Meyercord Revenue

History

At the age of nineteen, George Meyercord, son of a florist, founded the Meyercord Company in 1894 as a lithography shop specializing in decoration and ornamentation. By 1934, the company had grown to 400 employees working in a factory and office located in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. By then, the Meyercord Company had changed its business focus to decalcomania transfers.

In 1954 the company, known as Meyercord Revenue, introduced the FUSON® cigarette tax stamping system. Following World War II, state and municipal governments learned that "sin taxes" on sales of tobacco products and alcoholic beverages could be a substantial source of new tax revenues. Collection would depend on the ability to levy the tax on distributors though the sale of tax stamps that would be affixed to the products before they were sold in retail outlets.

However, for cigarette taxes to generate desired revenues, tax stamps had to be produced and affixed in secure manner that would discourage counterfeiting. The Fuson system provided a simple and cost-effective solution. High-quality custom images are printed on a specially treated web that is converted into rolls of tax stamps. High-speed application machines apply heat and pressure to affix the multi-layered images on individual cigarette packs. Today, Meyercord's Fuson system is the leading system for producing and affixing counterfeit-resistant tax indicia, and is used by 47 states and over 150 municipalities.

Illinois Tool Works Inc. acquired Meyercord Revenue in 1997 and provided the company with resources to expand its business focus beyond tax stamps to other applications within the field of security printing. A new state-of-the-art production facility that opened in 2002 gives Meyercord a strong competitive edge. High-tech access systems, advanced environmental controls and new state-of-the art printing and coating systems allow Meyercord to solve the toughest product authentication problems without deviating from its mission to provide clients with the best possible value.