By: Brent Ervin-Eickhoff
Just to prove that 2024’s election cycle will continue to break the internet in unexpected ways, a tweet from printing company Sticker Mule has racked up more than 10 million views in the past week for espousing some unsavory political opinions.
On July 13, company co-founder Anthony Constantino posted a statement to X/Twitter a handful of hours after the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. The post claimed “people are terrified to admit they support Trump,” stating that “the more people realize that kind-hearted, compassionate people support Trump, the sooner the hate will end.” In trying to sound measured with its views, Sticker Mule actually found itself in the internet’s crosshairs, with people online publicly questioning Constantino’s motives and ultimately unsubscribing from the printing company.
But what even is Sticker Mule, and is this kind of behavior really that out of character? Let’s dive in to unpack the controversy surrounding a company with a cartoonish donkey as its logo.
Who Is Sticker Mule, Anyway?
Founded in 2010 and based in Atlanta, GA, Sticker Mule offers custom-printed stickers, labels, and packaging—as well as hot sauce. With fast turnarounds and an easy, online proofing system, the company has garnered $11.2 million in revenue, according to business intelligence website RocketReach. Its to-the-point SMS and email marketing, and plentiful sales, made it easy to give the printer a shot.
As a former customer of Sticker Mule, I have a few positive things to say about their products and services. Any stickers I ever printed through them were always professionally done and finished, even when die cutting (the process used to cut around a custom shape) was involved to match an uploaded image’s shape. My brother-in-law—part of the vinyl toy duo “The Bots”—turned me on to them, and between their great promos (like getting 50 3-inch die cut stickers for $9 instead of $72) and great quality, we would often text each other different designs to take advantage of promos by stacking deals together.
While mules are more benign than their equestrian counterparts, it turns out that signing up for those promos was Sticker Mule’s “Trojan Horse” (...er…donkey?). Following their July 13 tweet, the company also sent an email to its customer base with the subject line “Trump 2024,” encouraging them to use their t-shirt promo to create a shirt that “shows you support Trump.”
Politics Over Printing
Credit where credit’s due: Sticker Mule has no shame about putting their politics before their business. In response to X/Twitter user deannaread1 complaining about the tweet and SMS alert, the company responded bluntly, saying, “We also sent an email.” (According to deannaread1, her tweet lambasting Sticker Mule was hidden on X/Twitter.)
Sticker Mule’s defiance and defensiveness in the face of users calling them out isn’t a great look, but is this behavior the norm for a printing company with a cartoonish donkey as its logo? Digging past the current internet firestorm, more instances of the company’s politics begin to surface.
User crimelinespod alleged in May 2023 that an advocacy design they ordered to be printed on a shirt was replaced with a proof of a shirt displaying the message “Liberal Moron.” Later that month, on the day Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Sticker Mule posted a picture of an upside-down flag to their Twitter account with the message, “WQHY ARE PEEOPLE POSTING THIS?”
Some of Sticker Mule’s all-caps tweets and silly typos seem designed to disarm the business’s message (its current About Bio is “poop poop pee pee”) or make it seem as if they have been hacked. However, sprinkled throughout their retweets of happy customers and posts about wanting to make a happier social network—it’s called Stimulus, and, yes, Anthony Constantino is posting about his Trump tweet there, too—are critical questions about the inflation rate during Biden’s presidential term, support for Elon Musk, and since-deleted tweets about New York City’s COVID rates with passive-aggressive emojis (like the exploding head and screaming face ones) adding sarcasm and cynicism to a pandemic that has killed millions of people globally since 2020.
The Sticker Mule Backlash, Explained
Since their initial tweet and subsequent marketing campaign, the backlash to Sticker Mule’s post has been swift. Hashtags around boycotting the company have gained traction, as have images of users unsubscribing from the company’s promotional emails and deactivating their accounts altogether. It’s the quintessential “Go Woke, Go Broke” mentality, but on the conservative side, and Sticker Mule’s reputation online appears to be suffering because of it.
While some of the criticism is warranted, Sticker Mule has shared a series of alleged screenshots demonstrating a few egregious emails the company received following the controversial tweet. In response, Sticker Mule has offered $2,500 bonuses “to all 79 people on our support team because they received death threats.”
In the wake of all of this controversy, other sticker and label companies have looked to seize on Sticker Mule making an ass of itself. A quick search for “Sticker Mule alternatives” on X/Twitter (which also happens to be an auto-fill suggestion on Google), shows people frequently recommending companies like Sticker Ninja, Stomp Stickers, and Stickerapp that’ve risen to fill in the gap created by Sticker Mule’s controversy. Even newer businesses such as Packstudio and local options like Brick City Printing have tried to capitalize on the firestorm.
Where will this all end? Will it wind up being a brilliant marketing ploy on Constantino’s part, driving traffic and business to Sticker Mule’s website? Or, like many other business owners who go viral for all the wrong reasons, is this the beginning of the end for the sticker and hot sauce company?
The only thing I know is that I’m happy to have so many alternatives to choose from.
