Hallmark is one of the country’s best-loved brands … but once upon a time, it was a small business, too.
Great values are what great companies are built on.
That was the belief of Hallmark Cards founder Joyce C. Hall, who created one of the biggest companies in Kansas City history with a pioneering business model that put people first and influenced countless other enterprises around the world.
But a century ago, Hall was a small business owner dealing with the same kinds of challenges that entrepreneurs face today.
“Sometimes I wonder if I would have succeeded if things had come easily,” Hall wrote in his 1979 memoir, “When You Care Enough.” “As it was, I had to do a little bit of everything myself, which is a good way to really learn a business.”
Despite the passage of time, important lessons can still be learned from how Hall grew his innovative greeting card company with relentless determination, resilient optimism and wise resolve to never stop looking for the next big idea.
“He is the American Dream,” said Anna Carol “Acey” Lampe, executive professor of management and director of the undergraduate business program at Rockhurst University, where she regularly invites Hallmark Cards employees to speak in the classroom.
For more than 25 years, Lampe worked in a variety of marketing roles at Hallmark Cards, and she wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the cultural evolution of the company. She came to deeply admire what lay at the heart of Hall’s entrepreneurial value system—a steadfast passion to know and serve the consumer better than anyone else.
“In the 1930s, he got into an automobile and drove all over the country visiting drug stores and watching people shop for greeting cards,” she said. “And back then greeting cards were displayed in drawers. They weren’t even out in the public eye. So he watched people, and because of that he created all the merchandising that we know today from greeting cards. That came from him.
“He was always out there. He never lost touch. What happens oftentimes is that entrepreneurs have a great idea, but they don’t always remember that, without the consumer dollar, their idea’s worth nothing. So, like J.C. Hall, be passionate about your consumer. Always ask, ‘What can we do to make the product better? What can we do to make the shopping easier? What can we do to make your life better?’”
Hall ranks among the top business leaders of all time, Lampe said, because “if youfocus on the values on which Hallmark was built, then you can accomplish anything.”
Determination Is More Important Than Capital
The startups of today have more in common with Hall than they might expect.
Born in 1891, Hall grew up in extreme poverty in David City, Neb. Beginning at age 8, he always had a job of some sort, whether it was working on a neighbor’s farm, selling his own lemonade at the ballpark or hawking cosmetics door to door for a company that would later become known as Avon Products.
As a 17-year-old traveling candy “drummer” or salesman, Hall became convinced that “salesmanship made the world go round,” he later recalled, “and there was little doubt in my mind then that my future was in selling.”
In 1910, he moved alone to Kansas City, where he began his own mail-order postcard business.
He was 18 years old. His office was his tiny room at the YMCA. His inventory was the cache of cards he kept in two shoeboxes under his bed. It was a modest start, to be sure, but Hall’s can-do effort eventually earned him enough capital to open his own checking account.
Modern entrepreneurs can learn a lot from Hall’s bootstrap beginnings, said Denise Fields, who works with early-stage entrepreneurs at the Small Business and Technology Development Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
“That is a classic quality of any successful entrepreneur,” Fields said. “The ones that are totally determined, they go out there. Where there is a will, there is a way, even if you don’t have any money.
“Sometimes it’s a very long slog. I have clients that are just now getting funding, that I’ve worked with for six years. That’s just how it is. But it’s persistence that matters, and the desire to basically run your own show.”
Even with little or no working capital, dedicated entrepreneurs starting out today have one major advantage that Hall didn’t—the ability to market their businesses on the Internet.
“I’ve got clients that are doing Facebook pages before they open and getting buzz out there from people who might be potential buyers and also using it for mini-focus groups,” said John Addessi, a consultant for the Kansas Small Business Development Center at Johnson County Community College.
“You’re going to have to shake the trees for everything out there that’s free, but the good news is that some of the free stuff is some of the amazing stuff. Twitter is free. Facebook is free. Inbound marketing on a website is free. It takes some care, but it doesn’t necessarily take money.”
You Can Turn Disaster into a Springboard
In 1915, Hall learned the importance of overcoming devastating setbacks when fire destroyed his company’s first Kansas City retail store and the Halls’ entire inventory.
“I was almost in a state of shock,” Hall recalled. “But there’s a big difference between being shocked and being whipped. If we had wanted to quit, that would have been a good time to do it.”
Hall wasted no time in contacting his suppliers to order new inventory on credit. He told them that he would pay when he could. Even with $9,000 worth of insurance, the move put the business $17,000 in the red. It was a big risk to take after such a disaster.
“It’s a matter of opinion how smart it was,” Fields said. “I’m sure for Mr. Hall it was the right decision, because anything other than that would not have been satisfactory. Hopefully, a business owner today wouldn’t have the extreme situation that he had. But you had better be prepared for some really not-so-nice setbacks, because you’re going to get them.”
Later, the Halls decided to take on additional debt and buy an engraving company, which allowed them to create their own Hall-branded greeting cards. Within eight years, the company had more than 120 employees and its own six-story plant.
“No entrepreneur went through more hardship than J.C. Hall did,” Lampe said. “He went through the Depression, he went through recessions, he went through fire and flood. But he was such an optimist. You have to look for what’s right in the world. You can’t go looking for what’s wrong. If something went wrong, he would make it so that it would be OK, because of his optimism.”
Never Stop Looking for the Next Big Idea
Even as Hall’s business became more successful, he knew that he had to avoid getting too comfortable with what was working.
When he sensed that postcards were becoming less popular, he pushed the company into specializing in greeting cards. The Hall brothers also developed modern gift-wrapping paper. And Hall had to ignore the play-it-safe voices that warned him against investing heavily in advertising and sponsoring TV shows, such as the Emmy Award-winning “Hallmark Hall of Fame.”
Another of Hall’s innovations was realizing that quality products were the result of treating employees in a quality way.
“Mr. Hall was probably the first—or a close second—to having coffee breaks,” Lampe said. “He had women come around once in the morning and once in the afternoon with a cart, and people could get a piece of pastry and some coffee or tea. And they thought that Mr. Hall was just being nice. Well, yes, Mr. Hall was being nice. But the reason he wanted people to get out of their offices and their chairs was so they could talk to each other.
“Mr. Hall really understood the power of communicating. So often in small companies, communication is really prevalent early on. Because it’s small, it’s just a few people and everybody’s talking out in the hallway. And then the bigger you grow, the more isolated you become. And then you lose touch with each other. He understood that the more excuses he could give his people to get out of their chairs and communicate with each other, the more opportunity there would be to come up with new ideas.”
Hall retired in 1966, although he remained involved with the development of the Crown Center business and shopping complex surrounding Hallmark corporate headquarters. He died in 1982 at age 91, leaving behind a greeting card empire that today has approximately 12,000 employees and estimated revenues of $3.65 billion. His company continues to innovate with eCards and newer brands like Hallmark Baby, its online shop for children’s clothing.
Late in life, Hall continued to share his values-driven business philosophy—that success will most likely come to the business owner who cares enough to give the very best.
“If a man goes into business only with the idea of making a lot of money, chances are he won’t,” Hall reflected. “But if he puts service and quality first, the money will take care of itself. Producing a first-class product that is a real need is a much stronger motivation for success than getting rich.”
(Photo: J.C. Hall oversees the construction on Hallmark’s headquarters at 25th and McGee, circa 1950s. Courtesy of theHallmark Archives, Hallmark Cards, Inc.)
