When was hallmark cards founded

You just concealed the gift in white, red, or green tissue paper and called it a day. Unfortunately, the Hall brothers ran out of tissue paper that year, but they still had customers clamoring for an elegant way to gussy up their presents.

Rollie Hall cleverly offered to sell customers pieces of French paper he had bought for lining envelopes. Demand was so great over the holiday season and the following year that in the Halls started printing their own patterned gift wrap, and wrapping paper was suddenly a holiday staple.

Hall was a fan of the old hallmarks that goldsmiths used to sign their work. In , Hall Brothers Inc. Hall is chairman of the Hallmark board, while his son Donald Jr. Hockaday, Jr. In Hallmark, after being a prominent advertiser in the broadcast media for many years, became an owner as well when it acquired a group of Spanish-language television stations from Spanish International Communication.

The next year, it added another station purchased from Bahia de San Francisco Television. Also in , Hallmark acquired a Spanish-language network, Univision, and amalgamated all of its holdings in a subsidiary, Univision Holdings. Based in New York, the subsidiary ran the nine full-power stations under the name Univision Station Group. During the mids small greeting card companies began competing for Hallmark's market position with a diverse array of cards that became favorites.

In the mids Hallmark fought back with its Personal Touch and Shoebox Greetings series the latter debuting in Many of these cards, however, bore a resemblance to rival designs that some found too striking. In Blue Mountain Arts, Inc. The initial decision went against Hallmark, which appealed ultimately to the Supreme Court.

When the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in , Hallmark agreed to discontinue its Personal Touch line. Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Hallmark's biggest challenge during the early s was confronting its continuing loss of market share to the number two and three companies in the greeting card industry, American Greetings Corporation and Gibson Greetings, Inc.

From to , it was estimated that Hallmark's market share fell from 50 to 45 percent. In the mids, some industry experts were even suggesting that American Greetings would overtake Hallmark sometime between and The reason for Hallmark's decline rested in the very backbone of its empire--the specialty card and gift shops that sold the Hallmark brand, which by the early s numbered more than 10, Over a long period, these shops had fallen victim to changing buying patterns in particular among women, who still bought 90 percent of all cards sold.

Pressed for time, more and more consumers were opting to purchase cards at one-stop shopping outlets--supermarkets, drugstore chains, and large discounters--such as Wal-Mart.

In the early s more than half of all cards were sold in specialty shops; by the early s only about 30 percent were. American Greetings and Gibson, which did not have such extensive ties to the card shops, were able to recognize the trend and shift to accommodate it. Hallmark, however, was in a bind. Continuing to rely so heavily on specialty shops would do nothing to halt its market share decline, but it could not simply abandon the shops, for doing so would bankrupt many of them, not something a company as paternalistic as Hallmark could seriously consider.

One strategy was to diversify away from greeting cards even further. In Hallmark acquired Willitts Designs, a maker of collectibles, but then sold the company only three years later.

Cable television was Hallmark's next foray with the formation of a Crown Media Inc. During this period Hallmark also updated its product line, offering a more high-tech approach to card purchasing. In the "Personalize it! The following year Hallmark filed suit for infringement of its kiosk patent against American Greetings and its Creata-Card kiosk.

The suit was settled in with each company receiving a worldwide, nonexclusive license to use the technology; no other details on the settlement were provided at that time.

Moreover, in , Hallmark developed recordable greeting cards in partnership with Information Storage Devices. Also in came the debut of the Hallmark Gold Crown Card, a frequent-buyer reward program for customers at selected Hallmark retail stores. In addition to the frequent-buyer program, the Gold Crown stores differed from regular Hallmark stores in several respects; they had their own lines of cards and exclusive merchandise, and they were all owned by individuals and were not franchises.

Crown Center , the privately financed city-within-a-city developed by Hallmark, is the result. The bustling residential, office, hotel and entertainment district not only turned the tide of decline within its acre boundaries, but also has been the catalyst for development in adjoining neighborhoods. A Legacy of Excellence Though he became a wealthy man, profit was never foremost in his thoughts. But if he puts service and quality first, the money will take care of itself.

He died Oct. Hall, Jr. Luckily, they had a million dollar idea: greeting cards that came in envelopes, making them more discreet than the standard open-face offerings. While the Halls didn't invent the concept of greeting cards, they certainly helped popularize them.

Eventually, the brothers took out a loan, invested in a printing press, and began making their own product. Hall Brothers Inc. After the first couple years, the new business was doing well, but when the United States entered World War I in , things really took off. Greeting cards weren't the Halls' only innovation. They can also be credited for inventing decorative wrapping paper in an improvisation after running out of the standard plain paper , as well as the card display racks you still see in every store today.

During the Depression, J. In fact, Hall Brothers Inc. Although the company started going by Hallmark in , the slogan, ""When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best," coined in , actually preceded the company's official name change in When J.