Partner Spotlight is a series designed to highlight the vendors that partner with ABA [5] to offer discounted products, services, and business opportunities to ABA members. Each installment, we interview a different partner to learn more about their organization and why indie bookstores matter to them. 

Apply is a Brooklyn-based creative studio that makes extraordinary stickers designed to inspire the artist in each of us. Inspired by the museums, galleries, and gritty stickered streetscapes of their hometown, Apply Stickers lets everyone be their boldest, brightest self.

Bookselling This Week spoke with Apply Stickers CEO and co-founder Spencer Lazar to learn more.

Bookselling This Week: How did Apply Stickers come about?

Spencer Lazar: It's funny. I spent most of my life investing in tech companies, but I'm a wannabe artist.

I don't have any normal training as an artist. But when I was coming of age, I became really captivated by street art and public art. Some people travel for golf or wine or food. I traveled to see public art.

I was really interested in how open and inviting that slice of the art world was relative to the white walls and velvet ropes of other parts of it.

For a number of years, I took pictures of other people's street art. Then, I ultimately had the idea that I could put it up myself, which was funny because I don't have any skills as an artist.

I can't draw or paint, so the only way I could do it was with stickers.

I looked all over to find stickers that I thought were exciting and inspiring, and I would collage them on the street into new scenes, usually in dialogue with advertisements. I first bought products from other places — anywhere from Etsy to Michael's to skate shops — but I didn't see what I wanted, so I started making stickers just for myself to use in my art.

From there, I had the idea to build a premium brand that brought together the types of imagery that I found inspiring and fun, and also a quality of product that I didn't really see in the market elsewhere.

I originally thought it would just be a hobby, but the more time I spent on it, I came to believe that it was a really interesting commercial opportunity as well.

And so, with encouragement from my wife, I took the leap. I was fortunate to have people that I love who believed in me and wanted to participate. My brother and my childhood best friend are my business partners.

That's how we got started. And it's been five years! It's been an incredible journey and a fumbling journey — but really fun, as you can imagine, because it's stickers.

BTW: The initial description you gave us mentions that Apply is not only in some amazing bookstores, but you’re also in museums and galleries!

SL: Yeah! Museums were the start. We care a lot about art and fine art, and we love the contrast between gritty sticker culture and the more polished echelon of culture and fine art. We did some really fun licensing in that fine art world, and we also just have a lot of affection for those institutions.

Bookstores were our second love in some ways.

We came to them after museums, but now bookstores are a bigger part of our business than museums.

BTW: That leads into my next question!  Which is, how did y'all decide to start working with bookstores? What prompted you to partner with ABA?

SL: I'll start with bookstores. Most of our business is done through wholesale partners.

And as we spent more time with our museum partners, we started to squint and realize that as bookstores and museums have evolved, their retail experiences have converged somewhat.

We just followed our intuition and realized that if we served museums really well — where there's a lot of great printed matter — we could also serve bookstores well.

We also took some inspiration from Warhol. He has a famous quote. He said, “In the future, museums will become department stores and department stores will become museums.” The really struck a chord with us.  

As a consumer, if you spend a lot of time in bookstores, you're probably somebody that cares about culture and the physical realm — not just being behind a screen. We felt like that was a similar mentality between museums and bookstores on the consumer.

So we started working with iconic independent bookstores in New York like The Strand [6] and Spoonbill Books [7]. We worked with maybe half a dozen of them just organically before we started really trying to grow there.

And we learned from them. We got a sense for the types of products that worked and that didn't work. As we were understanding that more, we learned about ABA and how well you organized the ecosystem.

And as we ramped up in the bookstore world, we thought this is definitely an ecosystem that we feel pull in and have affection for, so we wanted to get more involved.

BTW: After reading this article, I’m sure readers will go and check out your stickers for themselves, but how would you describe your designs or your general vibe to a bookseller who's never seen your designs before?

SL: The general vibe is vibrant.

We're not a dusty, scrapbook-y sticker brand. We use fluorescent inks and holographic materials. We really want to pop off the shelf and entice people that way.

We are also very passionate about the shapes of stickers. When you see our products on the shelf, they're not all standard shapes. They kind of invite you in that way.

And everything that looks like it has licensed content is officially licensed. We always give credit to the foundations or estates or artists that we're working with.

We're trying to build a creative brand. It's all about self-expression and creativity. If we're ripping creators off, that would not be a good way to do it, so we take that super seriously.

We also have lots of great in-house content. One of the things that we love — and I think has been really successful in bookstores — is developing local content.

We have stickers now for Seattle and Miami, Chicago and Boston, New York and DC, and Colorado — every single region. We're going to continue to build that out over time. We're really bringing all of those other elements — whether it's licensed content or really rich materials and shapes — to that local content so it really stands at.

If you picture a Southwest or a Rockies sticker with sun-scorched colors, that’s not our version. Our version is much more like Grateful Dead — electric, trippy, teddy bears.

We sell most of our products as singles for a mix-and-match experience, but we also sell stickers in other formats.

Depending on what the bookstore buyer is looking for, we have large sticker sheet sheets or sticker packs that are more in the gifting realm as opposed to impulse purchases.

For some of our products, we also have a charitable component too. For example, we work with the great artist Jeffrey Gibson. So far donated about $10,000 to support creative education in Indigenous communities. Gibson donates his royalties and we match whatever he contributes.

It may not be important to all buyers, but it is something that's important to us, so we try to make sure people are aware of it.

BTW: I love that, and I think that will resonate. Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you want to mention?

SL: One is that most of or transactions are done through Faire, but if people feel really strongly about buying outside of Faire, we're happy to work with them in that context.

The other thing is that some people ask, “Oh, I like the stickers, but how would I merchandise them?”

We do have fixtures that we provide with orders of $250 or more. (If you order less, you can also purchase them.)

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ABA Bookstore members are eligible for 10% off of wholesale price on their first purchase above $250. Learn more about the discount for ABA members on BookWeb. [8]