Welcome to Episode 6 of Bigger Than You Know, the series where I feature companies that turn out to be
much bigger than most people realize.
Today, it's Hallmark.
You probably know them for their greeting cards, but there's so much more to this company.
I even think the greeting card part of the business tends to get overlooked.
They help shape that entire industry, and you can even say they helped create it.
And today, no one in that industry is bigger.
The man responsible for starting Hallmark is J.C. Hall.
It was back in 1910, and he was only 18 years old.
It started off as a very small post card company, post cards were a big thing at the time.
He started getting a little traction, and after about a year, his brother joined him and they named the company Hall
Brothers.
They were successful in selling postcards, but they viewed it as more of a fad.
They figured if they wanted to establish a more sustainable business, they would have to expand into
something else.
That's when they started producing greeting cards.
They were doing well in selling both postcards and greeting cards, until 1915, when they had a major
setback.
It was a fire that destroyed their office and their entire inventory about a month before Valentine's Day.
Let me explain.
Back then, basically the only time someone would send greeting cards were Christmas and Valentine's Day.
So, losing their entire inventory of greeting cards a month before Valentine's Day was, as I said, a major
setback.
Such a setback, where that's where you have to sit down and evaluate whether or not it's worth it to continue.
I'm sure we've all had moments like this.
So, there's a little inspiration we could all pull from J.C. Hall.
He had only five years invested into a small business, he was still only 23 years old, and he experienced such a
setback that it left him not far from where he started.
It would have been so easy for him to just walk away and start focusing on something else, but he chose to
continue.
And, look what its led to.
He had a vision of what he wanted to do, and a plan of how to make it happen.
He abandoned the postcards, and went all in with the greeting cards.
He took out a loan, and bought a local engraving firm with a printing press, and started printing his own cards,
and it was a big success.
Now, obviously, they'd like to sell cards outside of those two holidays.
So they just started doing it.
Why not?
First, they offered an everyday card, it would say "thanks for being such a great friend," or
something like that.
It soon expanded to birthdays, and anniversaries.
Today, you can buy a card from Hallmark for just about any occasion, and there's a term called Hallmark
Holiday.
There's holidays like Grandparents Day and Sweetest Day, people even accuse Hallmark of inventing these
holidays, just to sell cards.
I found a page on their website where they deny it, and of course, they didn't invent any of them, but they sure
do benefit from them.
If there's a holiday or occasion where people can potentially exchange cards, Hallmark will offer them.
So, the fact that there's now a holiday practically every month where we go out and buy cards for it, that's
because of Hallmark.
Aside from starting the tradition of exchanging cards for all these holidays, Hallmark also invented gift wrap, and
it was an accident.
People used to conceal their gifts by just using colorful tissue paper, and in the Christmas season of 1917,
Hallmark ran out of it.
They did have some fancy French paper they would use for the envelope linings, so they decided to sell it as a
way to wrap your gift.
Everyone loved it, and it inspired them to produce their own gift wrap.
So, the fact that we now wrap all our gifts in this fancy patterned gift wrap, that's because of Hallmark.
There's a lot of innovations that Hallmark is responsible for, but let's skip ahead and take a look at Hallmark
today.
Their sales were around $4 billion last year, and even though their greeting cards sell for like, $5 each, they
would still have to sell a crazy amount of them to reach $4 billion.
Their greeting card segment is actually only one of six segments.
Everything we've discussed so far, falls into this first segment.
They're produced in more than 30 languages, over a hundred countries, they have an estimated 51% market
share in the greeting card market, well ahead of their closest competitor, enough so where I think you could
use the word "dominant" to describe them.
The segment consists of multiple product lines, you've got Signature, Studio Ink, Shoebox, that's their funnier
stuff.
They all offer something different.
Hallmark made greeting cards what they are today.
They've been successfully selling them for more than a hundred years, and still, no one else even compares.
Now, let's take a look at the other five segments.
This is a chain of two thousand Hallmark Gold Crown stores. They're in Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland,
and of course, the United States.
It's basically a store where you can buy all the stuff that Hallmark offers.
The next segment,
As the name says it's their selection of decorations and gifts.
They make vases, picture frames, candles, calendars, bags, wallets, glassware, just a bunch of things like
that.
If you're looking for a simple gift or some decorations for your home, that's a good place to look.
The fourth segment, and maybe the most shocking,
You know, like the crayons. Crayola, since 1984, owned by Hallmark, and Crayola itself can be qualified as being
bigger than you know, I'm not sure how they're measuring it, but according to Hallmark, Crayola is the
third largest toy brand today.
They sell all the stuff you would associate with them, crayons, colored pencils, markers, paints, coloring books,
they also sell some other brands you might be familiar with, like Silly Putty.
But it's the kits, all these kits, the craft sets and do-it-yourself products.
They're never-ending.
DIY Spring Pencil Topper Craft Kit, DIY Stained Glass Kit, Decoupage Frame, rock painting, egg decorating, Mason
jar, I'll stop.
And then there's grant programs, and, just go check out the Crayola website.
There's an Air Marker Sprayer, Emoji Marker Maker, Trolls Light Up Tracing Pad.
Yeah, yeah, I'll stop.
I'll go to their fifth segment, it's one that you may have already known going in.
But, again, even if you did it's probably bigger than you know,
which has six parts to it.
The Hallmark Channel, which is a basic cable network that airs family friendly programming.
Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, which is another cable network that focuses more on movies and mysteries.
Hallmark Drama, which you can guess what that is.
Hallmark Publishing, which sounds a little odd to me, but, it creates novelizations of previously aired movies
from those other channels.
Hallmark Movies Now, which is a monthly subscription service where you could stream stuff mostly from the
other channels, on demand, basically the Hallmark version of Netflix.
And finally, Hallmark Hall of Fame. The older viewers should know what this is.
It started in the early 50s, and it's been going on ever since.
sixty-three seasons, over two hundred and fifty episodes, and eighty-one Emmy Awards.
It's aired on multiple networks including CBS, NBC, ABC.
I won't go much deeper into it, but it was a big deal in its time and, revolutionary in itself.
The younger generations probably won't know much about this, so I recommend you go and ask someone
who's a little older.
But aside from Hallmark Hall of Fame, most of what Hallmark puts out on these channels doesn't get much
respect.
It has a reputation of being low quality, low effort stuff that's made for your grandparents.
They put out thirty-three new Christmas movies last year, and I guess they're going to top it with thirty-four this
year, and they all tend to be similar and predictable.
Saturday Night Live even made fun of them for those exact reasons.
But you might be surprised to hear that they're killing it in the ratings.
The Hallmark Channel is one of the most improved networks of the past few years, and it's not just
Christmas anymore either, just the same as when they started capitalizing on all the holidays with their greeting
cards, they're doing it again with movies.
What they do is they spend a couple million dollars producing a movie, which is really cheap, then they make
a killing on them when they're aired on their network, and add to the profits by offering them on their streaming
service.
People love these cheesy movies.
They're all nostalgic and heartwarming.
So, despite lacking in many areas, they still offer something to the audience, something that doesn't cost
much to deliver.
I would like to talk more about their unique way of profiting from these movies, but, for now, let's just
respect what they've done.
In a time where people are ending their cable and satellite services, and many networks are suffering,
Hallmark is doing better than ever.
And, finally, the sixth segment of their business,
It's their real estate development business, consists of 85 acres of hotels and offices around their headquarters
in Kansas City, Missouri.
It's where their visitor center is located, five million people visit it each year.
Not much to say about it.
If this video was especially intriguing to you, maybe make that your next vacation.
I don't know.
That was all six segments and I'm sorry to say, I didn't give any of them justice.
They're much bigger and complex than I could express in a brief video like this.
But let's try doing a quick summary right here, and maybe it will all sound bigger when it's said together:
Hallmark helped make greeting cards what they are today, and remain unrivaled in the industry.
They operate two thousand retail stores across five different countries.
They make numerous decorations and gifts.
They own Crayola.
Let's not get started with that one again.
They have three successful television networks, a video streaming service, in addition to sponsoring a
sixty-seven-year long-running honored television program, and that odd publishing thing.
And don't forget about their real estate development business.
Now, there's no way you knew all of that and that's why Hallmark is bigger than you know.
Let me know in the comments, what do you think about Hallmark?
I know this video mostly shows them in a positive light, but a good part of the public looks at them differently.
Hallmark does their best to promote how much they care and want to be a part of your celebrations, like in
their famous slogan, "When you care enough to send the very best."
But is it all just an act?
Does Hallmark really care and want to bring people together, or do they just want you to think they care,
when in reality, all they want to do is capitalize off these holidays, and sell you a meaningless card that you don't
really need.
There's so much more to look at with this topic, I feel like I touched on twenty different topics and failed to go too
deep into any of them.
Let me know if you'd be interested in hearing more about any of these in the future, I'd like to hear what you have
to say.
Really quick, if you wanted to know where the name Hallmark comes from, it's defined as an official mark
stamped on gold and silver articles in England to attest their purity.
It's a way to show that a metal is, quality.
If Hallmark represents quality, then that's a good thing to put on your product.
Also, the founder's name was J.C. Hall and he ran it with his brother.
It was called the Hall Brothers.
So, they figured it was a good name.
In the 1920s, they started writing it on all the cards, and in the 1950s, the name of the company changed from
Hall Brothers to Hallmark.
In my opinion, a positive change.
Thank you for watching.
(Subtitles by CHICHI7. Go subscribe to him.)