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A look inside Super Duper Publications n story by JEANNIE PUTNAM
photo provided by SUPER DUPER PUBLICATIONS
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estled in a castle on Pelham Road is Super Duper Publications, a family-run business that has been producing learning products for speech pathologists since 1986. Sharon Webber, co-founder and president of Super Duper Publications, said she knew she would not return to work as a speech pathologist for the Greenville County School system after having daughter Abigail in 1985. Webber and her then-husband Thomas established Super Duper Publications less than a year later. “I had been a speech pathologist (for the Greenville County school system) for four years and my husband at the time was practicing law,” Webber said. “We had our first baby and I didn’t want to leave her every day, so I knew I wasn’t going to go back to the school system full time.” Founding the company had been a long time coming. When Webber Above: King Tut-themed conference room | photo provided by SUPER DUPER PUBLICATIONS
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was in the undergraduate program in speech and language at the University of Georgia and the master’s program at the University of South Carolina, she developed worksheets to give to her friends at school. Then those people would use them with the children they worked with in speech therapy. “I would develop worksheets that I would give to my friends in the program to use with their children in therapy,” Webber said. “I would draw a picture and write a word or sentence or whatever the goal was. That was really the beginning of the creativity of developing very rudimentary materials. My friends always loved it. I thought after we had our Abigail in 1985, why don’t I see if someone might want to buy my materials [worksheets] and that is really how it started.” Webber wrote and illustrated the first two books and packs of stickers for Super Duper’s first product line. The company purchased a mailing
