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Beginning July 1st- this week, Stampin Up! will be expanding their product line after almost 2 decades of selling rubber stamps for craft projects. Stampin Up! is a direct sales company that sells products through at home craft parties and demonstrations.

For 19 years Stampin’ Up! has provided customers with rubber stamps for scrapbooks, cards and arts and crafts project, but now, they will expand beyond the rubber stamps and introduce, Decor Elements. The new product line, will be comprised of self adhesive vinyls or stickers, that can be used to decorate home decor items. The stickers are easy to use, can be easily changed and removed and can even be combined with Stampin Up!’s other products.

“Evolving our Definitely Decorative line to include Decor Elements is a natural progression for the company,” said Shelli Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Stampin’ Up! “For years Stampin’ Up! has encouraged individuals to explore their creativity with rubber stamps. The inclusion of self-adhesive vinyl elements allows our customers to further explore their creativity by decorating their walls and then leverage our existing products to create complementing home decor items such as frames, lampshades and more.”

The first phase of the new product launch will be in the United States and Canada and they will eventually expand to other markets. As more and more people are trying to save money by doing household arts projects themselves, this is the perfect time to introduce this new project. After 19 years in the rubber stamp business, its good to see that they are finally ready to expand their product offering.

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Well it was another crazy week with more unanswered questions related to Weekenders going out of business. While more and more distributors have begun selling their wares on eBay and Craigslist to recoup some money, still no word from the Direct Selling Association as to what happened or any insight.

There was a bunch of philanthropic news this week. mark announced a new campaign with spokesperson Lauren Conrad and Neways donated over 10,000 bottles of water for the Utah Summer Games.

In financial news, supplement company Nutrilite announced that they crossed the $3B sales mark which is truly amazing and the S&P began a review of Tupperware’s stock based on its new rating but Mad Money’s Jim Cramer think the stock is a buy at this point.

USANA continues to confuse us. After getting rebuffed on their offer to take the company private by a special committee who said the offer was too low, Dr. Myron Wentz (the company’s chairman) decided to reaffirm the offer at the same price!! Makes no sense at all and all Wentz seems to be doing is driving up the value and making his bid seem less and less practical. It doesnt’ help that shareholders are starting to sue the company because of the low ball offer that he is proposing. This story is far from over.

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Finally some good news for Herbalife. The company has been plagued lately with lawsuits and bad press over high levels of lead in the products, and I’m sure will take good news anywhere they can get it.

The nutritional supplement company announced that it has received a letter from the L.A. office of the SEC saying that they have completed their year long investigation into the company and has recommended that no action be taken agains the company.

Here’s how it all started…..apparently in mid 2007, the SEC began an investigation into some suspicious activity involving the timing of trading of Herbalife securities by a mid-level employee. The SEC was also investigating the extent of personal use of Herbalife products by distributors and the company’s related policies and procedures.

Herbalife cooperated fully with the SEC and its investigation over the last year and even disclosed to the public the accusations as well as the fact that they were being investigated.

I’m sure this comes as a huge relief to the company that the Securities and Exchange Commission has investigated the company’s practices thoroughly and found no wrong-doing. This is a small ray of hope for the company who is going through some rough times lately. They are still not out of the woods on the lead lawsuit but this was a big hurdle to get over and one they can finally put behind them.

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Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services - one of the world’s most respected sources of information on investment research, advice and data - announced this week that they will review their rating of Tupperware Brands Corp (NYSE: TUP) for a potential upgrade.

S&P had given Tupperware a “BB,” rating, which mean that, according to the S&P guide to ratings, ‘positive attributes exist, but adverse business conditions could lead to insufficient ability to meet financial commitments.’ The BB rating is a non-investment grade rating.

Since giving out the BB rating, S&P feels that Tupperware has improved its business operations and the company’s debt has been reduced during the past few quarters.

Tupperware revenue has gone up almost 19% in the first quarter of 08. Tupperware will announce second quarter results at the end of July. No word yet on when S&P will revise its decision, although upon announcement of the news, stock went up 40 cents.

In related news, Jim Cramer of Mad Money recommended Tupperware (NYSE: TUP) as a buy: “I’m shocked that Tupperware is down as much as it is. I want to buy Tupperware. I think it’s right.”

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