Olathe company opens mini windows to the world; How Travel Stamps’ 2D souvenirs illustrate adventure

Stamp collecting has always been cool, said Erika Ring, whose niche family business connects travelers to a network of souvenir stickers for more than 1,500 bucket-list destinations across the U.S.

Olathe-based Travel Stamps has printed and shipped its commemorative keepsakes from the Heartland since relocating from Moab, Utah, in 2021. The company designs as many as 30 new stamps each month, honoring the travel milestones of its customers.

Two million stamps have already been sold, according to Travel Stamps, which also is launching a digital Stamp Tracker for collectors who want to use an online portal. Even more ambitious plans in the works, said Ring, who serves as the company’s chief operating officer.

Erika Ring and Shane Ring; photo courtesy of Travel Stamps

Her father — Army veteran, world traveler, and outdoor enthusiast Shane Ring — founded the company in 2017 after working as a buyer for the Rocky Mountain Nature Association. There, he managed visitor center stores, and worked as a vendor of National Parks memento pin patches.

At the time Shane Ring was working at Rocky Mountain National Park, there were no options to collect a single sticker for a specific park that was consistent among all parks and no options to collect if you visited outside visitor center hours. There was also no collection system that connected all interagency sites among the NPS, BLM, Forest Service, and state and city parks and museums.

He saw an opportunity to expand the current offerings and tie together the different agencies, so he recruited two business partners to create an initial prototype, which was a single sticker for a specific site that a collector could buy at a gift shop or online. The first full collection represented the 59 National Parks, followed by collections for state parks, and then more than 400 National Park Service sites including seashores, battlefields, preserves, and rivers.

“It doesn’t sound that revolutionary, but at the time, there really wasn’t anything like that,” Ring said, noting she joined the business after traveling abroad and now oversees the brand’s big picture.

Shane Ring and Erika Ring; photo courtesy of Travel Stamps

Eight years in, Travel Stamps has helped families celebrate one million trips to U.S. National Parks, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management sites, state parks and capitals, cities, museums, presidential libraries, and more locales. 

Even though they’re designed as stamps, the pieces aren’t produced to be used within the U.S. Postal Service’s mail system — meaning collectors can’t send a letter or postcard with them; they’re purely meant to serve as keepsakes from memorable trips.

Homestate stamps feature such Kansas sites as the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, Cosmosphere International SciEd Center & Space Museum, and Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Click here to explore Kansas-themed stamps.

In Missouri, stamp topics include Butterfield Overland National Historic Trail, Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, the Missouri State Capitol, Ozark Scenic National Riverways, Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and one just for Kansas City.

Click here to see how Missouri is represented in Travel Stamps’ collection.

To work with federal agencies behind some of the featured sites, Ring said, Travel Stamps must follow a strict approval process. Requirements, for example, include adding interpretation to every product, which is why each stamp includes a blurb of educational text underneath the illustration.

“I don’t know if we would’ve ever put that paragraph of text had we not been required to at the start, but now people love to collect that portion of the stamp,” she said.

Further proof that the company values feedback and ideas from outside its core team: they’re always taking requests for new designs, which fans can submit through an online form, Ring said. 

Travel Stamps has received requests for international airports, Major League Baseball stadiums, and specific features in National Parks — which its creative team of five designers has already begun exploring. 

“We always wanted to celebrate the fact that we work with artists,” Ring said. “At the time, AI wasn’t a thing and now it is, so we’re really excited that we are promoting these artists.” 

Travel Stamps collectors are from all ages and walks of life — families with little kids to newlyweds to retired folks in their RVs, she said. They can build stamp binders from blank booklets and organize them with dividers and labels, created by Travel Stamps. Some collectors devise their own storage and display methods. 

“I’ve seen them on people’s laptops, cars, even a cast, and in other non-affiliated books,” Ring said. “We have a whole page of other books we recommend from other companies, including the Passport to Your National Parks.”

As Travel Stamps continues to grow, she said, the business aims to create a mobile app and build out its suite of international destinations. Right now, stamps for 24 countries are featured within the company’s designs. 

“Now that international destinations aren’t stamping your passport anymore and have gone all electronic, our Country Travel Stamps will hopefully fill that satisfying void of collecting a ‘stamp’ for a country,” Ring said.