Every Post-it Note in the world comes from this Kentucky town. ‘That’s a big deal’
Post-it Notes may not have been created by a Kentuckian, but one community in the commonwealth has kept the product alive for more than 40 years.
In Cynthiana, a town about 30 miles northeast of Lexington, manufacturing jobs keep the economy running. The largest employer in the city is the 3M factory, where employees glue, cut, wrap and bundle the company’s flagship product – Post-it Notes.
“Every Post-it Note in the world starts here. That’s a big deal. Queen Elizabeth probably wrote on a Post-it that started in Cynthiana. You don’t really grasp that. Sometimes I don’t even grasp that,” manufacturing coordinator James ‘Bud’ Gauze said.
Originally produced in Minnesota in 1980, Post-it manufacturing moved to Cynthiana in 1984. The plant itself is pristine and efficient, everything running right on time. All scraps from the production process are recycled, officially making the plant landfill-free.
Though the process of making a sticky note has changed over the past 40 years, the first Post-it machine is still in the Cynthiana factory and has made over 1 trillion notes during its lifetime, said site director Jason Orr.
That’s right: 1 trillion of those 3-by-3-inch squares of sticky reminders that have dominated office spaces, white boards and conference rooms for 40 years came from one machine.
Today, a Post-it can be made in as little as three hours. Cynthiana’s factory is the global supplier of Post-it Notes, producing around 80 billion every year—that’s enough 3x3 notes to wrap around Earth’s equator 152 times (Trust us: We’ve done the math).
The plant also makes about 100 million rolls of Scotch packing tape each year. While it’s not the only factory to make that product, it makes most of the nation’s supply.
Orr called the process of making a Post-it “a choreographed dance,” and said it’s a point of pride to have two of the most-familiar and most-used 3M products under one roof in a small Kentucky town.
“I’m just a kid from Eastern Kentucky,” Gauze said. “This is big. It’s very, very rewarding.”
Senior manufacturing supervisor Shena Kirk said she shares that pride with her children each year during back-to-school shopping. As she points out the Post-it products on the shelves, she said her children hardly believe she has a hand in making them.
“People might take something so small and simple for granted, but it’s never easy to make billions of units of a single thing. There’s a lot of moving parts to it, so it’s a lot of pride,” she said.
Investing in the community
Of the 112 production facilities across the world, 3M considers Cynthiana’s plant as one worthy of investment, keeping it on the short list for future expansions. Senior Vice President of 3M Manufacturing Operations Dan Spitzer said the community in Cynthiana is what keeps the factory growing.
“It’s just kind of magical there. When you go through that plant and you talk to the people and you talk to people in the community, it’s amazing the connection that the plant has,” Spitzer said.
Though Post-it Notes and Scotch Tape are two of 3M’s most well known products, the company actually makes over 55,000 products. In 2023, Industrial Adhesives and Tapes accounted for $2.2 billion in revenue. That’s a mere 6% of the total annual revenue for the company.
Department Chair of Economics at the University of Louisville Jose Fernandez said so far this year, 3M is reporting a 1% total increase in sales over last year. He said the company is “having a very good year” with $6.1 billion in sales reported through the third quarter.
“Their earnings per share is $1.98, which is up 18% year over year. 3M sells a lot of different products so it is difficult to tease out the contribution of Post-It’s only,” he said.
“I can say that 3M has 77% of the market share of global Post-It & Sticky Notes market.”
To make sure the local plant is positively impacting the people that keep it running, philanthropic investment is a staple of the factory. Last year alone, the Cynthiana plant donated $38,000 to different organizations in the community, ranging from healthcare institutions to childcare businesses.
The plant even secured a separate corporate grant to invest in the local technical school, giving $175,000 to buy tabletop manufacturing simulators so students can learn to thrive in a factory.
Gauze said the Cynthiana plant is the perfect example of a large corporation still meeting the needs of a small production site. With 550 employees, the sense of community stays strong.
“It’s not like Toyota where you got 8,000 employees. Here, we know each other. It’s more of a family oriented thing,” he said.
“Our kids play ball together, our kids go to school together, we go to church together, we eat at the same restaurants, we shop at the same stores. It’s kind of the best of everything. You have the perks and the benefits of a large company, but you still have that family oriented unit of a smaller company.”
How have Post-it Notes stayed relevant?
Post-it Notes almost instantly became iconic upon their initial release. University of Kentucky Product Design Lecturer Pooya Mohaghegh said the accessibility of sticky notes make them an irreplaceable technology.
“They’ve became such a prevalent part of culture and technology, they are almost invisible. Even a digital screen can’t beat it yet because you’d still have to pull up the phone, get to the right place and then start typing and writing, but with the Post-It Note, it’s right there,” he said.
SK O’Brien, an associate professor in product design at UK, agreed that simplicity of using a sticky note has kept the product relevant over its lifetime.
“Our phones and computers can send us reminders, alerts and provide digital space for work, but it requires we enter the digital world, where as the Post-it sits in your real world space,” she said.
“There is no training on how to use Post-it’s because once you see it in action, you intuit into your life. They’re as popular today as they were 40 years ago because they are simple and adaptable.”
Just six years after they were released to the public, author Ranganath Nayak included the sticky note in his 1986 book “Breakthroughs!,” which highlighted high-impact inventions and creative leadership. Only having seen the beginning of the Post-It’s cultural impact, he attributed it’s popularity to accessibility.
“The Post-it allows clerks and CEOs alike to do something always desired but rarely attained in the modern corporation: to be critical and equivocal at the same time,” he wrote in the book.
Almost 40 years after his book was originally published, Nayak told the Herald-Leader that he still attributes the staying power of the Post-it Note to it’s ease of use.
“Now that communication is almost always electronic and can only be accessed on devices of one kind or another, the Post-it Note remains one of the few physical handwritten means of communication that is easy to write, easy to use, and easy to discard,” he said.
“I think that remains its greatest appeal.”
How are Post-it notes made?
Invented in 1974 by 3M scientist Art Fry, sticky notes were actually created out of frustration.
An active member of his church choir, Fry often bookmarked songs in his hymnal ahead of Sunday service. Come time to perform, the bookmarks had usually fallen out. He needed a bookmark that would stick to the pages, without leaving damage.
Struck by inspiration, he went to another 3M scientist who had exactly what he needed – glue that wasn’t very good.
Spencer Silver had been trying to make an extra strong glue. Instead, he accidentally created an adhesive that stuck but didn’t bond. He struggled to find a use for his invention, until Fry came along. The two worked together and made the first sticky note, which soon went into production and was commercially released in 1980.
Fry occasionally visits the Cynthiana factory, to see how the process has changed since he first created the product. Orr joked that in the early years of Post-it production, you could have any size or color that you wanted – as long as it was 3x3 and yellow.
Today, 3M makes over 300 different Post-it products, ranging from page markers all the way up to easel pads. Orr said the original 3x3 yellow note pads are still one of the highest sellers.
Slightly secretive about the specifics of the production process, he kept some aspects of Post-it creation under-wraps.
“There’s a reason we provide a premier product and why the Post-it brand is so important. We don’t want to take any risk from that standpoint,” he said. “The risk is low but the consequence is large.”
This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 4:45 AM.