Customer Loyalty Was Once Measured in Green Stamps. And the More You Shopped, the Bigger the Rewards

"In 1891, traveling salesman Thomas Sperry came upon an intriguing incentive program in a Milwaukee department store, which issued stamps with each purchase that customers could later redeem for merchandise."

"By its second year, S&H had expanded to 67 cities, and Sperry and Hutchinson began opening more showrooms, where customers presented their stamps for merchandise: One booklet could get you a porcelain lamp, while six booklets could get you a bicycle."

"In the early 1900s, S&H launched its catalog, which became one of the most widely circulated publications in the country: By 1964, S&H was distributing a reported 32 million copies a year, as customers redeemed more than a billion stamps weekly."

Loyalty programs have ancient origins, with merchants rewarding customers in various forms. The first large-scale program emerged in 1891 when Thomas Sperry discovered a stamp incentive system in Milwaukee. In 1896, he and Shelley Byron Hutchinson founded the Sperry & Hutchinson Company, issuing green-and-white stamps redeemable for merchandise. The program quickly gained popularity, expanding to numerous cities and launching a catalog that became widely circulated, with customers redeeming over a billion stamps weekly by the 1960s.

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