Card Shark

There is only one who brightens all my

everyday affairs, There is only one. My Darling, who

understands and cares, There is only one I cherish with a love

that's deep and true; There is only one, My Darling--it's

you and only you!

In the greeting-card business the company that understands and cares the most is Kansas City's Hall Brothers, Inc., world's largest greeting-card makers. It has a love that's deep and true for ready-made bowlegged tetrameter and a business built on sentiment (last year's estimated gross: $15 to $18 million). Last week in the midst of its biggest sales season next to Christmas, Hall Brothers was, as usual, turning out more than 1,000,000 of its "Hallmark" greeting cards every day. There were no fewer than 500 different designs for St. Valentine's Day,* ranging from 5-c- greetings to $5 concoctions dripping with lace and scented sachets.

Behind all the hearts & flowers is Joyce C. Hall, 58, a lean and solemn man who started out, at 18, to become a greeting-card shark by selling postcard greetings in Kansas City. Rollie B. Hall, a brother, joined him there, but they soon realized that postcard greetings were losing favor. Said Joyce Hall: "We found we were developing a dying business." They switched to cards enclosed in envelopes, were soon so successful that they took in another brother, William F. Hall.

The Hall brothers claim to have fostered quite a few innovations. They were first with the "humorous" greeting ("You have the strength of a TIGER . . . lily!"). They developed the unfolding card that tells a continued story, and leveled out the seasonal peaks & valleys of the business by pushing the "everyday" card for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, sympathy and the sick. Today, customers have a choice of six different Hallmark cards for the tonsillectomy patient alone; once there was even one for the friend who has been run down by a car. Other tricks of the trade: white kittens on cards will always outsell brown ones; geraniums are never good, but pansies are surefire sellouts.

In addition to a staff of 150 artists, the company uses the works of such diverse painters as Vincent van Gogh, Norman Rockwell, Salvador Dali, Grandma Moses (one of the best sellers), and the winners of a $28,000 international contest (TIME, March 21). For the changeable public, Hallmark keeps plenty of new cards up its sleeve. One thing that doesn't worry Joyce Hall is a recession. In bad times, says he, people send greeting cards instead of presents.

* Believed to commemorate the death of two Roman priests in 269 A.D., each called Valentinus, and both executed on the same day. One of them is supposed to have been executed for marrying lovers who came to him, despite a decree by Emperor Claudius II forbidding marriage (single men made better soldiers).

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