The owner of S&H Green Stamps — popular from the 1950s through the 1970s — wants to help revive the storied brand via partnerships with Route 66.
“While we are just getting started, we have our eye on Route 66 as a community,” Carl Norloff, owner and CEO of the company, stated in an email to Route 66 News. “My hope is that we could become the official rewards program of Route 66, especially as the centennial kicks off.”
For the uninitiated, S&H Green Stamps began in the late 19th century as part of a rewards program by the Sperry & Hutchinson company (hence the S&H name).
Customers received stamps at supermarkets, department stores, gas stations and other retailers that could be redeemed for products from the company’s catalog.
At one point during the 1960s, S&H issued more stamps than the U.S. Postal Service.
Nowadays, S&H Green Stamps acts as “a premier rewards program that empowers you to earn digital rewards from any participating merchant. Use the mobile app to collect tokens, redeem them for valuable merchandise, or support local causes.”
The app is available for both Apple and Android devices.
“Join us in reviving a legacy of rewarding and empowering communities everywhere,” the company states on its website.
A look through the S&H Green Stamps directory shows Doc’s Just Off 66 in Girard, Illinois, the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway, ROUTE Magazine and Stuckey’s as partners.
Norloff said a great-grandson of the Sperry family revived the company’s stamps in the late 1990s, and Norloff was hired at the time to create the consumer-facing web technology.
But S&H Green Stamps fizzled again after a company that bought it went bankrupt.
Norloff acquired the brand in 2021.
“To see how the brand might resonate, I wrapped an RV announcing the return of S&H Green Stamps and toured across the country 3 times, meeting 100s of businesses and people, and was amazed at the reaction,” he wrote in an email. “Still strong brand recognition, so I jumped in. Spent the next 2 years building the platform, looking at partnerships and doing a pilot.”
He said he held off scaling up the company in the past year due to family responsibilities, but continued to build new features into the platform that will be released in 2026.
“We are ready to scale now, and I want to focus my resources on a single project (Route 66),” Norloff wrote. “We became fans of Route 66 during our journey, and I thought how great it would be to be part of the Centennial. 2 nostalgic brands. So I am hoping that S&H can become the official loyalty program of Route 66.”
Those who wish to enroll in the S&H Green Stamps program should go here. Businesses that are interested in participating should go here; nonprofits should go here.
(Image of an old collection of S&H Green Stamps by nonelvis via Flickr)