American Greetings Seeks to Acquire Recycled Paper Greetings
American Greetings is seeking to acquire rival Recycled Paper Greetings Inc. Recycled Paper Greetings filed for bankruptcy as part of the proposed sale. RPG Investment Holdings strongly opposes the actions taken by American Greetings reports Reuters.
RPG Investment Holdings and funds affiliated with private equity firm Monitor Clipper Partners LLC said in a separate statement on Friday that they "strongly oppose the actions taken by American Greetings" prior to the bankruptcy filing.
According to Recycled Paper's website, it is a Monitor Clipper portfolio company.
"Through its unlawful actions, we believe American Greetings is attempting to eliminate Recycled Paper Greetings as a competitor, in an effort to gain more widespread traction in the lucrative market segment in which Recycled Paper Greetings excels," the investors said.
There are other article about investors complaining about the sale here, here and here.
American Greetings Corp. is eliminating 275 jobs because of the weak economy. Internet Retailer reports that the economy will cause the company to fall short of its expected Q3 earnings. The cuts will be made at American Greetings' headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. The company employs 18,000 people and 2,200 of them work at the Cleveland headquarters. Ohio.com has more details on the layoffs at American Greetings.
American Greetings to Sell Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears
Earlier this month American Greetings had announced Hasbro, Inc. as the new master toy licensee worldwide for both Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake effective January 2009. This was a statement from American Greetings at the time the deal was announced.
"Both Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake have a strong history with Hasbro, and we are thrilled to be working with them on our two biggest classic brands," said Tamra Knepfer, Senior Vice President, Consumer Products, American Greetings Properties. "Hasbro has unparalleled experience leveraging evergreen franchises with toy lines at retail and we are incredibly excited about the innovation, marketing, and retail presence that this alliance brings to both brands as we look to grow both here in the U.S. and around the world."
Now Marketwatch is reporting that American Greetings plans to sell Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears to a privately held Canadian company called the Cookie Jar Group for $195 million. American Greetings has Care Bear cards like these and a number of products featuring both Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake. A longer article about the sale can be found here.
What's up with the greeting card websites? You would think they would have been ready for the big influx of traffic on a day like Valentine's Day. The Associated Press reports that a company named Keynote Systems Inc. that checks web traffic found that only 30 percent of their attempts to access several of the major greeting card sites were successful.
Keynote said sites that usually load in two or three seconds were taking an average of 12 seconds or longer.
Problems with Web sites not only frustrate customers but also deprive sites of advertising revenue, especially if a visitor doesn't come back to view or send a card.
The Web site for Hallmark Cards Inc. was inaccessible or slow starting about 6 a.m. EST, according to Keynote. It was back to normal by late morning but got slow again around noon - just as people on the West Coast got to work and opened cards that had arrived in their inboxes, said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.
Keynote said it also spotted problems with 123Greetings.com, and The Associated Press found in a test Thursday afternoon that many pages took several seconds to load. But officials at 123Greetings insisted that less than 1 percent of its visitors experienced slowdowns.
"123Greetings.com experienced record traffic today, one of the highest in its history," the company said in a statement. "Problems at other greeting cards sites caused record volumes of users to come over to our site, and we were happy to welcome them all."
Not at all of the traffic was lost because some people who were unable to access a greeting card website probably tried again later. The greeting card companies will get a shot again a year from now.
Ellen DeGeneres' Card Collection with American Greetings Video
This video offers a closer look at the Ellen DeGeneres' Card Collection from American Greetings that we blogged about earlier. The video even includes footage of the cards being printed.
American Greetings is seeking to acquire rival 
American Greetings Corp. is eliminating 275 jobs because of the weak economy. Internet Retailer 
Earlier this month American Greetings had announced Hasbro, Inc. as the new master toy licensee worldwide for both Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake effective January 2009. This was a statement from American Greetings at the time the deal was announced.
