The Greeting Card King

JOYCE CLYDE HALL

ALMOST every U.S. businessman gives away some samples of his product, but few can match Joyce Clyde Hall, 68, founder and president of Hallmark greeting cards. Some time in the next few days. Hall will choose a Christmas card from this year's Hallmark line and send it to no fewer than 6,000 friends and acquaintances. He can afford it. Over the past 50 years, Hallmark has grown into the goliath of the greeting card business, producing 4,000,000 copies of 11,000 different cards each day for sale through 22,000 retailers in four countries. Hallmark's gross is estimated at more than $90 million annually, twice as big as its two nearest competitors combined, and profits are estimated close to $5.4 million annually.

What makes Hallmark's size all the more impressive is that it comes in a field that, for all the bunnies and babies and Santas smiling up from its cheery face, is as ruggedly competitive as any business in the U.S. With some 290 firms turning out 5 billion cards each year, for every event from the cradle to the grave, a special kind of genius is needed to grab off about 30% of a $288 million market. Hallmark's boss abundantly has that genius.

AT an age when most men are put out to pasture, Hall still operates like a one-man gang, working seven days a week, making the decisions, supervising every aspect of his business. "I used to think." says the lean, balding Midwesterner, "that when I got old, I would not work such long hours, but here I am." He approves every idea, each sugary line on each card in his huge assortment. He keeps constant tab on the profit sharing, health insurance, hours and pay of his some 5.000 employees, even inspects the food served in the company cafeteria. When he rejects something, he is liable to do it without giving reasons, says only that his decisions come from "the vapor of experience." Out of this fog has come an almost uninterrupted string of correct answers on what cards the fickle U.S. public will buy. "I have a hard time explaining why." says Hall. "But I know--there's something in the past years that's telling me."

Born in David City, Neb., Hallmark's Hall started work at the age of nine selling lemon-extract perfume to help support his mother, worked on through high school selling postcards and helping in a bookstore. By 1912, he was in Kansas City, determined to make a go of greeting cards. The venture almost died as soon as it started; Hall was $17,000 in debt when a flash fire wiped out his printing plant. Luckily, he was able to sweet-talk a local bank into an unsecured $25,000 loan, and he has not taken a step back since. By the late 19303, Hallmark was one of the top three cards.

IN the early days, Christmas, St. Valentine's Day and birthdays were the major occasions for greeting cards. Hall pushed the idea of cards for every sentiment, every event, now does 50% of his annual business outside of the big holidays. He went after such writers as Ogden Nash and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, brought in such artists as Saul Steinberg, Grandma Moses, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, sponsored touring Hallmark art exhibits across the U.S. He was told time and again that Sir Winston Churchill would never agree to have his paintings on greeting cards. Churchill was delighted, and Hallmark sold 4.5 million Churchill cards the very first year, about half the number of Hallmark's alltime bestseller--a cart loaded with pansies that is suitable for almost every occasion.

Overriding all is what Hall wryly calls his "ten-point program'' for sales success: the first nine points are distribution. To get his cards into the stores and keep them there, he set up a sales system that replaced the helter-skelter collection of boxes under the counter with a long display rack that put the selection out in the open. Hallmark sells the display racks to retailers at cost, also assumes responsibility for keeping the store's stock--both from Hallmark and from competitors--up-to-date, re-ordering when the cards get low. All the retailer has to do is ring the cash register. While others in the industry also use the system, Hall says that his company does the job more often, thus knows precisely which cards are selling, which are duds, when to introduce new designs.

LAST week, while U.S. citizens thought about their 1959 cards, Hall was going over the 1960 line, studying it during the day, taking it home at night to see how it looked by the light of the fireplace in his Georgian mansion set on a 700-acre farm outside Kansas City. Some time soon, Christmas 1960 will go to press, and next year every American will get at least one greeting card the original of which is back at Hallmark bearing a curt "O.K., J.C."

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