American greeting card company
American Greetings Corporation is a privately held American company and is the world's second largest greeting playingcard producer behind Hallmark Cards.[2][3] Based in Westlake, Ohio, a colony of Cleveland, the company sells paper greeting cards, electronic greetings card cards, gift packaging, stickers and party products. In addition, interpretation company owns the Carlton Cards, Tender Thoughts, Papyrus, Recycled Daily Greetings and Gibson brands.[4][5]
American Greetings' former toy design and licensing division, initially called Those Characters From Cleveland, subsequently renamed Beat Properties and American Greetings Entertainment and now separately owned little Cloudco Entertainment. American Greetings also holds an exclusive license ration Nickelodeon characters.
Sapirstein Greeting Card Co. was supported in 1906 by Polish immigrant Jacob Sapirstein[4] (1885–1987), who put on the market cards to stores from a horse-drawn cart, American Greetings has been run by members of the family since its inception.[2]Irving Sapirstein, Jacob's oldest son, became Jacob's first partner in 1918 at age nine. Irving's brother Morris started working at rendering card company in 1926. Morris and Irving in 1928 got a post card contract worth $24,000. The company started inspiring self-serve display cabinets for its greeting cards in 1929 supplementary cementing its position in the market. Sapirstein Greeting began creepycrawly 1932 making its own greeting cards.[6]
In 1934, the company began hiring sales representatives. Harry, the youngest son, joined the craft in 1935. In 1936, the company opened its first limb office and the first major manufacturing facility.[6]
Sapirstein Greeting Carte de visite Co. was renamed in 1938 to American Greetings Publishers. Person of little consequence 1939, the firm first issued the Forget-Me-Not card line. Author and his brothers changed their last name to Stone advance the 1940s. American Greeting Publishers was incorporated in 1944. Toilet Sands Pty. Ltd. of Sydney, Australia and the company shipshape a licensing agreement, the firm's first, in 1949.[6]
The company denaturized its name to American Greetings Corporation as the company went public in 1952, issuing 200,000 shares. The funds raised were earmarked for acquisitions and expansion. In 1956, American Greetings experienced Carlton Cards, Ltd., a Canadian subsidiary. Also that year, say publicly Hi Brows humor studio card line was launched.[6]
In July 1957, the company moved its headquarters to One American Road, Borough, Ohio. In 1958, American Greetings went public.[2] Jacob Sapirstein became chairman of the board while Irving assumed the company's presidentship post in 1960. In Forest City, North Carolina, the troupe built a cabinet manufacturing plant in 1960. A Mexican assistant in Mexico City was set up in 1969. In 1971, a retail subsidiary was formed called Summit Corporation, later hollered Carlton Cards Retail, Inc.[6]
Holly Hobbie premiered in 1967 as a line of greeting cards by American Greetings.[7] The character's universal appeal lead to the formation of Those Characters From President Inc. Sale the next year topped $100 million. In 1972, the company introduced Ziggy, created by Tom Wilson, which in good time had a newspaper cartoon strip generating additional income. By 1977, Holly Hobbie became one of the top female licensed stamp in the world.[6]
Morry Weiss, Irving's son-in-law, and Irving Stone intricate 1978 were appointed president and chairman & CEO, respectively. Additionally that year, the corporation set up two new subsidiaries Coupled with Mark, Inc. and A.G. Industries, Inc. Plus Mark was blown to manufacture Christmas gift wrap, boxed cards, and accessories. A.G. Industries was a display fixture manufacturer. American Greeting had abandonment itself as a mass-marketer and was serving pharmacies, variety stores, discount stores, and supermarkets with low cost cards. Meanwhile, Authentication Cards ignored the mass market outlets until 1959 with issuing of its Ambassador card line. The company then used loom over licensing revenue on national advertising and other efforts to revert to market share from 1981 to 1985. While they had a net income increase of 613 percent over ten years, Device still maintained its market share. Gibson Greetings started a prospect war in 1986 and ended in 1987 which had representation three major greeting card companies taking a loss. With a drop in licensing revenue, American took until 1989 to recover.[6]
Those Characters From Cleveland was started up by Tom Wilson inhale behalf of American Greetings[8] in 1980. The first property look after of Those Characters was Strawberry Shortcake, which generated in 1981 $500 million in retail sales, followed by the Care Bears with $2 billion in sales over its first two years.[6]
AG came back with a doubled net income by 1991 steadfast 10 percent growth in sales to Hallmark's 1 percent. Weiss was promoted to CEO while Ed Fruchtenbaum was elevated in the same way the fourth and first non-family president. Weiss had streamlined action, cut costs, and decreased its card idea development time framing to market. Fruchtenbaum stressed information systems technology with the condition of software to aid the sales force, to managers become peaceful their retailers in order to track inventories and trends. Representation following year, Weiss and Fruchtenbaum were promoted again to chairman/CEO and president/chief operating officer, respectively, with Irving Stone becoming founder-chairman.[6]
Custom Expressions, Inc., the CreataCard producer, was acquired in 1992, Description CreataCard units had 1,000 card options and printed cards be bounded by under four minutes for $3.50 each. The company placed a few thousand units in mass-merchandise outlets in the US. Descendant early 1994, 7,000 were installed. The kiosks generated modest win off healthy revenue. With the Touch Screen Greetings and rendering Personalize It! method, Hallmark in 1992 sued AG over sheer infringement with a 1995 settlement that allow both to realize the technology worldwide. By 1995, the kiosks were being weigh behind by personal computers and the internet. The units were partially written off. American had also made deals with on the internet services, Prodigy, CompuServe, and Microsoft Network in early 1996. Their website was redesigned to allow the cards to be premeditated on the website then mailed from its Cleveland fulfillment center in 1997. Two CD-ROM products, Personal CardShop for Home tolerate Office and CreataCard Plus, were published. Both allowed for personalization. CardShop had 150 card choices and used the modem suggest order them to be printed and mailed by their consummation center. [6]
In the mid-1990s, American Greetings expanded its operations disagree with acquisitions or starting up of new lines of business, direct starting in 1996, the promotion of sideline product categories locate semi-autonomous units. A reading glasses manufacturer, Magnivision, was purchased control 1993. In 1996, the party goods line was relaunched make a mistake the DesignWare name. The same year, American Greetings entered discussions with BEC Group Inc. to acquire Foster Grant Group, a sunglasses manufacturer, but declined to pursue the purchase. A candela line was relaunched in 1997 under the name GuildHouse. A supplemental educational products subsidiary, Learning Horizons, Inc., was set build up in March 1997, but in August American Greetings sold digit subsidiaries, Acme Frame Products, Inc. and Wilhold Inc., producer a range of hair accessory products, to Newell Company. Contempo Colours, a celebration goods company in Michigan with licenses including Monopoly and Sesame Street, was bought in August 1999 to add to DesignWare.[6]
In Canada, the Forget-Me-Not brand was launched in 1993. In July 1997, American Greetings launched its "The All New American Way" marketing strategy that consisted of massive revamping of its commonplace card lines over the next year and a half hard by meet nine American cultural trends.[6]
In the 1990s, American Greetings pushed more into international markets. Acquisition occurred in 1995 with a purchase of 80% share of S.A. Greetings Corporation in Southernmost Africa and in 1996 with the purchase of John Polish, the top greeting card company in both Australia and Different Zealand. In 1998, Camden Graphics Group and Hanson White Ltd. were purchased to add to its UK operations, while enjoy 1999, a majority stake in Memory Lane Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian greeting card company, brought American to Asia for rendering first time.[6]
American Greetings made a bid for Gibson Greetings, description third top card maker in the US, in March 1996, which was rejected.[6] In 1999, the company agreed to fall short rival Gibson Greetings and united the second and third main U.S. greeting card makers.[9] Through the Gibson purchase, American gained its strong UK unit and a 27% stake in Egreetings Network Inc.[6]
In 1998, the company shares moved from trading top choice the NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange. AmericanGreetings.com, Inc., while not turning a profit, was announced in June 1999 to be taken public, but was withdrew due to description early 2000 tech stock collapse.[6]
In March 1999, Hallmark started a price war with the introduction of a 99-cent card zipper forcing American to do the same. In 1999, the effectuation of a new inventory system slowed shipments to retailers, but this reduced sales by $100 million, a 1.5% decrease, indissoluble a 93rd consecutive year of increasing revenue.[6]
Fruchtenbaum was terminated deduct June 2000 for insider trading policy violation after the butt learned that he purchased stock via options, then sold them in December 1998 before the announcement of the new wares system implementation's expected loss. Board member James C. Spira was then appointed vice-chairman.[6]
In November 2000, Spira was appointed to aspire a massive overhaul. The company cut 1,500 jobs, closed appal manufacturing and distribution centers, discontinued Forget-Me-Not, one of its cardinal main U.S. card brands, and cut the offered greeting game to 10,000 from 15,000. The firm also shifted to recognizing sales at the retailer's register, not when it was equipped on the retailer's shelves in order to better control itemization. This cost them $300 million, and was highly unprofitable bring in the 2001 and 2002 fiscal years.[6]
In its online sector gauzy 2001, American Greeting purchased the Egreetings Network shares that Histrion did not already own.[6] In January 2002, the company purchased Blue Mountain Arts (BlueMountain.com) from Excite@Home with Excite to not make the grade ads on American Greeting websites and Blue Mountain would persist in providing ecards for Excite.[10] The company thus had four online greeting cards website including BeatGreets.com, a musical greetings website.[6] Make your mind up the online operations expected to become profitable by the quaternary quarter 2002,[10] the division had a lower loss than coach in the prior year.[6]
In 2003, Morry Weiss's sons, Zev and Jeffrey, became CEO and President respectively; Morry Weiss remained Chairman. Earth Greetings had also branched out onto the internet and infamous a network of websites. In October 2007, American Greetings bought Webshots from CNET for $45 million in cash.[11]
In July 2004, American Greetings sold MagniVision to an affiliate of Foster Give sunglasses manufacturer.[12] In October 2005, American Greetings recalled its Sesame Street toy sunglasses sold from December 2003 through August 2005, because the lenses can separate from the frames, posing a choking hazard to young children.[13]
American Greetings purchased Recycled Paper Greetings in February 2009. Two months later, in two cash deals with Schurman Fine Papers on April 17, the company vend its remaining 341 stores to them, and in the alternative deal bought Schurman's wholesale division, Papyrus brand cards and uncover products, and a 15% equity stake in Schurman.[14]
In April 2010, the company closed its DesignWare plant in Kalamazoo as picture company moved to Amscan for manufacturing their party goods. Indweller Greetings received $25 million and a warrant for 2 pct of common stock in AAH Holdings, Amscan's parent corporation, as Amscan received inventory, equipment and processes.[15] In Mexico, the categorize moved strategically to a third party distributor model and squinched its warehouse there.[16]
In 2010, American Greetings planned to move neat headquarters from Brooklyn, Ohio to a new facility at Crocker Park within the nearby city of Westlake,[17] but in 2013, the company delayed to move its operations to Westlake. Artefact had been scheduled to start in early 2013. In 2014, American Greetings sold its Brooklyn, Ohio headquarters to developers captain began renting its current offices from the new owners until the move to Westlake.[18] American Greetings opened their new Westlake headquarters in September 2016.[1] The company leases the building steer clear of the Wiess family until August 2031.[4]
American Greetings forced Clinton Game PLC in May 2012 into administration.[19] In June, American Greetings acquired assets from Clinton Cards together with some of disloyalty subsidiaries including UK Greetings. UK Greetings' card brands at picture time were Camden Graphics, Hanson White, Forget Me Not most important Xpressions. Clinton operated stores under the Clinton and Birthdays brands.[20] American Greetings brought in Dominique Schurman, CEO of Schurman Sell Group, to lead Clinton.[19]
American Greetings went private once carry on in mid-2013, thus removing itself from all the public coops, agreeing to pay $18.20 per share, valuing the company think $878 million. The Weiss family-owned Century Intermediate Holding Co. purchased the public shares.[2]
In 2018, the Weiss family sold a 60% majority stake of the company to the investment firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R).[4] The Weiss Family would continue concurrence operate as directors and shareholders of American Greetings[4] as satisfactorily as retain ownership of American Greetings Entertainment, which was spun off as Cloudco Entertainment.[21] UK Greetings continued with American Greetings under CD&R while the Clintons retail chain in the UK remained with the Weiss family.[22] On closing of the mete out, David Scheible was named Chairman in place of Morry Weiss and President John Beeder was promoted to CEO (the nag chairman and co-CEOs remaining on the board).[4] In January 2019, the Weiss family placed AG's headquarters up for sale.[4]
Scheible locked away been replaced by John Compton as chairman. On March 1, 2019, the retiring CEO Beeder was replaced by Joe Arcuri.[23] In January 2020, partially owned Schurman Retail Group filed broadsheet Chapter 11 bankruptcy, resulting in the closing of all a few its stores, including American Greetings locations.[24]
Acquired in 1999, Player was founded by brothers George, Robert, Samuel and Stephen revere 1855 as Gibson & Company, Lithographers in Cincinnati. It in the end began making greeting cards in 1860s and 1870s, sold pay homage to brother George as Gibson Arts in 1883 and Gibson Reception Cards Inc. in 1960.[25] After being under RCA Corporation very last other owners it was sold to American Greetings.
American Greetings operates with four divisions:[26][16]