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Hallmark makes and sells greeting cards, gift wrap, ornaments, and other keepsakes, mostly through its own stores and other retailers.
Hallmark is the company behind the cards people buy when they need to say something they can't quite put into words — happy birthday, sorry for your loss, congratulations, get well soon. It is a private, family-owned business based in Kansas City, Missouri, and it is still controlled by the descendants of its founder, Joyce Hall, who started selling postcards out of a shoebox more than a century ago. Greeting cards remain the heart of the company, but Hallmark also owns the Gold Crown Hallmark store chain, the Crayola crayon brand, and a media arm that once produced the famous Hallmark Hall of Fame television movies.
The basic business is simple: Hallmark designs the card, prints it, and sells it at a markup to retailers like drugstores, supermarkets, and its own shops, which then sell it to you for a few dollars. The hard part isn't printing paper — it's the brand. Hallmark spends heavily on design and marketing so that when you stand in the card aisle feeling awkward, you reach for the name you trust to get the tone right. That emotional pull is why it can charge more than a generic card and why rivals have struggled to knock it off its perch. The business has real cracks. People send far fewer paper cards than they used to, and digital messages, e-cards, and social media have eaten into the occasions that once demanded a trip to the store. Hallmark has responded by leaning on its stores, its ornaments, and licensing deals, and it has cut costs and closed underperforming locations over the years. Competitors like American Greetings and a swarm of cheaper store-brand cards keep pressure on prices.
Hallmark is a case study in a beloved brand fighting a slow shift in how people communicate. It still sells billions of cards and remains the biggest name in the category, but the growth story is no longer about paper — it's about whether the company can turn nostalgia and design into money in a world that increasingly says "happy birthday" with a text.
Saved answer · last researched 4 Nov 2026