Sending Greetings: The Card Industry Today

Most Americans still sent out Christmas cards last December despite the penny-pinching brought on by the current recession and the noticeable decline in consumer confidence. Many also plan to mail out Valentine missives in addition to the usual birthday cards and thank-you notes in 2009. Obviously, maintaining sentimental ties to relatives and friends around the country carries a greater importance than worrying about the cost of stamps and pretty cards. Greeting cards manufacturers understand this emotional response and have capitalized on it for the last century. Both Hallmark Cards and American Greetings, the top companies in a field which also comprises many smaller manufacturers and niche printers, were founded in the early years of the twentieth century. They have survived by closely monitoring social and life-style trends, adding humorous cards and targeting special audiences, as well as by adopting new technologies, developing cards which play music when opened for example, and by diversifying corporate interests, from providing online e-card services to producing giftware and licensing entertainment characters. Hallmark also owns a cable television channel.

Cleveland-based American Greetings, publicly traded but family run, recently began acquisition of a smaller rival, Recycled Paper Greetings, a Chicago card designer currently in bankruptcy proceedings. The acquisition is a hostile one and litigation may prevent resolution and company integration for some time to come. Recycled Paper publishes ecologically friendly, humorous cards and was one of the first to do so.

Kansas City-based Hallmark, still privately held and family managed, recently added a set of cards congratulating couples on their gay marriages or civil unions. Predictably, some Christian groups objected; but this decision reflects a fact of modern day American society. Moreover, people really do want to find a card with an appropriate message in the giftwrap and card aisle in the grocery store or in a card store at the mall. While the culture wars may make for intense public debate in the media, a sensible response can be found just down the street at the local stationers or at the nearby discount superstore.

Greeting cards, although not a big-ticket item, are hardly recession proof. Acknowledging the realities, American Greetings has cut staff and Hallmark has frozen wages in recent months. Sales may have declined slightly but the product is hardly on the way out. E-cards, especially given their attraction to hackers and spammers, are not really in the same league (not yet anyway) as tangible folded cards with clever imagery or personal photographs and pertinent or witty prose. These two admirable business successes, Hallmark and American Greetings, are likely to weather the recession in good shape, continue to research and illustrate new social trends, and may well adapt to whatever new technology comes along next.

"Briefs: USA & World: Gay marriage Hallmark moment", National Catholic Reporter

"American Greetings cutting jobs in Bardstown", Lexington Herald-Leader/Kentucky.com

"American Greetings Announces Plans to Acquire Recycled Paper Greetings", Wall Street Journal/PRNewswire-FirstCall

Suzanna Stagemeyer, "Hallmark greets new year with wage freeze", Kansas City Business Journal