Joyce C. Hall

Born: August 29, 1891
David City, Nebraska
Died: Oct. 29, 1982
Kansas City, Missouri
Founder and CEO, Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Joyce C. Hall always put quality first, whether it came to products, customers, or employees. Because of this, Hall, a high school dropout, was able to build a multibillion-dollar greeting card empire that diversified into a wide variety of products and services, including residential and commercial property, art supplies, gift wrap and accessories, and television programming. In less than one hundred years, Hallmark went from a tiny postcard shop in Kansas City, Missouri, to the world's largest manufacturer and distributor of greeting cards, with thousands of retail outlets around the globe and annual sales of $4 billion.

A Boy Named Joyce

Joyce Clyde Hall was born on August 29, 1891, in the tiny farm town of David City, Nebraska. He was the youngest of three sons born to George Nelson Hall, a preacher, and Nancy Dudley Houston Hall. George and Nancy Hall were very religious, using the name of a Methodist bishop, Isaac W. Joyce, when it came time to christen their youngest boy. When Joyce Hall was just a child, his father died. Hall and his siblings, older brothers Rollie and William and younger sister Marie, were raised by their semi-invalid mother.

Hall went to work at the age of eight. A year later, his entrepreneurial talent already showed. He was only nine when he began to sell cosmetics and soap door-to-door for the California Perfume Company, which later became Avon Products, Inc. (see entry). When Hall was ten years old, the family moved to Norfolk, Nebraska, where Rollie and William had purchased a book and stationery store. In 1905, a Chicago salesman visited the store and convinced Hall that there was money to be made in selling postcards. Hall, then sixteen, invested his life savings of about $170 into the venture and convinced Rollie and William each to match his investment.

Together, they founded the Norfolk Post Card Company, importing foreign postcards and selling them to local merchants. During the school year, Hall was the company's order filler and card sorter. During vacations he took to the streets, selling both the postcards and a sawdust sweeping compound. The business struggled to survive and in 1910, Hall dropped out of high school and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, with a suitcase of clothes and two shoeboxes of postcards. He began selling the cards to drugstores, bookstores, and gift shops. Hall's brother Rollie joined him in 1911 and they opened a small book, card, and gift shop in downtown Kansas City, buying products designed and manufactured elsewhere and selling them wholesale.

Company and Business Leader

Although the business was a brotherly effort, Joyce Hall was the company's backbone. He constantly looked for ways to modernize things and kept his finger on the pulse of public tastes. Through the 1920s, Hall expanded the inventory to include Christmas and other decorative seals, party invitations, sympathy cards, and calendars, all of which were big hits with customers in a time of economic boom. But Hall also paid attention to his personal life. On March 25, 1922, he married family friend Elizabeth Ann Didlay. They had three children, Elizabeth Ann, Barbara Louise, and Donald Joyce.

In the 1930s, Hall introduced a number of new marketing and sales strategies, such as an automatic reorder system, and self-service open display racks. Previously, cards were kept behind the sales counter and customers had to have a clerk pick out choices for them. People loved being able to sort through the cards on their own, and business soared.

The decade also brought the Great Depression, which devastated the nation's economy. Hall worked hard to ensure that his employees would keep their jobs. He was also dedicated to returning prosperity to the United States. The 1930 Joyce Hall Prosperity Plan was embraced and promoted by Rotary Clubs throughout the country. Rotary Clubs are community-based business organizations. The plan encouraged suppliers and customers to buy materials in advance, providing working capital for companies. According to Hall, his plan allowed people to keep working and earning wages. It also kept the spending cycle going. Some newspapers credited Hall and his plan with aiding the country's eventual economic recovery.

During the 1950s, Hall took a stand against the Cold Warera threat of nuclear destruction, and became involved in a peace-keeping effort. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) invited Hall and other prominent American businessmen to the White House for an important discussion. The meeting concerned establishing an organization to promote world peace. The resulting organization was called People-to-People. It was an effort to foster mutual understanding, respect, and friendship between American citizens and citizens of the world. Hall served on the group's board of directors and was chairman of People-to-People's executive committee. During his service, he made several trips overseas to promote the peace initiative.

A few years later, Hall started the Hallmark Corporate Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides funds to Kansas City-area organizations and schools. The foundation's gifts have included grants to the University of Kansas to establish a business professorship and a design professorship, and annual scholarships for students at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Never Slowing Down

Hall's outside activities took up much of his time and he found that he was less able to focus his attention on running a company. He gradually weaned himself away from managing day-to-day operations of Hallmark, finally retiring as CEO in 1966. Hall continued to serve as chairman of the company's board of directors, but he soon found a new interest: land development. The urban decay surrounding Hallmark's Kansas City headquarters bothered him and when the city failed to take action, Hall launched the redevelopment himself. Within ten years, he had built the 85-acre Crown Center. The residential, office, hotel, and entertainment district brought renewed interest to the area, and revitalization spread to nearby neighborhoods.

Because of his work with Crown Center and his charitable activities, Hall never totally retired. Not one to drop out of sight, he also continued to keep a close watch on the quality of Hallmark products until his death in 1982 at the age of ninety-one. Hall believed the secret to his success was that throughout his life, he demanded excellence—from himself and from those around him. He also believed that he succeeded in business because he simply worked harder than anyone else. Not surprising for a man who asked millions of people to "care enough to send the very best."