Business Opportunities Weblog

Fruit Crate Labels Are His Business

By on October 1, 2009 in Ideas

Colfax Record:

It’s not often that you find your future in a box discarded behind the supermarket. But not much about Weimar historian, author and artist Pat Jacobsen’s career path has been typical.

Jacobsen stumbled upon some boxes of old fruit crate labels in 1978, just as the young musician was moving into his first place. He tossed them in his car, figuring the colorful advertising images would make a cheap decorating medium for the bare walls of his new bachelor pad.

Shortly after, a friend introduced Jacobsen to a San Francisco woman selling similar labels, some for as much as $100. Suspecting an opportunity for profit, Jacobsen struck out along the Pacific coast, talking to fruit growers, packers and printing companies. Little did he know that this would become his life for the next 25 years.

Fruit companies used paper labels from approximately 1885 to 1960, when pre-printed cardboard boxes became more economical. By the time Jacobsen came around, printing businesses and crate manufacturers were all too happy to offload thousands of obsolete labels that had been gathering dust in storage.

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Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,198 posts to the site.

Another Idea: How to Start a Manufacturer Of Self-Adhesive Printed Labels Business

  • ddmike

    Who would have thought that something as simple as a fruit “wrapping” paper could be so profitable? You have some really great ideas here that inspire innovation. I wonder if he used these papers in designing his company business signs, too?

  • http://www.boxescrates.net boxes_crates

    I’ll post the same information to my blog, thanks for ideas and great article.

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