Greeting Card Publishers (U.S.) — NAICS 513191

An investor's primer. Figures are reported facts with citations; statements about the future are labeled as judgments. Federal statistics are the ground truth; industry and retail figures are third-party estimates and are flagged as such.

1. Overview

Greeting card publishers design, write, and produce the cards people buy for birthdays, holidays, sympathy, weddings, and everyday sentiments — in print and, increasingly, in electronic and personalized-online form. It is one of the oldest and most concentrated consumer-products niches in the United States: two privately held giants — Hallmark Cards and American Greetings — control the overwhelming majority of it [7][10].

Why it matters to an investor: this is a mature, cash-generative, slowly shrinking category, not a growth story. Industry groups estimate roughly 6.5 billion cards are bought in the U.S. each year, generating $7 billion-plus in retail sales, but paper-card volumes have drifted down for two decades as texting, social media, and e-cards substitute for paper [17]. The interesting economics sit in the mix: very high product gross margins offset by heavy creative, licensing, and in-store fixture costs — plus a few pockets that are still growing (premium/artisan cards, personalization, and digital greetings).

The ways in differ sharply by investor type, and that is the single most important thing to understand about this industry:

• Public-market investors have only indirect or foreign-listed exposure. There is no U.S.-listed pure-play greeting-card stock. The nearest proxies are UK-listed online-card and gift-and-card companies, custom-print platforms, and marketplaces — each a bet on an adjacent or foreign slice, not on the two U.S. leaders.
• Private investors have the real access points: the industry is dominated by privately held Hallmark and by American Greetings, whose majority passed to Elliott Investment Management in February 2025 [12]. Building or buying a small independent card line is also a genuine, low-capital private route.

2. What it is and how it's structured

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) places greeting-card publishers in the Information sector, subsector 513 (Publishing Industries). NAICS 513191 covers establishments primarily engaged in publishing greeting cards — the creative and commercial function of developing card lines and bringing them to market, whether in print or electronic form, including cards published only on the internet [4].

A publisher develops or licenses artwork, photography, written messages, characters, and designs; selects a catalog; arranges printing or digital delivery; and sells through retailers, wholesalers, websites, subscriptions, or corporate programs. The value chain runs:

creative development and licensing → catalog selection → printing or digital production → wholesale/direct distribution → in-store merchandising and reorders

The "publishing" distinction defines the scope, and several adjacent activities are excluded:

• Printing without publishing — a commercial printer that merely prints cards to someone else's order — is classified in NAICS 323111 (Commercial Printing), not here [4].
• Greeting-card retail (Hallmark Gold Crown shops, Papyrus stores) sits in retail-trade codes, not 513191.
• Gift wrap, party goods, stationery, and ribbon are separate manufacturing/publishing niches; diversified paper-and-gift companies (e.g., the former CSS Industries) straddle several codes.

In the 2022 NAICS revision, greeting-card publishing moved into the reorganized Publishing Industries subsector; the prior (2017) code was 511191 (Greeting Card Publishers), with internet-only cards previously split under internet publishing — now consolidated in 513191 [4].

Ownership mix. This is not a public-company industry.

• Hallmark Cards, Inc. is a private, family-controlled company. The Hall family holds majority ownership (employees own the remainder) and continues to sit on the board; Hallmark says it has stayed private since its founding [6][7]. Its card brands include Hallmark and the faith-focused DaySpring.
• American Greetings Corporation is privately held. Elliott Investment Management acquired a majority stake in February 2025; Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) and the founding Weiss family retained significant minority interests [9][12].
• A long independent tail of small specialist and founder-led publishers, artist studios, and digital startups sits below them — most tiny, many sole proprietors. The Greeting Card Association (GCA), the industry's trade body, says it represents more than 230 U.S. and international publishers and suppliers — a membership count, not a U.S. firm count [14].

3. How big it is

The federal figures describe the publisher/manufacturer level of the business (what publishers themselves book in revenue), which is much smaller than what shoppers spend at retail. County Business Patterns (CBP) figures are for 2023; Economic Census concentration and firm figures are for 2022 — they are different vintages and should not be read as a single-year growth series.

Two things stand out. First, the industry is extraordinarily concentrated: the top 4 firms took 91.5% of receipts, the top 8 took 95%, and the top 20 took 98.6% [2]. (A concentration ratio, e.g. CR4, is the combined revenue share of the largest n firms. The HHI, the other standard concentration score, is suppressed in the federal data [2].) Second, the average of about 123 employees per establishment [1] is arithmetically true but economically meaningless: two companies dominate and roughly 85 others split the remainder.

The retail-vs-publisher gap. Shoppers spend an estimated $7 billion-plus a year on roughly 6.5 billion cards [17]; the federal $3.0 billion in receipts is the publishers' cut before the retailer's markup [2][17]. "Receipts" are publisher-side business receipts, not retail scan sales — the wedge between the two is the retail margin (see §5).

Undercount caveat. The federal count of 87 firms / 106 establishments genuinely understates the creative ecosystem, for three reasons:

1. Nonemployers are invisible. CBP counts only businesses with payroll; firms with no employees are covered separately in Census's Nonemployer Statistics [5]. The thousands of solo artists, Etsy sellers, and home-based card-makers who sell without employees fall outside the 87/106 tallies.
2. Classification bleed. A diversified company books each site under that site's primary activity. Hallmark alone employs on the order of 20,000–30,000 people [7], but only its card-publishing operations land in 513191 — its Crayola crayon plants, Hallmark Media (the Hallmark Channel), and Gold Crown retail stores are counted under other codes. That is a big reason industry employment reads as only ~13,000.
3. Private-label and diversified producers. Cards made for a retailer's house brand, or by paper/gift firms whose primary code is elsewhere, don't all show up here.

Read the federal numbers as an accurate picture of dedicated card-publishing firms, not of everyone who publishes a card.

4. The investable universe

There is no U.S.-listed pure-play greeting-card stock. The category leaders are private, so public-market exposure is peripheral or foreign-listed. (Tickers appear here and in §10 only; abbreviations: LSE = London Stock Exchange, NYSE = New York Stock Exchange.)

Beyond these, U.S. mass, grocery, drug, and dollar retailers (e.g., Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree) carry cards, but greeting cards are a tiny line in each — retail-channel exposure only, not a card investment.

Private / other owners (where the industry actually lives). The long tail includes Avanti Press, Leanin' Tree, Design Design, and hundreds of indie studios, plus digital-first players (Punchbowl, Paperless Post, JibJab, Jacquie Lawson, Greetings Island). For most investors the practical exposure is either the peripheral public tickers above or a private stake — because the heart of the industry is not public.

5. How the money works

Greeting cards are a high-gross-margin, high-overhead product business. The economics that matter are unit economics, seasonality, and the retail markup — not the metrics used for capital-heavy or regulated industries.

Unit economics of a $3 card (illustrative). The physical card costs the publisher only roughly $0.20–$0.50 to make; the publisher wholesales it to a retailer for on the order of $1.50; the retailer keeps the difference [21][22]. That is why headline product margins can run very high. But publishers spend that margin back on:

• Creative labor — writers, artists, editors — the real cost center, because the product is the sentiment and the art.
• Licensing and royalties — a mid-single-digit percentage of price for licensed characters and artwork; premium/licensed lines pay more [22].
• In-store fixtures and merchandising — publishers typically fund the display racks and often manage the planograms (shelf layouts) and reorders in stores. That is a meaningful service cost and a barrier to entry [21].

Revenue lines run beyond single cards to boxed cards, personalized/photo products, e-cards, subscriptions, licensing, and attached gifts and paper goods. Major costs are creative and royalties; paper, ink, envelopes, finishing, and packaging; printing, warehousing, freight, and fulfillment; retailer allowances, merchandising labor, returns, and markdowns; and — for digital lines — hosting, payment processing, and customer acquisition. Capacity utilization matters mainly for vertically integrated publishers with their own presses; asset-light publishers are better judged on supplier reliability, catalog productivity, and contribution margin.

Seasonality. Demand is calendar-driven. Christmas is the single largest card occasion, followed by Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, and graduation; birthdays are the biggest everyday (non-seasonal) occasion and provide the steady base load [17]. (Moonpig, as one data point, reported that 88% of physical card purchases in its own business were tied to annual events — a company figure, not a U.S. industry statistic [29].) Publishers build seasonal inventory year-round, which is why federal quarterly payroll is fairly even — first-quarter payroll of $121M is about a quarter of the $459M annual total [1] — even though sell-through spikes. Unsold seasonal stock is a real cost; returns and markdowns eat into margin in the weaker parts of the trade [21].

Volume down, price up. U.S. card volume has slipped from around 7 billion cards a year in the early 2000s toward ~6.5 billion, but publishers have partly offset that with premiumization — fewer cards at higher prices, from $1 dollar-store cards up to $6–$12 premium and handcrafted ones [17]. An estimated ~40% of cards are handed directly to the recipient rather than mailed, which cushions the industry against postal decline [21].

For a private buyer, the useful operating metrics are sell-through and reorder rates by SKU (stock-keeping unit); revenue and gross profit per display facing or per store; returns, markdowns, and obsolete inventory; gross margin after retailer allowances and merchandising; cost per card for paper, printing, freight, and labor; inventory turns and seasonal working capital; and — for digital — subscription retention and repeat-purchase rates. The owner's return comes from steady replacement demand, pricing power on premium lines, a dominant shelf position, and disciplined creative and inventory management.

6. What drives demand

• Demographics and life events. Card demand tracks the number of households and the cadence of birthdays, weddings, births, and deaths. Older cohorts buy and send more cards than younger ones, so an aging population is a modest tailwind even as habits shift [15].
• The occasion calendar. Holidays concentrate demand; a strong or weak Christmas/Valentine's season can swing a publisher's year [17].
• Retail foot traffic. Cards are heavily impulse- and destination-bought at mass merchants, grocery, drug, and dollar stores. Card sales rise and fall with those channels' traffic, and the shift of traffic online is a structural drag [18][19].
• Generational behavior — a mixed signal. Digital substitution is the headwind, but Millennials — now among the largest card buyers by dollars — and Gen Z have proven more willing than expected to pay for premium, artisan, humor, and inclusive cards, treating a good card as a small gift rather than an afterthought [15][16].
• Format and personalization. Foil, die-cut, musical, and interactive formats, plus photo/name personalization and licensed characters, support price and differentiation [16].
• Digital greetings and B2B. E-cards, app-based greetings, and subscriptions (Punchbowl, Paperless Post, JibJab, Moonpig, Hallmark and Blue Mountain e-cards) grow off a small base, and corporate/business-to-business card programs add a steadier commercial layer [16][29].

The central tension is substitution: texts, social media, free e-cards, do-it-yourself design tools, and now generative AI can replace some occasions — while also spawning new personalized formats.

7. Regulation

Greeting-card publishing is lightly regulated — there is no industry-specific licensing regime — but several external rules bite:

• Button-battery safety (Reese's Law). Musical and light-up cards contain small coin/button-cell batteries. Under Reese's Law and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) mandatory standard (16 CFR part 1263, incorporating ANSI/UL 4200A — the Code of Federal Regulations and the American National Standards Institute / Underwriters Laboratories safety standard), such products must have child-resistant battery compartments and specific warnings; product requirements applied from October 2023 and packaging-label requirements from September 2024. Publishers of electronic cards must certify compliance [23].
• Postal standards. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) regulates card size, thickness, rigidity, weight, and machinability; non-standard designs raise postage. Rate changes affect the cost of mailing cards, though the ~40% handed over in person blunt the impact [24].
• Copyright. Original text, artwork, photographs, and illustrations are protected intellectual property (IP); publishers need clear contracts with artists and writers covering ownership, license scope, territory, formats, and duration [25].
• Trademarks and licensing. Brand names, logos, and licensed characters require clearance or licenses from the rights holder; the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) governs trademark registration [26].
• Environmental marketing claims. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Green Guides require substantiation for claims such as "recyclable," "compostable," or "made with recycled content" — increasingly relevant as younger buyers and retailers push on paper sourcing (e.g., FSC — Forest Stewardship Council — certification) [27].
• Digital marketing. The CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) applies to commercial email — relevant to e-card and subscription businesses — requiring truthful headers, opt-out, and disclosures [28].
• Trade and tariffs. Paper costs and tariffs on imported cards, envelopes, and paper (notably from China) feed directly into input costs.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is close to a duopoly. Hallmark is the U.S. leader at an estimated ~40% share, and American Greetings is the strong #2; together the two are commonly estimated at more than 80% of U.S. card sales — consistent with the federal CR4 of 91.5% [2][7][10].

Scale advantages are hard to dislodge: national retailer relationships, field merchandising and display management, broad catalogs across occasions and price points, licensing access and brand recognition, purchasing power in paper/printing/freight, and proprietary sell-through data. New entrants can launch cheaply through print-on-demand, marketplaces, social media, and direct sales; winning national retail distribution is the hard part, because it demands consistent fulfillment, retailer service, working capital, and proven sell-through.

Three dynamics define the picture:

1. Brand roll-up into American Greetings. Over the years it absorbed Papyrus, Carlton Cards, Gibson, Recycled Paper Greetings, and Blue Mountain — turning former rivals into a house of brands [10].
2. Private-equity (PE) ownership churn. American Greetings went from a public Weiss-family company to a 2013 take-private, to a ~60% CD&R stake in 2018, to Elliott taking majority control in February 2025 (with CD&R and the Weiss family retaining minority positions) [11][12]. Each transition adds leverage and a return clock, and shows that established card assets still attract financial sponsors.
3. Retail-channel upheaval. The specialty card-shop model has shrunk sharply: Papyrus closed all ~250 of its U.S. and Canadian stores in 2020 [13], and Hallmark's Gold Crown network has contracted to around 1,146 stores by 2025 [7]. Card sales have migrated to mass, grocery, drug, dollar, and online channels.

Against that, a long tail of independents is quietly gaining share in premium, humor, and inclusive niches through Etsy, boutique retail, and direct wholesale, while digital entrants attack the low-effort/last-minute end [16][29]. Neither yet threatens the duopoly's scale, but both erode its edges — and further consolidation among smaller publishers, distributors, and specialty brands is plausible (a judgment, not a reported forecast).

9. Risks

• Secular volume decline. The core paper-card business is shrinking at low-single-digit rates as digital substitutes take routine greetings; one third-party projection puts the global market at about −2.5% a year to 2032 [19][20]. (Forward-looking; researcher estimates vary.)
• Channel and traffic risk. Store closures and falling brick-and-mortar foot traffic pull card sales down with them [13][18].
• Customer concentration. Publishers depend on a handful of giant retailers for shelf space, which compresses pricing power and creates single-account risk.
• Seasonal inventory risk. Misjudging a Christmas or Valentine's assortment leaves unsellable, dated stock [21].
• Input-cost inflation. Paper, printing, freight, labor, and postage costs — plus tariffs — squeeze margins on a low-price product [21].
• Creative hit-rate and brand relevance. A weak season of designs, or fading relevance with younger buyers, hits revenue directly.
• Leverage at the leaders. Successive PE deals can load American Greetings with debt whose service depends on a mature, slowly declining cash flow, and can pressure long-term creative investment [11][12]. (Terms undisclosed; judgment on structural risk.)
• Limited transparency. Because the two dominant U.S. publishers are private, outside investors have little visibility into their real economics.
• Demographic drift. If younger cohorts don't sustain their card habit as they age, the long-run base shrinks faster than expected [15]. (Forward-looking.)

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes (indirect only). No U.S.-listed pure play exists. The closest listed proxies are Moonpig (LSE: MOON) for online personalized cards and IG Design Group (LSE: IGR) for the manufacturing/gift-and-card side that owns the former CSS Industries U.S. business; Card Factory (LSE: CARD) is a vertically integrated UK card retailer. Cimpress (NASDAQ: CMPR) offers custom-print exposure and Etsy (NASDAQ: ETSY) offers indirect exposure to the growing independent-maker segment. Each is a bet on an adjacent or foreign slice, not on Hallmark or American Greetings directly. U.S. mass/grocery/dollar retailers give only trace, retail-channel exposure.

Private routes (where the real access is).

• Direct equity in the leaders is effectively closed: Hallmark is family-held, and American Greetings is held by Elliott, CD&R, and the Weiss family [7][12]; exposure comes only through those private vehicles.
• Build or buy an independent line. The lowest-capital entry — start a card brand and sell wholesale, direct, or via marketplaces — is the niche where premiumization actually rewards new entrants [16]. Buying an existing small publisher, an artist studio, or a niche IP/licensing library is a similar play.
• Back a digital or personalization platform. Early-stage e-card, subscription, and personalization companies are the fastest-growing (if smallest) corner [16][29].
• Buy the plumbing. Distribution, merchandising, specialized printing/finishing/fulfillment, or licensing assets are ways to finance consolidation of the fragmented tail.
• Retail franchise (a different business). Operating a Hallmark Gold Crown store is card retail, not publishing — a shrinking-footprint, thin-margin operation [7], distinct from the publishing economics above.

Diligence should weight repeat sell-through over catalog size, retailer concentration over headline distribution, cash generation over accounting profit, and working-capital needs around major holidays.

Outlook (judgment). Expect the paper category to keep shrinking slowly while the two leaders defend cash flow through price increases, brand consolidation, and diversification (Hallmark leans on Crayola and Hallmark Media; American Greetings on digital and licensing). The durable pockets of growth are premium/artisan cards, personalization, and digital greetings — small relative to the whole, but where new entrants and the peripheral public names have the best odds. This is a defensive, mature, consolidating category to underwrite for steady cash and consolidation upside, and it is more attractive as a brand, IP, and distribution investment than as a manufacturing-growth theme.

---

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns: 2023 (NAICS 513191) — establishments, employment, payroll. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Establishment and Firm Size / Concentration Ratios (NAICS 513191) — receipts, firm count, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI (suppressed). https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/establishment-and-firm-size-statistics.html
3. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (2023). https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition — 513191 Greeting Card Publishers (with 2017 predecessor 511191). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=513191&year=2022
5. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns Methodology and Nonemployer Statistics. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. Hallmark Cards, Corporate — Company & Leadership (2026). https://corporate.hallmark.com/about/hallmark-cards-company/leadership/
7. Wikipedia, "Hallmark Cards" (2025). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallmark_Cards
8. Forbes, "Hallmark — Company Overview & News" (2025). https://www.forbes.com/companies/hallmark/
9. American Greetings, Corporate — History (2026). https://corporate.americangreetings.com/about-us/history/
10. Wikipedia, "American Greetings" (2025). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Greetings
11. PR Newswire / Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, "CD&R Closes Acquisition of American Greetings" (2018). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clayton-dubilier--rice-closes-acquisition-of-american-greetings-300625699.html
12. PR Newswire / American Greetings, "Elliott Investment Management Closes Acquisition of Majority Interest in American Greetings" (2025). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elliott-investment-management-closes-acquisition-of-majority-interest-in-american-greetings-302366448.html
13. Fox Business, "Papyrus closing all greeting card U.S. stores amid retail struggles" (2020). https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/papyrus-closing-all-greeting-card-u-s-stores-amid-retail-struggles
14. Greeting Card Association, "About the GCA" (2026). https://www.greetingcard.org/about-the-gca/
15. NPR, "Greeting Card Sales Have Stabilized, Thanks To Millennials" (2019). https://www.npr.org/2019/02/14/691963430/greeting-cards-are-still-a-thing-in-the-digital-age-thanks-millennials
16. U.S. Chamber of Commerce (CO—), "The Greeting Card Revival: Expansion and Next-Gen Relevance" (2024–2025). https://www.uschamber.com/co/good-company/launch-pad/greeting-card-next-gen-relevance
17. Wikipedia, "Greeting card" (2025) — annual card volume, retail sales, occasion mix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeting_card
18. Grand View Research, "U.S. Greeting Cards Market Size Report" (2024–2025). https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-greeting-cards-market-report
19. IBISWorld, "Greeting Cards & Other Publishing in the US" (2026). https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/greeting-cards-other-publishing/1235/
20. Intel Market Research, "Greeting Cards Market Outlook 2025–2032" (2025). https://www.intelmarketresearch.com/greeting-cards-market-12977
21. A Bright Spot, "The Very Sincere Economics of Greeting Cards" (2025) — illustrative economics. https://www.abrightspot.org/2025/03/22/the-very-sincere-economics-of-greeting-cards/
22. Financial Models Lab, "Earnings of Greeting Card Manufacturers" (2025) — illustrative unit economics. https://finmodelslab.com/blogs/how-much-makes/greeting-card-manufacturing
23. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, "Button Cell and Coin Battery Business Guidance" (Reese's Law; 16 CFR part 1263; ANSI/UL 4200A) (2023–2024). https://www.cpsc.gov/Business--Manufacturing/Business-Education/Business-Guidance/Button-Cell-and-Coin-Battery
24. U.S. Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (mailpiece size/thickness/rigidity standards). https://pe.usps.com/cpim/ftp/manuals/dmm300/Full/MailingStandards.pdf
25. U.S. Copyright Office, "What Is Copyright?" https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/
26. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, "Trademark Basics." https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics
27. Federal Trade Commission, "Environmental Claims: Summary of the Green Guides" (2012). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/environmental-claims-summary-green-guides
28. Federal Trade Commission, "CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business" (2023). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
29. Moonpig Group plc, 2025 Full-Year Results and Annual Report (2025). https://www.moonpig.group/news-and-media/press-releases/2025-full-year-results-announcement/
30. Business Wire, "CSS Industries Announces Acquisition by IG Design Group plc" (2020). https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200120005407/en/CSS-Industries-Announces-Acquisition-by-IG-Design-Group-plc
31. PG Buzz, "IG Design Group Is Close To Publishing 300m Greeting Cards Annually." https://www.pgbuzz.net/ig-design-group-is-close-to-publishing-300m-greeting-cards-annually/
32. Card Factory plc, Investor Information (2025). https://www.cardfactoryinvestors.com/investors/