Notorious For Politics, Anthony Constantino Should Be Known For Building Sticker Mule

CEO Anthony Constantino ought to be known for Sticker Mule, the fastest-growing ecommerce print-on-demand sticker, label, magnet, key chain and t-shirt business he’s built from the ground up in under a decade and a half. It’s now in 39 countries and employs 1,200 people, with factories in New York, South Carolina and Italy. But instead, he’s famous because of politics.

Let’s get it out of the way: if you’ve heard of him, it’s almost certainly because of his first 15 minutes of fame from sending a mass email to customers and colleagues after President Donald Trump was shot, calling for an end to the hate. That ignited a firestorm of coverage. He then got 15 more minutes of fame because of his legal battle with local authorities to keep the “Vote for Trump” lighted sign he had put atop his factory in his upstate New York hometown of Amsterdam. (He won.)

His real success, however, is with Sticker Mule. Constantino is the sole owner today, but he got his start with a business partner exactly 14 years ago. “Now, he was in his 70s when we got started, and he managed to get through his whole career without ever using a computer,” Constantino told me in an interview. “And around Christmas 2010, and he asked me for help with the computer, and I just started to BS with him about the internet and doing internet companies and stuff like that… He came and saw me the next morning, 9:00 am, he had a notepad, and he said to me, almost word for word, ‘’We gotta start an internet company together.’”

A flurry of activities followed: incorporating, finding ecommerce web developers, deciding on products, picking a company name, launching a website and getting the first orders. “We got orders right away,” Constantino said. “We got 10 or 20 orders the first day, because people liked the design of the website so much–like, the internet was different back then… It wasn’t so common to have a beautiful website, and we built a site that looks like it does today, and for the time, it was beautiful.”

They then spent the next few years figuring out how to make the business work. “We just had to figure things out one by one,” Constantino explained. “I tell people I learned over time. My co-founder was a big believer in doing things this way. But, you know, in business, I say you just find problems and you fix them. So… once we got started, we did a kind of a survey, like you do an assessment at your organization. You say, ‘What are the biggest problems I’m facing today?’ And you just tackle those problems. And you try to solve as many problems as you can, you know, in a short amount of time. And we just kept fixing problems, fixing problems.” (Along the way, the company established its first production facility in a historic shuttered factory building in Constantino’s hometown. Sticker Mule eventually renovated six buildings in this former center of carpet and rug manufacturing, making good on a company ethos of reshoring and community involvement.)

One element of fixing problems was investing heavily in building their own technologies, whether that involves the factory machinery, the management software that runs their plants, or the back-end systems that handle their data. “We build our own machines, and we build our own software,” said Constantino. “We don’t use these ERPs or MRPs or any of that. We built our own systems that are highly automated to service our needs. The problem with, you know, existing manufacturing software is it’s all generalized for general manufacturing, but every manufacturing situation is a little different. So we have highly specialized software that we built specifically for ourselves.”

Hiring the best and brightest is another core philosophy. A recent new hire for Sticker Mule is Matthew Rhome, director of quality and efficiency. His pedigree? He invented the direct-to-garment inkjet printer. His expertise will support the fast-growing custom-printed apparel portion of the company’s business.

“I could have worked a lot of places. I had a lot of people after me,” Rhome said. “Sticker Mule is the best producer of custom t-shirts. The quality is far better than what anyone else out there has. They’re very innovative–they move fast and embrace new processes that can help move the business.”

A recent innovation is Sticker Mule Stores, which allows anyone to sell custom merchandise on demand, with Sticker Mule handling customer service and order fulfillment. Officially launched mere weeks ago, the new outlet has already signed up celebrities like Mike Tyson and Donald Trump Jr., and brands such as AWS and Rumble, and it already boasts over 15,000 user creators.

One of those is Bill Ottman, the technologist and writer who founded the decentralized social media platform Minds and CIO of the interactive streaming platform Fishtank.live. “It was sort of serendipitous that it came out kind of pretty soon before we launched our last season,” he said. “But, you know, obviously the upsides for us are that there’s no overhead. We just drive our audience there, and they ship quality products, and it’s just done for us.”

Both the innovations and the politics will continue. Sticker Mule, already having expanded its business into social media, fitness, and hot sauce, will pursue any opportunities in keeping with its mission: “Do the coolest stuff that’s within our ability to do with a focus on initiatives that increase happiness.” “People don’t realize the scope of the company,” explained Rhome. “Our global presence and our internal R&D–it’s a world market now, and people everywhere want to feel they’re getting value for their money.”

Meanwhile, Constantino has announced that he’s running for the U.S. House of Representatives, seeking to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik, who will soon move into her new role as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.