BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

COSTA MESA — For most people who frequent bars and clubs, it’s a necessary annoyance: the rubber stamp the doorman presses on their hands to show they’ve paid admission, flashed a membership card or passed their 21st birthday.

Mike Brown, however, saw a million-dollar idea in those little marks.

The Costa Mesa resident, who launched a technology consulting business out of his town house last year, recently started a second company to put a new twist on corporate advertising.

Handvertising USA allows corporations and media outlets to put their logos on small rubber stamps that Brown and his assistants pass on to bars, clubs and other venues, where the minders at the door stamp the images on hands of incoming patrons.

“Every now and then, you go to a bar and they put a big ‘X’ on your hand,” Brown, 22, said in the second-floor office where he conducts much of his business by computer. “It hit me one day, why not use that space for something useful?”

Handvertising USA, which launched a month ago, is still developing its client list, but Brown hopes to expand it into a nationwide enterprise within a year or two.

The company works as a middleman between advertisers and venues, as corporations pay to have stamps made and Brown and his colleagues pass some of the proceeds on to clubs or bars that agree to use the images on customers’ hands.

Brown said three companies had already paid to have stamps made of their logos — a radio station, a real estate network and an alcoholic beverage producer — but he declined to state their names. In the meantime, he and his sales representatives are visiting venues around Newport-Mesa to rouse support for their cause.

It shouldn’t be a difficult task: Venues that use Handvertising stamps get paid to do so, and all they need to do is discard that “X” stamp they’ve been using for years — that, or ditch the paper wristbands.

“We’re saving trees, in a sense,” said Beth Nike, Brown’s girlfriend and one of the company’s sales representatives. “We’re not using wristbands, which not only costs more money, but it uses paper. A stamp, you can use over and over.”

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.