Even during the 13 years she worked in finance at IBM, Kathryn “Kate” Antesberger liked her paper planners.
You couldn't hold an online calendar in your hands, and you certainly couldn't pepper it with eye-popping Post-it notes and highlighters and other colorful fare, including her own self-made stickers. So when a friend suggested she sell her planner stickers on Etsy, she didn't think too hard about it. She figured PlannerKate, the straightforward name of her business, would make for an equally straightforward side-project.
Six months after she opened shop, she quit her job to focus on PlannerKate full time. Three years later, her husband quit his masonry business to join her.
Their two sons were 1 and 3 years old, respectively, when Antesberger started PlannerKate in 2014. Now, at the age of 8 and 10, they've watched their parents' business outgrow the basement, move to an office location in Fremont, acquire more than 100 cutting and printing machines, recruit a team of 13 employees, sell more than 2 million items on Etsy with more than $2.5 million in sales, and for a while become become the top seller on the site.
"I think a lot of people enjoy it as a hobby," said Antesberger. "Yes, you're organizing and planning out your appointments, but it's still fun to sit down and play with stickers like we're still 5 years old."
Antesberger's stickers, which she still designs herself, marry functionality and style. Stickers for different appointments and tasks come in various colors — everything from "study time" to "payday" to "inhale, exhale." Also on offer are custom scripts in fonts ranging from blocky to cursive. Especially popular are the "wacky holiday" line of stickers, which help people keep track of such essential holidays as National Ice Cream Day or National Eggnog Day.
"I did not know that it was such a large hobby for people to do all the decorating they do with their planners," said Lisa Craig, office manager for PlannerKate, who previously worked in the health care industry.
Like many of her customers, Craig is a busy mom who uses planner stickers to keep her mental calendar organized. The office she runs is always humming with about 20 printing and cutting machines, with five employees each operating an additional 20 of their own machines at home (a coronavirus-era measure that stuck). The PlannerKate team cuts about 14,000 sheets of stickers a week to keep the inventory stocked, with items always ready to ship.
"In all honesty, I still cut stickers and still pack orders, still, you know, clean the bathroom," said Antesberger with a laugh. She also speaks to her customers directly, which she thinks they appreciate as opposed to “some customer service representative.”
Expanding PlannerKate without losing the intimacy of a local, home-made business has been one of the key challenges of success. Antesberger finally launched an independent website in June and now ships internationally, but she’s still intent on making everything in-house.
"We've never changed our quality or our process," said Antesberger. "We've just grown it."
PlannerKate is sort of like its stickers, which feature a removable adhesive — they can be moved whenever things change, without themselves changing.
First Published January 2, 2022, 4:30 p.m.
