About Us

Hi!  I know people are curious sometimes about who the people are behind the anonymous-looking website. Impression Obsession was formed in March 1998 by Mitra Friant and Charmaine Jackson, two high school teachers who thought it would be fun to run a stamp business part-time after school.  We published our first stamp catalog with 92 images in August, 1998 and we were off and running.

We had a lot of success with that first catalog and continued adding images (and customers) until the company became too busy to be a part-time job. In September, 1999, I (Mitra) quit teaching and started working at the stamp business full-time. Charmaine, meanwhile, had a baby and decided to continue teaching so she got out of the stamp business.

2008 will mark 10 years in business...I can't believe it! IO has come a long way since then. We now have over 2000 images in production atany given time and have expanded into offering clear stamps and more recently cling stamps (stamps with gray cushion that temporarily sticks to acrylic blocks). We are proud to offer Alesa Baker Designs, Heart Art Studios and Melissa Gordon's stamps and just this year have added Leigh Hannan's distinctive designs to our line.

I am helped (greatly) by 2 full-time and several part-time employees who work in our office pressing rubber, trimming dies, indexing wood, and packing orders. I truly can't remember what it was like when Charmaine and I made all of the stamps ourselves (I think I've blacked the memory out).

We are moving for the fifth time in our 10 years, but this time we're just moving two doors down to a larger warehouse unit. I'll post new pictures once the move is done.

Here is a picture of our booth from the winter 2007 CHA show.