When was hallmark cards invented

Design Ideas. Home Maintenance. Country Living Shop. Shopping Guides. United States. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. Makeover Takeover: Colonial Comeback. Treat Your Family to Homemade Cupcakes. Getty Images. Courtesy of Hallmark. Posts shared on Facebook claim that Hallmark cards are made in China, while American Greetings cards are made in Ohio.

This claim is partly false. Examples of such posts can be found here , here , and here. Hallmark is a family-owned company based in Kansas City, Missouri. Hallmark cards with specialized processes, such as die cut, glitter, flock and foil stamp are produced in Lawrence. Hall was named president and chief executive officer CEO , replacing his father, Joyce, who remained chairman of the board of directors.

Continued growth spurred the company to build a new manufacturing plant in Topeka, Kansas, and expand its Lawrence, Kansas, facility to , square feet. The company was also doing well globally, which led it to form a subsidiary, Hallmark International. Upset with the quality of early television, Hallmark founder Joyce C.

Hall decided to do something. In the early s, he set about creating a series of programs based on some of history's most critically acclaimed books, stage plays, and operas. The first was the world premier presentation of the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti , which aired on Christmas Eve In , Hallmark debuted William Shakespeare's Hamlet. It was the first time a Shakespeare play was aired on TV.

Although the series maintained a focus on the classics, it also expanded to include socially relevant stories written specifically for television. These intimate portraits included Teacher, Teacher , the story of a mentally challenged youth, and My Name is Bill W. The program continues into the twenty-first century with such offerings as The Runaway , about two boys dealing with racial prejudice in post-World War II Georgia, and Follow the Stars Home , the story of a single mother raising a disabled child.

Over the years, the Hall of Fame original programs have won eighty-seven Emmy Awards, the highest honor given in television. Among the award-winning programs are jason and the Argonauts and the great sea epic Moby-Dick , written by Herman Melville In the mids, Joyce Hall became concerned about the deteriorating conditions in the Kansas City neighborhood where Hallmark's corporate headquarters were located. When city officials failed to take notice Hall decided to act on his own. In , he retired as CEO in order to devote more time to the issue.

Two years later he began construction of the Crown Center, a residential, retail, and commercial real estate development designed to halt urban decay in the neighborhood.

Part of the complex, which included office space, opened in In , after Donald Hall had been running the company for twenty years, Hallmark's board of directors thought it was time to select a CEO from outside the family.

It turned to Irvine 0. Hockaday Jr. When Hockaday was appointed CEO, it marked the first time that Hallmark did not have a Hall family member at the helm.

Some industry observers believed that bringing in an outsider might cause friction among the company's old guard. It seemed, however, that new blood was exactly what Hallmark needed. Hockaday was quickly accepted by the other top executives and led the company through one of its most dynamic periods.

The Litho-Krome acquisition gave the company a quality printing plant in the South. The other two purchases bolstered Hallmark's international presence, allowing the company to cut costs by producing cards directly in Australia and New Zealand.

The company also expanded its product line, introducing Shoebox Greetings, an offbeat line of cards aimed at young, hip adults, and Mahogany, greeting cards designed for African Americans.

So in January , year-old Joyce dropped out of high school, crammed two shoeboxes full of postcards, and boarded a train for Kansas City, Mo. At first, he called on drugstores, bookstores and gift shops, wholesaling products created and manufactured by others.

As business picked up, he ventured to the towns served by the railroads running in all directions from the Midwestern rail center. Soon brother Rollie joined him, and they opened a specialty store in downtown Kansas City, dealing in post cards, gifts, books and stationery. On Jan. The brothers floated a loan and bought an engraving firm, setting the stage for the creation of the first original Hallmark card designs.