Twenty years ago, Joe Stefani’s brothers made him “keeper of the fraternity flag” at their house at Monmouth College. So, Joe did what anyone in his early 20s would do, he hung it on his wall.
“Kids would come in and say that’s really cool, like a giant poster. That’s when I got the idea, why don’t we mass produce these,” Stefani recalls.
He and his now husband found a manufacturer and started selling flags to the four largest fraternity and sorority groups. Obviously, members of those houses couldn’t just run down the street to a store to buy the flags they wanted to display. Proud veterans of the Air Force and Navy couldn’t either, so Stefani signed deals with them too.
Today, Stefani’s company, Desert Cactus, sells a majority of their products on Amazon and this year, the Rolling Meadows outfit will clear north of $20 million in sales. They sell hardgoods for fans, having inked deals with the NHL, NBA, WNBA and dozens and dozens of colleges (large and small) across the country. Their sticker sheets are printed and cut in Northern Illinois, the license plate holders are assembled there too. Among the 30,000 other products they offer on Amazon are flags, lanyards, coasters, key chains and luggage tags.
“People always thought a sporting goods store was the way to sell, brick and mortar was the way to sell. I think COVID taught our industry, the licensing industry, hey you have to take online seriously. You figure that first summer of COVID, while everyone else was trying to figure out online and figure out Amazon, we’d been on this website for 10 years already. We know it.”
Sales shot up exponentially starting in 2020 and they haven’t slowed down since. The Desert Cactus team ships three to five box trucks per week directly to Amazon warehouses as part of the Fulfillment by Amazon program. Once the customer clicks buy, the goods get to their doorsteps in a day or two, sometimes within hours.
There are more than 15,000 independent sellers in the state of Illinois who sold more than 131 million items through the online store last year.
“More than 60% of sales in Amazon’s store come from independent sellers — most of which are small and medium-sized businesses. The small businesses selling and flourishing in Amazon’s store are also at the heart of their local communities, creating jobs and building economic opportunity. Selling in Amazon’s store fuels growth and has enabled independent sellers to employ more than 1.8 million people in the U.S.,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide selling partner services.
And the Rolling Meadows sticker sheet printing press? That runs pretty much non-stop six days a week.
“We now have 24 full time people. So that’s 24 people that work for us that provide for their families. The vinyl that we buy, that we print on for stickers, that’s from here in the U.S. We buy hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of vinyl. It’s trickle-down economics where there are all these other businesses who rely on us.”
Now, Desert Cactus has licensing agreements with Hasbro. Peppa Pig custom party invitations are huge; My Little Pony is too. Say your child is going to the University of Illinois, or they just graduated from DePaul? The team can print signage for your party or yard for you, and get it too you quickly. They’ve even got deals with Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue and the English Premier League (soccer).
Plus, new colleges are calling every week because the online model makes sense. At a recent visit to Brigham Young University, administrators reported more than 50% of their alumni base lives outside Utah. They’re not going to find the fan gear they want at a local retailer, but they will provide feedback after ordering on Amazon.
“Every single day we get customer reviews. So, we get to see all of that data and that ties right back into product development. ‘Hey, I like the quality of this material,’ or ‘hey, I don’t like the quality of this material.’ Plus, what’s awesome about Amazon is that we can test market so much stuff and get data back in real time. Right now, we don’t know what types of products to make, we don’t know if we should be extending stickers more, should we be extending flags more? At least we can test stuff,” said Stefani.
You may wonder what’s next for a small business putting out more than 1 million products a year and growing. The mighty team is now selling licensed headwear to fans and soon they’ll be offering neckties with team and school logos to their customers.
But right now, the WNBA is taking off and guess who’s printing all those stickers for the game’s brightest new star, Caitlin Clark? You guessed it, it’s the “keeper of the fraternity flag.”