It’s hard not to feel sorry for Hallmark Cards…
I mean, it’s a hometown institution. A company that generations of locals were raised to be proud of. And what Hallmark did with Crown Center and the surrounding area with hotels has been nothing short of amazing.
They’ve had their slip-ups here and there – like when they brushed off Martha Stewart in the 1990s just as she was beginning to take off. The Hyatt skywalks disaster in the 1980s made them look bad, even though they did a nice job of muzzling much of the criticism. And the company’s bumbling misadventure into Spanish speaking television was an embarrassing disaster.
Nobody wants to see Kansas City workers lose their jobs.
And you know, other than being overly corporate and heavy handed at times, Hallmark’s intentions have most been viewed by locals as good.
However a 2004 book I never got around to reviewing – nor did anyone else at the Kansas City Star starting with its books editor and reviewers – cast a bright light on Hallmark’s darker side.
The book published, by greeting card manufacturer Blue Mountain Arts co-founder Susan Polis Schutz, depicts former Hallmark president David Hughes and the company as shallow, callous interlopers and rip-off artists.
After stumbling onto three of what Schutz believed to be ripoffs of Blue Mountain’s cards n a mall in 1986, she turned one of them over and gasped when she saw, “Personal Touch by Hallmark.”
“The cards seemed like a cheapened version of our cards,” Schutz writes. “The cards were there, but the emotion, the essence, was gone.”
“The Hallmark salesman just told me not to carry your cards anymore,” the clerk had told Schutz’s mother. “He told her that Hallmark was coming out with a knockoff line.”
Maybe there were just those three cards, Schutz thought charitably.
However when she opened the display drawer she saw “piles of airbrushed cards that seemed to look just like ours.”
Schultz stormed out of the store angrily, tossing a handful of the Hallmark’s cards into the air.
Five shopping center stops later – after finding dozens of other Hallmark cards that looked almost exactly like Blue Mountain’s – Schutz said, “I’m calling Mr. Hughes.”
Hughes had jetted in a few months earlier to try and buy Blue mountain out.
“‘He didn’t have anything to do with this my heart was telling me,” Schutz writes.”‘He’ll say it was a big mistake, apologize, and they will stop making the cards.”
Fat chance,
Only after beaucoup litigation and a spanking by a judge did Huhes and Hallmark get their comeuppance.
“Don’t worry,” Schutz husband had told her. “We’ll fight them. They don’t know how strong willed we are.”
Hughes secretary had set up a meeting with the exec and the Blue Mountain cofounders and he’s had flown to their Colorado home.
For the grand occasion – a lunch at their home – Schutz wore leather boots, slacks and a wide leather belt and husband Steve wore tight fitting jeans, a western shirt and bolo tie.
“Mr. Hughes didn’t disappoint us,” Shcutz writes. “He arrived in a private jet and took a limousine to our home. His custom made tweed suit and impeccable hairstyle embodied refinement.
“‘I’ve been a great fan of yours for a long time,’ he said shaking our hands as we gazed at his perfectly manicured nails. ‘It’s so nice to meet you at last.’
“As I picked up my napkin, Mr. Hughes asked, ‘What are your plans for the future?’ Well, I said,’ scrambling for an answer. ‘I’ll always continue writing poems. I also want to spend more time with my children.’
“This didn’t seem to be the answer Mr. Hughes wanted, so he rephrased his question. ‘What are your plans for Blue Mountain Arts?'”
To continue what they’d been doing since the company’s founding in 1971, they told him.
“‘But when companies become a certain size, problems always arise,’ Huges said. ‘You two might be happier just creating without a business to manage’ .”
When Schutz told Hughes they only made 200 cards, he appeared surprised.
“He then asked us how a card company like ours could be so successful with so few cards. He told us Hallmark had over 11,000 designs.”
That’s when Hughes dropped the bomb, Schutz writes.
“He discussed Hallmark’s organization, and to our amazement, he confessed they’d been suffering a ‘creative shortage.’ His polished manner took on a sheepish cast. He mentioned how Hallmark had developed a corporate bureaucracy that made it difficult to keep up with the times.
“He said that Hallmark’s creativity was inefficient, uninspiring and unimaginative and that they were trying to keep up with the public’s current needs and tastes.”
After getting turned dow,n “Mr. Hughes looked into our eyes, and for the first time since we’d met him he let down his guard and asked what seemed to me, a completely unrehearsed question.
“‘How did you do it’ he inquired, nearly whispering. He wanted to know how our products were able to sell so well…That answer was simple, but I could imagine why the head of an enormous company like Hallmark might have difficulty understanding it.
“We’re not creating a product to sell…We’re creating something we love.”
“Mr. Hughes, eyebrows raised, looked at us in disbelief as we described the importance of our family and our basic philosophy of life…
“When our meeting was over Mr. Hughes called his pilot. I remember thinking that he looked uncomfortable, confused and considerably less polished than he had when he arrived.
“We shook hands again. Before entering the limousine that would take him back to corporate life in Kansas City, he turned and said, ‘If you ever change your mind, please call me.’ Relief showed on his face as he waved goodbye.”
The Schutz’s felt theyd made a new friend.
“Who knows?” they thought. “Maybe Mr, Hughes will go back and implement a plan that will bring creativity back to Hallmark.”
“A plan was implemented allright” Schutz thought as she drove home from the mall after discovering Hallmark’s new Personal Touch cards. “We concluded that Mr. Hughes was not our friend. The thought entered our minds that perhaps the purpose of his visit had been to ‘size us up.’ He might have surmised that we were two laid-back, lucky artists.”
Two laid-back, lucky artists that would do what Virginia Pell of Middle Class Values at 51st and Main had been unable to do; bring the mighty greeting card bully to its knees.
Hall-Mart, I mean Wal-Mark, I mean Hallmark. I hate seeing anyone lose a job but this company is hard to love. I mean where do you start?
– Their corporate office is hidden like a Langley, VA CIA Bunker.
– Pain in the ass for Union Station proponents.
– Crown Center is like an indoor tribute to the Reagan Administration era.
– The American Restaurant is hidden. Never had a storefront and it is a labyrinth to get up there. It feels like a place that isn’t making money but someone is keeping it going… Hall private family dining room.
– Kauffman, Helzbergs, and Cerner Boys have actually created things that are vital to our City as a whole… The Hall thing is a pretty exclusive.
– The Hyatt disaster was hidden too. The Halls should have been the face of reparations on that. They hid. They still hide. The worst day in Kansas City history and they hid… and opened Crayola Café.
Not only did they hide, but pressure was brought to bear on a local attorney who wrote a book about the behinds the scene screw ups and he was pressured into never publishing it.
Art Brisbane and I separately met with him.
If there’s one company in KC that doesn’t think the male mind can come up with greeting card copy, it’s Hallmark. For years, the company has bent over backwards to hire female writers almost exclusively. They must figure they’re more “sensitive” … or they’ve got the “Good Ole’ Girls” network humming along nicely. You know, women who want to hire other women because they keeping hearing how women are paid pennies on the dollar for what a man makes and what show Mr. Wrinkly Nutsack a thing or two. Speaking of which … their cards reek of a lack of wacky male humor that makes the smaller card companies more complete. Perhaps that’s where they went off-track.
Going back to the 60s, females were preferred to males. Males got drafted and seniority kept building.
Plus women tended to work for a few years (less than needed for a pension) and then become stay-at-home mothers.
It seems as if they’re still battling the same demons Hughes talked to Blue Mountain about.
This is just an opinion from the outside looking in, but one gets the impression that they are so white bread, uptight and paranoid that they can’t ever start to think outside of their narrow box.
They should own what’s left of the card market (I’ll leave out the word greeting because it’s so stilted and old fashioned, which is fitting for Hallmark).
It’s actually hard to fathom how they could have so badly missed out on so many trends over so many years.
My feeling is too many people were worried what the Hall Family would think and that’s on the Hall family. The younger generation is afoot – younger in the sense of mid late 50s or older – and it’s still hard to see any dramatic changes or influences. Other than layoffs and cutbacks.
What about some of the younger Halls stepping up and into the limelight, rolling up there sleeves and going on the record in a leadership way on issues of the day.
They need a Crosby Kemper – the dead one – who right or wrong wants to fight for what he thinks is right and doesn’t give a damn who knows it.
Not another generation of rich, powerful people using their influence behind the scenes to try and get their way
only two minor observations: years (and years) ago, I set about applying for a job there as a writer. I received the portfolio that you have to complete and submit to be considered. this was exercise after exercise of things like, “write four lines of birthday verse that includes a choo-choo train to an 8-year old boy from his grandmother.” I think I got about half-way through it when i realized ‘this really sucks!’ and was bored. what i wanted to write was stuff like Jack Handy’s Deep Thoughts. not exactly choo-choo train birthday card material.
a few years after that, for reasons i do not remember now, i was in their offices to see an acquaintance who worked there in the creative department. mid-manager type, wearing business dress clothes. when he got up to escort me back to the elevator, he slipped his suit coat back on. i remember thinking, “uh… you put your suit coat on to go out into the hallways? man, i would hate that.”
between the writer’s portfolio and that experience i realized i would never, ever work at hallmark and if for any reason i did end up there, I’d probably hate it.
It is said about copyrights and patents that, as soon as you open the hood, the secret is out. A good engineer or artist can copy what they see. It is a very tough profession wher the big bull business is in control, having the staff of attorneys to protect their theft or delay the penalties. We actually have some of the best here in town. Hallmark is a different beast than it was under Joyce Hall. The Hallmark Farm has made way for 18 holes, pool, tennis courts and a clubhouse. Gone are the pastures, ponds an beanfields. Gone is Dallas, Missouri. It seems a corporate structure based on love cannot continue to exist when it becomes big business, and according to Blue Mountain, it becomes a non-feeling conglomerate, the GE of caring. Almost 70 years ago, there were five iconic Kansas City businesses, Yellow Freight, Hallmark Cards, Russell Stovers, and Marion Labs, and JC Nichols. Where are they now? Perhaps it was management; perhaps it was funding; perhaps it is just changing times. After all, 150 years later, that 150 shares of Ford was a theater in DC, not a car company. When looking at businesses in the area that survive the century mark, there are some surprises, like Monarch in Humbolt, Kansas. We long for the old days. The one thing we can count on is change, and even the sale of Boulevard brings challenge to local business leadership. Let’s hope the next crop of midwest business is equally iconic.
You forgot Kansas City Southern..
The next crop?
Well, AMC became huge as well and now the Chinese own it. Sprint is practically a ghost living in a ghost town of it’s own making.
I talked about this with Craig Glazer a few months back, who today deserves to have a statue erected? Steve Rose thinks Kay Barnes does, but there are plenty of people who think she mortgaged the city in an unhealthy way.
Does she deserve credit for downtown? Hey, downtown was going to come back one way or another. Stan Durwood didn’t live long enough to pull it iff, but it was destined to happen. And it’s still got a long way to go.
Who’s your statue candidate?
Stan Glazer of course. For building what one person considers an “Institution” and for siring an offspring who spent time in one.
C’mon, Monarch…
You can do better. Can’t you?
I say, Ollie Gates would work. He’s done a lot for the community and his community and he’s grown his restaurant into a local institution.
Kay Barnes gets me erected! Granny porn. Yummy!