QR Code Rubber Stamps & Stencils

Bryan at Holmes Stamps in Florida contacted me on Twitter the other day to let me know that they were making QR code rubber stamps. Holmes is a family business that’s been going since 1954 and this is just another way they’re making old school products relevant to the 21st century. They can make you a self-inking model with a crisp, clean image of your QR Code for easy and reliable scanning. You can also get them to add text to the stamp. Anyway, I saw the QR code rubber stamps as the ideal way to retro-fit a QR code onto something that should have had one on it from the start, or to quickly apply one later to a document in a way that adds further context to it. OK, a sticker would do the job too, but a rubber stamp is a quick, simple and cheap way to achieve the same result. You might need a couple of them, but if the QR codes contain data that can be applied repeatedly then it would make sense to use a rubber stamp. A few examples I immediately thought of where a QR code rubber stamp would be handy to add QR codes after-the-fact:

• The last box of brochures, business cards or flyers before you start using the latest print run that actually have a QR code printed on them.
• Printed products out of legacy systems that don’t directly support adding images (like the customer invoices generated by your 1997 accounting system)
• A short term scan-to-win promo to add to sales dockets at point-of-sale.
• Product packaging, die-cut boxes and cartons that you buy unprinted because printed ones are too expensive.
• Marking student assignments (the QR code links to the school extranet where they can log in to see the teachers comments).
• Adding a device-scannable digital decision to anything the stamp will print on – yes/no, approved/rejected, passed/failed, etc.
• Adding the contact details of the originator to a completed pro-forma document.
• An alternative to a temporary tattoo – it doesn’t just have to be a paper product.

My head pretty much exploded when I starting thinking about the possibilities, but there’s a start. I’m sure there’s other companies out there doing these as well, but Bryan was the one that contacted me so he’s the one I’ll recommend you go and talk to.