardner. At least once a year, she and the other executives serve breakfast to factory workers. And she recently closed the plant so all 100 employees could attend the funeral of a co-worker. One week later, she did it again so they and their spouses could celebrate Friday's christening of the new Stampin' Up! headquarters in Riverton.
The company could save a lot of money if its factory were not five hours away, Gardner acknowledges. But the mere mention of abandoning the small town where she grew up makes her cry.
"Shelli is all about the employees," explains plant supervisor Daron Jackman. "She's totally loyal to us."
Talk about a lost art form.
These days, U.S. companies don't hesitate to move manufacturing jobs overseas. Cuts to health and retirement benefits are the norm. And scandals are stealing the pensions of countless workers but not the bonuses of their unscrupulous bosses.
Gardner once overestimated sales. She was stuck with a huge inventory and 100 employees with nothing to do. Rather than lay anyone off, she shut down the plant and paid workers to do community service projects.
"I don't know if it's her upbringing or what," says Linda Kloepfer, hired in 1992 as Gardner's first Kanab employee. "But it works for us."
Corporate responsibility: It works for a lot of other companies, too. Starbucks, Tom's of Maine, Ben & Jerry's, even General Electric have embraced a kinder form of capitalism. Covey espouses "principles of empathetic communication" and industrialist Jon M. Huntsman Sr. devotes an entire chapter of his new book to being kind to others.
Women might be wondering what took so long.
In her 1982 book, In a Different Voice, psychologist Carol Gilligan noted that women have long been more concerned with getting along than getting ahead. Their conception of morality centers on relationships and fairness rather than rules and hierarchy.
In other words, if Robert Fulghum learned all he needed to know in kindergarten, chances are his teacher was a woman.
Gilligan wrote that the ability to connect and rely on others requires "a kind of courage and emotional stamina which has long been a strength of women, insufficiently noted and valued." And it's why more and more women, rather than conform to a male-oriented ideal of leadership, are starting their own businesses.
From 1997 to 2004, the number of companies that are at least 50 percent owned by women increased twice as fast as those owned by men, according to the Center for Women's Business Research. Today, women own 48 percent of all private companies, which generate $2.5 trillion in annual sales and spend $546 billion a year on salaries and benefits.
Judy Rosener says women such as Gardner are driving America's economic revival but their achievements are barely noticed and rarely studied. That's because research depends on financial data and private companies don't have to and don't want to disclose it.
Still, what research Rosener has conducted -- she is a professor at the University of California-Irvine and author of the 1995 book, America's Competitive Secret: Women Managers -- helps explain why women do well in business.
They start out with a passion, Roseners says. They have a very low bankruptcy rate because they don't get money from banks and credit. And, since it's their money, they are much more careful in how they spend it.
But women also give personal attention, and connect with customers and their employees.
"This idea that everyone works for money is crazy," Rosener says. "Men are defined by title, job and how much money they make. But women tend to define themselves by family and friends. What they find is the qualities you need to be a good mother are the same ones you need to be a CEO. You have three kids and two cookies. You have to figure out how to work things out. Mothers do that normally. We make it fair and we make it fun. But you don't put that on a resume."
And you don't run a company with hugs. At least that's what one former employee told Gardner.
"Those were his exact words. At first I wanted to cry. My next thought was, 'How dare you. I'm the one who has put up millions of dollars so you can be here.' But the truth is I didn't feel comfortable for a long time. I would think, 'Who am I? What do I know? I don't have an MBA.' I'm more comfortable now. I lead with my heart and my demonstrators confirm my best instincts.
"There are still people who say I'm lucky, that I was in the right place at the right time. There is not enough appreciation [for women's contributions to business] and there probably never will be."
Asked for the name of the employee who disagreed with her style, Gardner says she would rather not embarrass him.
Growing pains: Linda Kloepfer is correct; Gardner's upbringing had a lot to do with her career.
Her parents divorced when she was 5 and her dad, a hard-working man who sold and repaired heavy construction equipment, took custody of the four girls.
"I always had a baby sister on my hip," says Gardner, the oldest. "Even after my dad remarried, I always acted like the mother."
The family moved from Lancaster, Calif., to Kanab when Gardner was 12. She had no interest in sports or music or arts and crafts, she says, but gravitated toward leadership roles such as student council.
At age 18, she started her own family, which, by the time she moved to Nevada, included five girls.
Sterling, her husband, was a home builder, and in the 1980s there wasn't much of that in Kanab. Hang a door a day, get $20 is how Gardner describes those lean times. Las Vegas proved more lucrative.
The couple lived two doors down from Gardner's sister, LaVonne Crosby. Both women had sold toys and home decorations through Tupperware-like parties and demonstrations. So when they decided to sell stamps -- "I needed some adult interaction," Gardner says -- the sisters went to a national wholesaler and asked if they could launch a direct sales division.
"Their stamps were selling well on the shelves and they turned us down," Gardner says.
Big mistake. Huge mistake.
Okay, so Gardner didn't exactly march back to the manufacturer like some stamp-crazy version of Julia Roberts spurned by that Rodeo Drive dress shop in "Pretty Woman." Instead, she and LaVonne persuaded the company and others to sign licensing agreements and let them sell the stamps. Using $85,000 the Gardners had saved for a new home, the sisters hired an accountant and a lawyer and Stampin' Up! was born.
"We called three people -- a cousin and two aunts -- who called three people and so on," Gardner says. "In three months we had so many orders we needed our own warehouse."
The big move: The sisters moved the business back to Kanab in December 1992, turned their dad's old truck shop into a manufacturing plant, and started making their own stamps. In 1998, LaVonne left the business to devote more time to her home life. By then, the company had relinquished its licensing agreements and was selling only Stampin' Up! designs. The catalog, originally 62 pages, now tops 250, including 20 pages of accessories such as paper, buttons, ribbons, metal fasteners and markers.
Stamp designs range from simple flowers and whimsical caricatures to artistic borders and intricate scenes of Utah's redrock country. The images are molded into magnesium plates in Texas, but everything else is done in Kanab. The plant smells like pit row at the Daytona 500 and operates with similar efficiency.
One by one, the molds are filled with a fine phenolic powder and put in a heated press. The resulting templates are covered with rubber sheets and baked in large ovens. Workers examine the quality of the rubber impressions with magnifying lens and mark those that don't measure up. From there, the sheets are cut, mounted on foam, affixed to wood blocks, and packaged in sets. On a good day, two eight-hour crews produce around 250,000 stamps.
The sets are boxed and trucked to Riverton, where they are shipped to a network of 42,000 mostly female demonstrators around the country and in Canada. Many, like Gardner, are moms who thrive on the in-home sales setting, the web of relationships, and the work-from-home environment that multilevel marketing offers.
To them, Gardner is a rock star.
At Stampin' Up! conventions, they wait two, sometimes three hours for her autograph or to have their picture taken with her. Some have even called the company to ask what kind of car Gardner drives, so they can buy one, too.
Then again, conventioneers also seek autographs from factory workers such as Cherokee Hines, who earns $35,000 a year making the phenolic templates. "I've been to convention five years in a row," Hines says. "I love this company. We're like a big family. I don't see myself ever leaving."
That family now includes Sterling Gardner, who quit the home-building business and took charge of the company's nonstop expansion. (In addition to the new office building, Stampin' Up! is planning a second factory in Kanab.) Sterling's father is the night-shift supervisor at the factory. Numerous relatives are demonstrators, and three of Gardner's daughters work for the company. Like her, they grew up learning the ups and downs of owning a family business, including sacrificing time with their parents.
"There were times Sterling and I would put the business before the family. But I knew it would be short term," Gardner says, noting the couple home schooled the girls so they could all go on business trips. "At one point, when the girls were teenagers, we asked them if we should sell the business and they said, 'Are you crazy?' "
Others weren't so understanding, which helps explain Gardner's didn't-mean-to-do-it attitude toward success.
When the sisters sought a $20,000 loan for construction of the Kanab plant, local bankers wanted to know where their husbands were. Members of their church were especially uncomfortable with the role reversal.
Gardner, a Mormon, was under great pressure not to work outside the home and the business increasingly took her out of town, to trade shows and direct-selling seminars. For a long time, she worked in the middle of the night and hid her business from friends.
"My mom and stepmom were full-time, stay-at-home moms. So it's almost as if I was failing, like I needed to go outside the home to have my needs fulfilled," she says. "I used to tell people I worked from home and left it at that. . . . I really wanted to do what the Prophet said and I still have my moments of guilt. But the more we got into the business, and it sucked us in, the more I realized you can balance your priorities.
"I look at my girls and they are hard workers. They know how to deal with stress. So many people feel their life is upside-down because it isn't perfect. But business teaches you about that. It teaches you to deal with circumstances beyond your control."
lfantin@sltrib.com
