SIC 2771 Greeting Cards
SIC 2771
This category includes establishments that publish and/or print greeting cards for all occasions. Producers of hand-painted greeting cards are classified in SIC 8999: Services, Not Elsewhere Classified.
323110
Commercial Lithographic Printing
323111
Commercial Gravure Printing
323112
Commercial Flexographic Printing
323113
Commercial Screen Printing
323119
Other Commercial Printing
511191
Greeting Card Publishers
According to the Greeting Card Association, approximately 7 billion cards are sold annually in the United States. Two manufacturers have held longtime domination of this industry: Hallmark Cards Inc., the largest privately owned manufacturer in the world, and American Greetings Corporation, the largest publicly owned greeting card manufacturer. Together, these two companies control about 85 percent of the $7.5 billion U.S. greeting card market.
Continuing a longtime trend into the late 2000s, Christmas ranked as the number-one seasonal occasion for sending cards, with almost two-thirds of this sector, and birthday cards were the top individual everyday segment of this industry, accounting for 60 percent of that market. The average individual card price was between $2 and $4, although card prices ranged from less than $1 to $10 each. The typical American receives an average of 20 cards each year, and all but 10 percent of American households spend money on products from this industry.
Greeting card companies run their establishments on two structural models. Larger establishments have in-house creative staff, including graphic artists, designers, creative consultants/directors, and writers. Smaller companies typically use freelancers to provide these services. Generally, printing is done in-house by both large and small establishments; the notable exception to this arrangement, however, is Hallmark Cards Inc., which has used an outside printer since the late 1940s. Common to both types of establishments is the emphasis on marketing. Leaders in this industry have highly developed distribution and marketing research and promotion systems.
Because greeting cards formerly appeared in drug and grocery stores in relatively small quantities, manufacturers relied heavily on small-package delivery services. Hallmark Cards Inc. used long-haul trucks and trains to ship cards from distribution centers in Liberty, Missouri, and Enfield, Connecticut, to regional offices throughout the country. From there, smaller courier services handled regional distribution. However, Material Handling Engineering reported that, in 1995, Hallmark began handling all phases of its own distribution from its Research Distribution Operations division in Kansas City, a 226,000-square-foot facility that used ergonomic operator workstations, high-tech carousels, and a state-of-the-art tracking system to triple its throughput.
Other manufacturers still rely heavily on relationships with couriers. Because of the seasonal nature of many greeting cards, companies require timely shipments and a courier that is able to handle the returned unsold cards at the end of a season. Moreover, throughout the year unsold cards need to be returned and replaced speedily as part of this industry's marketing strategy.
Manufacturers have structured their marketing divisions to engage in marketing research and promotion at two levels. One level addresses retailers and works with each store or regional chain to create a product mix and display specific to each retailer's sales record. The other level addresses customers directly by using consumer-specific research. The industry extensively uses demographic studies and surveys of consumer tastes and purchasing behaviors.
Louis Prang, a German-born immigrant who founded a lithography business in Boston, made the first commercially printed greeting cards in the United States during the Christmas season of 1874. His folded cards contained messages inside, copying the newly formed tradition of Victorian English Christmas cards. Since Americans were not accustomed to purchasing greeting cards, Prang's first year of business went exclusively to England. He put his cards on the U.S. market the following year and soon added birthday and Easter cards to his product line. But sales were slow, and by 1890 he had stopped producing cards. In The Romance of Greeting Cards, Ernest Dudley Chase suggests that Prang's lack of success with the American market was due in large part to the popularity of less expensive German-made greeting cards, which resembled postcards more than greeting cards. Prang's cards costs more to produce due to their use of colors.
Joyce C. Hall, founder of...
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