Vanguard ID Systems recently took home a prestigious ICMA Élan Award in the Judges’ Choice category for its design of an RFID key tag for The Woods Coffee. The Judges’ Choice is unique in that allows the Élan judges to recognize their favorite entry from among all the submissions received in every category.

Anyone giving a gift card for Christmas or carrying a supermarket rewards tag on a keychain or a library card in a wallet more than likely have had their hands on a Vanguard ID Systems product. The privately owned company, founded two decades ago by Richard O. Warther, produces the ubiquitous plastic cards and tags. Customers range from retailers to minor league baseball teams, with the company’s heaviest concentration in library and health clubs. At 53, Warther describes himself as “an old bar code guy.” In the early days of the technology, Warther worked for grocery store chains and later Graphic Technology and Data Document Systems, both in Kansas City, Kan. He founded Vanguard ID in 1987 with the help of several financial backers. “They put up the money, I supplied the knowledge and backbone,” Warther said.

Vanguard ID Systems announced today that it has manufactured its one-billionth bar coded key tag. Twenty years after inventing the technology, Vanguard has surpassed this milestone, producing 1,020,118,000 key tags to date. Over that period, the increasingly ubiquitous accessory produced by the West Chester, PA based corporation has taken up residence next to house keys and car keys the world over. In fact, if you laid all of the key tags Vanguard has produced end to end, the resulting strand would produce a bar code that would encircle the earth one and two-thirds times.