Just because someone does not graduate high school does not mean they are doomed to fail. Joyce Clyde Hall was born on August 29, 1891, in David City, Nebraska. Because he was born into a very religious family, he was given the first name Joyce because he was born on the day that Isaac W. Joyce, a Methodist bishop, was in town. Never favoring the name, Joyce Joyce Hall was the youngest son of George Nelson Hall and Nancy Dudley Houston Hall. Coming from a poor family, at only eight years old, he started his very first job as a farm hand. A year later, he went on to become a door-to-door salesman of cosmetics and soap for the California Perfume Company, which is known today as Avon. In 1902 Joyce's two older brothers, William and Rollie, moved to Norfolk, Nebraska, and opened a book store, and soon the rest of the family joined them. Joyce then went to work in the At the age of sixteen, Joyce and his two brothers, thinking there was a large market for imported postcards, they decided to open the Norfolk Post Card Company. However, there was not a high enough demand for postcards in Norfolk. Realizing there might be an opportunity for better business elsewhere, eighteen-year-old J.C. Hall dropped out of high school and took a train to Kansas City, Missouri, carrying shoeboxes filled with post cards and high hopes for the future. Upon his arrival he only had enough money to rent a small room at the YMCA; and for the next year, this became his home, office, and stockroom. His business was going well, and soon his brother Rollie joined him in the business. By 1912 J.C. and Rollie were able to further expand their business and open more stores in Kansas City and Chicago. Just when their business was taking off in 1915, only a couple of weeks before Valentine's Day, a fire swept through their warehouse. Their entire inventory of Valentine's Day cards was destroyed leaving the brothers $17,000 in debt. However, they were not about to give Joyce Hall borrowed money to purchase a local engraving firm, and he and Rollie were able to refill their stock quickly and fairly cheaply by printing their own cards just in time for the Joyce Hall soon began to experiment with other concepts for cards; for, at the time, most greeting cards were only made for Valentine's Day and the Christmas season. However, Hall believed that people would enjoy the idea of cheap "everyday" greeting cards that they could Joyce Hall introduced his first "everyday card" in 1919. It used a line from the poet Edgar Guest: "I'd like to be the kind of friend you've been to me." This verse quickly became a bestseller. The success of this first line of cards encouraged the Hall brothers to expand their card themes even more to include birthday, anniversary, inspirational, and get-well messages. World War I added to the brothers' success as folks back home rushed to send "missing you" cards to By the early 1920s, the all-occasion cards were being sold in stores throughout the East and Midwest, which did not go unnoticed by the Halls' main competitor, American Greetings, which had also begun selling all-occasion cards. In response to the increased competition and to further expand and gain national recognition, Hall re-named the company Hallmark-a name that suggested the highest quality. Today Hallmark cards are printed in thirty languages and are available in over thirty countries.
Works Cited
"Hallmark Founder J.C. Hall." Hallmark Corporate Information. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015. "Joyce C. Hall." Joyce C. Hall. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015. "Joyce Clyde Hall." Entrepreneur. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.
"Hallmark Founder J.C. Hall." Hallmark Corporate Information. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015. "Joyce C. Hall." Joyce C. Hall. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015. "Joyce Clyde Hall." Entrepreneur. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.