BILL RILEY: But we have a lot of winners and a lot to be proud of out here at the
Iowa State Fair. Our good friend Abby Brown is going to tell us
more about how all those ribbons are made and right here in Iowa.
ABBY BROWN: Ribbons are synonymous with the Iowa State Fair as corn dogs and butter cows. Thousands
are handed out each year for everything from cattle shows to bubble gum blowing contests.
These aren't mass produced overseas. What makes these
ribbons special is that they're manufactured right here in Iowa.
LORI WHITE: We're here at Staats Awards in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. We've been around for almost 125
years. We manufacture awards. We do V-top ribbons, we do banners. And about in the 1920s is when the
different fairs had different -- we always had blue as first place and red as second place but
then each county fair or state fair might decide what other color to do for third and fourth or
things like that. So Staats was known to establish the placement colors all the way up to tenth.
Our largest clienteles are state and county fairs. We do large county fairs in Los Angeles, Orange
County in California. We've been very blessed to have all the state and county fairs that we do.
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LORI:
We can brag that we do 29 state fairs. So Amy is working on the Iowa State Fair right here.
I can tell you, with Iowa State Fair we do about 5,000 of the rosettes.
We do 14,000 V tops. And there's over 1,400 banners done back here.
AMY: I've been here two and a half years. I have no idea how many I've made.
LORI: Well, you saw the manufacturing side. I had 23 gals that work back there. It's all hand sewn.
We are very proud of this. We are very lucky to have these ladies
that still have that trade to be able to hand sew those rosettes.
EMPLOYEE: It's a lot of fun to see people get them. I do the queen sashes,
also. So it's fun to see all the girls wear those.
LORI:
Some of the trades that they did years ago we still do here with the heat press on the
satin banners. It reminds you of printing for a newspaper, it is a type set. Each word printed
on there is typed up to hot stamp on to that rosette or ribbon. Every line that is changed,
for every event that is being awarded, requires a change out to that verbiage.
It's a little labor intense sometimes, yeah.
It is one of the largest fairs in the nation, so to have that as a clientele is rewarding to us as
well. What's great about our job is it is very rewarding to be able to produce these products
that are going to be handed out to a young kid that has worked very hard raising the cattle or
raising a sheep or pig or whatever they worked really hard for. It does mean a lot to them.
It's a rewarding position that we have here.