Anthony Constantino feels that his open support for Donald Trump has resulted in significant financial losses for his company. The founder and CEO of Sticker Mule shared that, following his endorsement of Trump in 2024, an internal audit suggested that his custom printing business, based in upstate New York, may have lost as much as $50 million in revenue.
Despite this backlash, he’s not backing down. Instead, Constantino is motivated to take a stronger stance. He remarked, “Unless someone takes a firm stand on this issue and doesn’t back down, the situation in America will never get better.”
At 43 years old, he is now navigating the general election after winning the Republican primary for the 21st Congressional District, a seat once held by Elise Stefanik. Remarkably, he’s funding his entire multimillion-dollar campaign himself.
He explained his choice to self-fund: “I want to fund it myself so that I can be an independent-minded person who can do all the right things.” This approach allows him to concentrate on a key passion—revitalizing American manufacturing.
Though he finds himself politically active now, this wasn’t initially part of his plan. Back in 2016, he gained notoriety for purchasing MAGA-themed Christmas ornaments for his mother’s neighbors in Florida, which caught the attention of left-wing influencers who viewed it as campaign funding. Constantino believes that Sticker Mule was among the first companies to face wide-scale backlash for its support of Trump.
He recalls, “Tens of thousands of Democrats were writing us hate mail. You wake up one day and it’s like all hell has broken loose. There’s never been a day when 10,000 people are telling you they hate you and are going to destroy your company.” This experience only deepened his resolve to speak out. After the assassination attempt on Trump in 2024, he felt an urgency to act. “That experience… really woke me up to how bad the left has become,” he stated.
Constantino is convinced that his business, which produces a range of custom products including stickers and packaging, can serve as a model for revitalizing domestic manufacturing and creating jobs in the U.S.
Reflecting on his upbringing in the Rust Belt, he discusses how he watched the decline of manufacturing industries throughout his life. “I grew up in a manufacturing town… I watched manufacturing get destroyed all my life,” he remarked, observing that his hometown is now dotted with abandoned buildings, remnants of once-thriving factories.
Sticker Mule was established in reaction to this downward trend. “Customers really want quality products that are locally made and shipped quickly,” he noted, highlighting the tendency of some distributors to opt for cheaper imports from China instead. He believes the path forward involves reigniting domestic manufacturing and enhancing production processes until they can compete effectively.
“We have to start innovating again in manufacturing,” he insisted. “In the last 10 to 20 years, all of America’s brain power has gone into software. You can innovate in software, but you can innovate in hardware too. To bring manufacturing back to America, we have to design our own machines.”
He also challenges the prevalent concern about automation leading to job losses. “I automate all the time, but my growth has been so good that I was able to automate and expand employment and increase wages at the same time,” he stated, expressing a more optimistic view of the relationship between automation and job creation.
