John Anselmo
Owner and President, Anselmo Die & Index · custom index tab maker since 1993
John Anselmo owns Anselmo Die & Index, the family plant in Schaumburg, Illinois, that makes every Tabzoola order. He has run the business since 1978 and has made custom index tabs since 1993 — well over 60 million of them.
John Anselmo started Anselmo Enterprises in 1978 as a small shop die-cutting and scoring polyethylene sheet for binder manufacturers. The shop added screen printing on the binder cases it made for those manufacturers, then began riveting in the 3-ring metals.
In 1993 the company turned to custom index tabs and became Anselmo Die & Index. For most of the next three decades those tabs reached offices through brokers and resellers — law firms, medical offices, accountants and corporations that never knew the name of the plant that made their dividers.
The pandemic ended that model. Broker sales collapsed, and in 2020 John opened Tabzoola so any office could order direct from the plant: design online, see the exact price, approve a free PDF proof, and receive tabs made in Schaumburg in about three business days.
“It was either reinvent again or become a memory, like most of our competitors.”— John Anselmo
Every tab is still made in the same plant: printed on a press, then Mylar-coated and die-cut, with dies the company cuts itself. That is why every cut from 1/2 to 1/15 is standard and a set can be matched from a sample.
Quick facts
- Role
- Owner and President, Anselmo Die & Index; owner of Tabzoola
- In business since
- 1978
- Custom index tabs since
- 1993
- Tabs made
- Well over 60 million
- Plant
- 2235 Hammond Drive, Suite C, Schaumburg, Illinois 60173
- Tabzoola online since
- 2020
Writing elsewhere
- What the courts actually say about exhibit tabs · Medium, 2026-10-16
90 rules from 85 courts, quoted word for word, and the pattern underneath them.
- What the courts actually say about exhibit tabs · LinkedIn, 2026-10-13
The same piece on LinkedIn, for lawyers and paralegals who read there.
- What a custom tab divider really costs in 2026 · Medium, 2026-10-16
Three editions of the Tabzoola Tab Price Index: $2.35 a set at 100, five times that at the minimum, and one set bought three ways.
- How Estate Planning Attorneys Set Up a Client Binder, Tab by Tab · Medium, 2026-10-17
The 8-tab estate binder and the 12-tab living trust version, what goes behind each tab, and what Tabzoola's printed sets cost.
- All of John’s off-site writing: medium.com/@johnanselmo