American Greetings

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American Greetings

Type	Public (NYSE: AM)
Founded	1906
Founder	Jacob Sapirstein (1885-1987)
Headquarters	Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Key people	Morry Weiss - Chairman; Zev Weiss - CEO & Director; Jeffrey M. Weiss - President, COO & Director
Industry	Greeting card publisher
Products	Greeting cards, gift wrap, party goods, giftware, stationery, electronic greetings, calendars & educational products
Revenue	$1.9 billion
Net income	$84.4 million
Employees	18,000
Slogan	...says it best
Website	www.AmericanGreetings.com

American Greetings Corporation, Inc. NYSE: AM is the world's largest publicly-traded greeting card company. It is based in Cleveland, Ohio and sells paper greeting cards, electronic greeting cards, party products (such as wrapping papers and decorations), and electronic expressive content (e.g., ringtones and images for cellphones). In addition to the American Greetings brand, the company owns the Carlton Cards, Tender Thoughts and Gibson brands of greeting cards. American Greetings is also famous for their toy design and licensing division, Those Characters From Cleveland (now American Greetings Properties). The most-popular copyrighted properties owned by this division include Strawberry Shortcake, the Care Bears, The Get-Along Gang and Holly Hobbie. American Greetings also holds an exclusive license for Nickelodeon characters.

1 History
2 Licences
3 Cartoonists
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

History

Founded in 1906 by Polish immigrant Jacob Sapirstein (1885-1987), who sold cards from a horse-drawn cart, American Greetings has been run by members of the family since its inception. Irving I. Stone (Sapirstein's oldest son, who changed his surname to Stone) was stuffing envelopes at age five, handling the business during his father's illness when he was nine, and worked for the company fulltime on leaving high school. He was succeeded as CEO by his son-in-law Morry Weiss in 1987, and took the title "Founder-Chairman" previously held by his father, when Weiss became chairman in 1992, before dying in 2000. In 2003 Morry Weiss's sons Zev and Jeffrey became CEO and President respectively; Morry Weiss remains Chairman. In early 2007, American Greetings replaced Kellogg's as the sponsor for Dragon Tales. American Greetings has also branched out onto the Internet, and owns a network of websites. On October 25, 2007, it announced the purchase of Webshots from CNET for $45 million in cash.