Local My Sticker Face Write-Up

We are really excited to share that recently we were written about in one of our local news outlets! We love our local community and are so happy to share this peak into our little company and its history!

This Patchogue couple is cashing in on smiles with My Sticker Face

BY MICHAEL WHITE JULY 5, 2016

You can’t help but smile.

That’s why Mark Trafas of Patchogue believes his invention — tiny faces in sticker form — is getting so popular with people.

The tinier the sticker, the bigger the smile.

Landing #1 on a BuzzFeed listicle called 13 Ways to Make your MacBook Your Own also helped with that popularity thing.

In April, BuzzFeed urged its readers to “Adorn your laptop with stickers of your friends’ disembodied heads.”

And people have since taking this very sound advice.

Trafas’ fiancé, April Scarduzio of Patchogue, has since been fulfilling sticker orders all day long at Trafas’ embroidery shop in Holbrook, St. James Embroidery, which doubles as My Sticker Face headquarters.

In February, Scaduzio quit her last job to make a full-time push with My Sticker Face — both with production and marketing —and BuzzFeed was her best coup to date.

“I just emailed the editors and they picked it up,” she said.

Now for some history.

Trafas, a Nesconset Native, said the first sticker heads he ever made were that of his own.

This was back in 2008, when he was coming across the same issue many people have when sharing workspace.

“Around the shop we would always have water bottles or items, and we would be writing our names on them to avoid confusion,” he recalled. “And I said, you know what? I’m going to take a picture of my face and stick it on everything that’s mine.”

The confusion ceased.

“Then I thought, I can’t be the only idiot who might like these things,” he said.

His hunch was write.

My Sticker Face is striking a cord with a lot of people from all walks of life, with orders coming in from around the globe.

“Some of the stuff we get is so funny,” Trafas said, pointing to a few examples. Among them was a single sticker of rapper Kayne West’s face next to that of a pig.

(Why? That’s anyone’s guess. Users don’t explain their creations to the company.)

As My Sticker Face transitions from a hobby, to a side business to a full-time gig, Trafas and Scarduzio — who are getting married in less than a month — envision expanding their product line.

Right now their big sellers are the sticker sheets and stamp booklets.

“And we’d like to eventually have a West Coast production facility,” Trafas said, “to shorten our shipping times.”

Trafas owes a lot to his stickers.

“That’s kind of how we met,” said Scaduzio. “We were both working at a sign company and he’s sitting there making these stickers and I was like, this is awesome.”

“So it was the stickers,” she concluded. “The stickers, and a puppy.”

Two things that make people smile.