A card jobber in Cleveland.

American Greetings began in Cleveland in 1906 as a one-man card-jobbing business founded by Jacob Sapirstein, a recent immigrant and the son of a Polish rabbi, the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History at Case Western Reserve University says. English Wikipedia says he sold cards to shops from a horse-drawn cart and that members of his family have run the company since. His eldest son, Irving, became his partner in 1918, Wikipedia says; Morris joined in 1926 and Harry, the youngest, in 1935.

In the 1930s the Sapirstein Greeting Card Co. was the founder and his sons working out of the family home, the encyclopedia says. In 1932 the business moved to larger premises, and Sapirstein, dissatisfied with the cards then on offer, began to design and print his own; the company was incorporated in 1934. Wikipedia adds that it began using self-serve display cabinets for its cards in 1929, hired its own sales representatives from 1934 and opened a branch office and a major manufacturing facility in 1936.

The national name arrived at the end of the decade. Wikipedia dates the change to American Greetings Publishers to 1938; the encyclopedia says the company was operating as American Greetings Publishers Co. by 1939 and was incorporated under that name on 29 January 1944. In 1939, Wikipedia says, it issued the Forget-Me-Not card line, and in the 1940s Irving and his brothers changed their surname to Stone. The company became American Greetings Corporation in 1952 and offered its stock to the public, and in 1960 Irving I. Stone succeeded his father as president, according to the encyclopedia.

The company kept expanding its range and its reach. Wikipedia says it signed a licensing agreement with John Sands of Sydney in 1949, formed Carlton Cards as a Canadian subsidiary in 1956, launched the Hi Brows humour studio card line the same year and moved its headquarters to the Cleveland suburb of Brooklyn, Ohio, in July 1957. The encyclopedia says it bought the House of Paper in 1964 to make ribbon, gift wrap and party goods, and that its last Cleveland plant was converted into a warehouse in the 1980s.

Holly Hobbie, Ziggy and Those Characters From Cleveland.

Licensed characters became part of the American Greetings identity in the late 1960s. The encyclopedia says the company introduced Holly Hobbie in 1967, the start of a series known as Those Characters From Cleveland that were licensed to appear on other companies’ products. Wikipedia says Holly Hobbie began as a line of greeting cards, and adds Ziggy, created by Tom Wilson, in 1972; Ziggy soon had a newspaper strip of his own. Wikipedia lists Holly Hobbie, Tom Wilson and R. Crumb among the cartoonists who have worked for the company.

In 1980, Wikipedia says, Tom Wilson set up Those Characters From Cleveland on the company’s behalf as a toy design and licensing unit. Its properties went on to include Strawberry Shortcake and then the Care Bears. The unit was later renamed AG Properties and then American Greetings Entertainment, and when the company changed hands in 2018 it stayed with the Weiss family and was spun off as Cloudco Entertainment, Wikipedia says.

Other divisions widened what the company made. Wikipedia says that in 1978 it set up Plus Mark, to make Christmas gift wrap, boxed cards and accessories, and A.G. Industries, a maker of display fixtures; it relaunched its party goods line as DesignWare in 1996. In Canada the Forget-Me-Not brand was launched in 1993, and abroad the company bought John Sands of Australia in 1996, and Camden Graphics and Hanson White in Britain in 1998, according to Wikipedia.

Technology arrived at the shop counter and then online. In 1992 the company launched CreataCard, an interactive electronic kiosk in which shoppers could design personalised cards, the encyclopedia says. Wikipedia says its website was redesigned in 1997 so that cards could be designed online and mailed from a Cleveland fulfilment centre, and that in January 2002 it bought Blue Mountain Arts’ ecard site, BlueMountain.com, from Excite@Home. In a 2025 release, the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice named the company’s digital brands as American Greetings, Blue Mountain, Jacquie Lawson, SmashUps and Creatacard.

Design and documentation.

Greeting cards, tape and notebooks are everyday objects that most people buy without much thought, and that is exactly why their packaging and covers have to work hard. A card is usually chosen in a few seconds at a rack, so the back of the card, where the publisher’s name and mark sit, becomes a quiet signature that travels with every one sold. A roll of tape is often bought from a peg or a shelf beside dozens of similar rolls, and the core, the label and the colour of the roll itself carry much of the name.

A notebook brand works differently again: its cover is handled every day for months, so a name printed on that cover is carried in bags, on desks and in classrooms long after it was bought. Across all three categories, the companies behind familiar names may have been bought, merged or renamed several times, and the products may be made far from where the name began.

Each guide in this group separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Gibson, Papyrus and a change of owners.

American Greetings grew by buying other card makers. Wikipedia says it agreed in 1999 to buy Gibson Greetings, whose roots go back to Gibson & Company, Lithographers, founded in Cincinnati in 1855 by the brothers George, Robert, Samuel and Stephen Gibson. It bought Recycled Paper Greetings in February 2009, and in April 2009 acquired the Papyrus brand of cards and paper products from Schurman Fine Papers. In June 2012 it acquired assets of the British card retailer Clinton Cards, including UK Greetings, whose card brands then included Camden Graphics, Hanson White and Forget Me Not, Wikipedia says.

The family stayed in charge through those years. Morry Weiss, Irving Stone’s son-in-law, was appointed president in 1978, and his sons Zev and Jeffrey became chief executive and president in 2003, according to Wikipedia. The company went private again in mid-2013, when a Weiss family-owned holding company bought out its public shareholders, Wikipedia says. On 13 February 2018 Clayton, Dubilier & Rice announced that funds it manages would take a majority stake, with the Weiss family, descendants of Jacob Sapirstein, keeping a significant holding; the deal closed on 6 April 2018, CD&R said. Joe Arcuri became chief executive in March 2019, Wikipedia says.

Ownership changed again in 2025. In a release dated 3 February 2025, Elliott Investment Management, CD&R and American Greetings announced that Elliott had completed its purchase of a majority stake in the company, announced on 20 December 2024, with CD&R and the Weiss family keeping a significant minority interest.

The company’s own site names its global headquarters as Cleveland, Ohio; Wikipedia places it in the suburb of Westlake, where the new headquarters opened in September 2016. The site lists offices for John Sands in Mulgrave, Victoria, UK Greetings in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and Carlton Cards in Mississauga, Ontario, and describes its range as greeting cards, digital greetings, gift packaging, party supplies, stickers and stationery.

For a design guide, American Greetings shows how a card company can carry a family surname, a national name and a cast of licensed characters at once. Compare Hallmark, the Kansas City card company founded in 1910, and the Care Bears, the characters that grew out of its licensing unit. For this guide we use a card red, rose and envelope cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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