DDP team helped company find space downtown

As firefighters were still knocking down the flames of a fire that would leave Gwendolyn Lee’s rubber stamp business “a total loss,” she was already making mental lists for how to reopen.

It was Sunday night, Oct. 25, 2020, when her RubberStamps.Net store and manufacturing facility at Bettendorf’s Cumberland Square was destroyed. The e-commerce business, which produced custom rubber stamps and labels, was gone. The cause: undetermined.

Forced into survival mode, Lee channeled all her energy into figuring out how to get back to production, serving customers and more importantly, “keeping the employees whole.” One of her first phone calls that night was to Kyle Carter, Executive Director of the Downtown Davenport Partnership (DDP), an affiliate of the Quad-Cities Chamber.

“I’m gonna need a roof over our heads,” she recalls telling Carter, whom she knew from serving on the DDP Board. 

“It was pretty awful getting that phone call, it was heart-wrenching,” said Carter, who offered “to help however we could.”

Read the full story on the Quad Cities Chamber's blog.