Opinion: Ozark company markets symbolic yellow ribbons

Amid the war in Iraq, an online business in Ozark is marketing a new yellow ribbon product to soldiers’ families. Home-based Designs on Demand Aug. 1 launched yellow ribbon magnets with a new twist: a soldier’s photograph inside the ribbon loop.

Owner Margaret Scheperle said her company, which specializes in promotional products, has sold more than 200 yellow ribbon magnets. Online orders have come in from across the country.

“It’s mostly individual military families,” Scheperle said. “These photos have really touched these military families.”

Scheperle said she and her husband, Darrel, an architect by trade, got the idea from the personalized military dog tags the company produces. The dog tags feature a soldier’s picture on one side and a personalized inscription on the backside.

“(The yellow ribbons are) a new product for us. We’d seen the yellow magnets and thought, ‘Oh, let’s put a picture in there,’” Margaret Scheperle said.

Designs on Demand has been producing personalized photo dog tags for more than a year. Scheperle said they’ve been a hit.

“They are all over; they’re in Iraq and in Germany and in Afghanistan,” she said. “People are wearing them at home with the soldier’s photo and in the field they wear them with the family member’s photo and a message.”

Though demand is high for the military dog tags, the company’s yellow ribbon magnet sales have outpaced the dog tags.

Designs on Demand grossed $1,900 from magnet sales in the first month – more than triple the average monthly sales for the dog tags, Scheperle said. In one year, the company sold 1,500 dog tags for $6,000, plus $1,000 in chain sales. If yellow ribbon magnet sales continue at the first-month pace, Designs on Demand would gross approximately $22,800 in a year from those magnets.

The yellow ribbon magnet photos retail $7 for a four-inch magnet and $10 for an eight-inch magnet. Most often they have the soldier’s name and photo and a special message.

The extra workload has led Darrel Scheperle to step away from architecture and begin working full-time with Designs on Demand. The Scheperles are the only employees, with family members helping out as needed.

The company’s Web site is at www.designsondemand.com.

National folk symbol

After talking with Scheperle, I began to wonder where this yellow ribbon custom originated. Archives at the American Folklore Center at The Library of Congress say yellow ribbons began popping up in war times, beginning with the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. Penne Laingen of Bethesda, Md. is known for the first reported case when she tied a yellow ribbon around an oak tree in her front yard when her husband, Bruce, was held captive. Yellow ribbons then welcomed the American hostages home from Iran in 1981.

They resurfaced 10 years later during the Persian Gulf War, this time in honor of the brave soldiers sent to defend America.

The American Folklore Center says the yellow ribbons have become a national folk symbol. The central idea is said to originate much earlier from oral tradition as a folktale about an ex-convict’s homecoming. The tale turned into a copyrighted song in 1972 when Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown wrote “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.” The song was later popularized by Dawn, featuring Tony Orlando.

And now the story comes full circle: Scheperle has sent one of her yellow ribbons to Orlando, who she calls “Mr. Yellow Ribbon,” with hopes of recognition.

“I don’t know if it will ever reach him,” she said. “He’s got so many layers to his organization.”

Mr. Yellow Ribbon if you’re listening …

Eric Olson is News Editor of Springfield Busness Journal.

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