The Hallmark Cards

Hallmark Cards is the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States. It manufactured 50 percent of greeting cards send in the United States every year. Hallmark is a privately owned American company based in Kansas City. (Wikipedia, 2006) Further, it is known throughout the world for its greeting cards and related personal expression products. It is also famous for its television’s most honored and enduring dramatic series, the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Hallmark continues to expand the types of products it markets and the ways it distributes those products through licensing, joint ventures and emerging technologies. The company publishes products in 30 languages. These products are distributed in more than 100 countries. (Micro Strategy, 2006)

Hallmark Cards maximizes the profit potential of thousands of items available through more than 42, 000 retail outlets across the country to maintain its lead in the competitive greeting card and gift industry. It also deploys business intelligence that yielded clear benefits for the retailer. Thus, its product development, in-store testing time and merchandising time has been reduced. This enables the company to have a better evaluation of promotional programs and to improve inventory and planning for individual stores. (Micro Strategy, 2006) Evaluation of the new technology with a healthy dose of common sense is one of the key aspects in the success of the company. Hallmark also seeks innovative solutions from the staff and gets suggestions constantly. Some of these ideas suggested are tried and others are scrapped. “Every month when I get the operating report, I hear ideas from my staff that are innovative and suggest new ways of dong things better,” said James Johnson, data processing director of Hallmark Cards' data center. (Polilli, 1990)

Another aspect that the company prioritizes is the principle of design management. The company learns how design management can create a climate in which the foundations of creativity such as motivation, curiosity, fear, the breaking and making of connections and evaluation can prevail. Also, since the greeting card industry became more competitive, the company changes its creative climate to adapt in that competition. “I needed to build a creative climate inside a results-driven business culture that would nurture a wide range of creative types,” said David Welty, corporate creative director of Hallmark’s Specialty Creative Division. Thus, the creative division was segregated to protect it from the rough and tumble of the company’s larger climate. As a result, local climate was fashioned supporting, diversifying and sustaining the brand of creative talent Hallmark traded upon. Further, employees can offers classes to enhance or hone the tools of artistic expression. The company also maintains a library with magazines from around the world and a rotating art collection. Mauzy and Harriman (2003)

We can therefore conclude that Hallmark Cards developed effective strategies to successfully cope up with the changes in the market environment. These strategies let them use effectively the needed data in producing their products particularly the greeting cards and in running the entire operations of the company. Further, the open communication between the staffs and the management help the company to innovate, improve and develop new products. Maintaining the dynamics, climate and the environment of creativity to exist by nurturing and protecting the creativity of designers has been also very important to Hallmark’s success.

References

Harriman, R. & Mauzy, J. (2003, May). Creating a Climate in Which Corporate Designers Can Flourish. Design Management Institute.

Micro Strategy. (2006). Success Story: Hallmark Cards, Inc. Retrieved October 25, 2006, from www.microstrategy.com

Polilli, S. (1990, March 15). Greeting at Hallmark: Use Common Sense in Software. Software Magazine.

Wikipedia. (2006, October 14). Hallmark Cards. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved October 25, 2006, from http://en.wikipedia.org