Green Shield Stamps were a sales promotion or incentive loyalty scheme using trading stamps, designed and deployed in the United Kingdom and Ireland to encourage or reward shopping, by being able to buy "free" gifts. Green Shield Trading Stamp Company Limited was founded in 1958 by entrepreneur Richard Tompkins, and the stamps were withdrawn in 1991.

Founder

Granville Richard Francis Tompkins (15 May 1918?6 December 1992) was a print, advertising and retail entrepreneur, best known for founding the Green Shield Stamps company, and the Argos chain of catalogue stores. ^[1][2]

Richard Tompkins was born in Islington, London, and worked as an engineering draughtsman during the Second World War, before founding his first printing business in 1945.^[1][2]

On a holiday in Chicago in the 1950s, Tomkins witnessed the success of S&H Green Stamps, and founded Green Shield Stamp Trading Company to replicate the concept in the United Kingdom ^[1][2]

In 1973, he adapted the format of his Green Shield catalogue shops, used for redeeming trading stamp books, and independently founded Argos, a catalogue store chain that took cash. Though independent, Argos operations were closely linked to Green Shield Stamps, and Argos was sold in 1979 to BAT Industries for £35 million.^[1] Tomkins died of cancer in 1992 in Westminster, a year after the stamps were withdrawn, and the same year he was honoured as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).^[1][2]

History

Trading stamps first became popular in the United States. Sperry & Hutchinson began offering stamps to United States retailers in 1896. The retail organisations bought the stamps from S&H and gave them as bonuses with every purchase based on the amount purchased. The stamps were given away at filling stations, corner shops and supermarkets. When the customer had collected sufficient stamps and stuck them into collectors books (a task often given to amuse children), the shopper could then claim valuable merchandise from a catalogue or local S&H Green Stamps shop.

Inspired by the U.S. popularity, Richard Tompkins purchased the name Green Shield from a luggage manufacturer, and founded Green Shield Trading Stamp Co Ltd in 1958, operating along similar lines to S&H Green Stamps. They were very popular during the 1960s and 1970s. Competitive trading stamp schemes included Pink Stamps (a UK operation of S&H Green Stamps), British consumer co-operatives' dividend stamps, Blue Chip and the short-lived UK operation of King Korn.^[1][2]

Tesco founder Jack Cohen was an enthusiastic advocate of trading stamps as an inducement for shoppers to patronise his stores; he signed up in 1963, shortly after his competitor Fine Fare adopted S&H Pink Stamps, and Tesco became one of the company?s largest clients. But Cohen was a fan of pile it high and sell it cheap, and in the mid-1970s Tesco faced many cost problems associated with not properly integrating its purchased chains of stores. In 1977 Tesco launched Operation Checkout, an across the board price cutting campaign aimed at countering the threat from the new breed of discounters such as Kwik Save. A key decision was to abandon Green Shield stamps, thus saving some £20m a year and helping to finance price reductions.^[1][3]

In light of a price war at the checkout, and higher prices where the stamps were sold, consumers quickly realised that although the stamps were accumulating, grocery prices were having to rise to cover the costs of the scheme - and as inflation was quite high, the value of the stamps was going downwards.

As sales began to slow and other retailers abandoned the scheme, the original Green Shield Stamp 'catalogue' shops were rebranded Argos beginning in July 1973.

The company suspended the sale of stamps in 1983, and then had a short revival beginning in 1987, involving 2500 shops, finally ceasing in 1991. ^[1]

The Genesis song Dancing with the Moonlit Knight from their 1973 album Selling England by the Pound refers to ?Knights of the Green Shield?.

Green Shield Stamp "syndrome"

Green Shield Stamps were successful as a business, not because they encouraged people to buy goods in proportion to the sales value - they made money because so many receivers of Green Shield Stamps never cashed them in. Sticking the stamps in the books was monotonous and time consuming. This became known as Green Shield Stamp syndrome.

References

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h}
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e}
3. ↑ http://cep.lse.ac.uk/seminarpapers/24-05-04%20-%20Background%20paper%20by%20Geoffrey%20Owen.pdf

External links

• ?Tompkins, (Granville) Richard Francis (1918?1992)?, Richard Davenport-Hines, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
• Green Shield Stamps at Nostaligia Central
• Green Shield Stamps at RetroWow
• 1975 debate in the Irish Parliament re monopolistic practices
• Scotsman article on the "House of Cards"