Label Inventor Recalls Discovery

A sticky situation revolutionized workflow solutions

NECESSITY MAY be the mother of invention, but sheer coincidence spawned the integrated label. In 1980, Gary Stewart, co-founder and owner of Trade Printers, Phoenix, was working on a machine he developed to apply transfer tape in segments when producing die-cut laboratory mount sheets. "It came to me that by reversing the process and applying tape to a form and then die-cutting the paper, we could create a peel-out label," he recalled. "There was not a specific application driving the discovery. I just saw that here was a concept with some merit that people would be able to utilize. The only options at the time were affixed labels or wasting full sheets of costly label material."