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First Posted: 12/26/2013 Gary Martin celebrated his 76th birthday last week and he received a few Hallmark cards to mark the occasion. But as fewer people send cards and the younger generation relies more on electronic greetings, or none at all, Hallmark stores like the one Martin owns in the Viewmont Mall are feeling the pinch.
&#8220;This season has been the toughest I can ever remember,&#8221; said Martin, who lives in Clarks Summit and operates the Hallmark Gold Crown store in Honesdale in addition the the one at the mall in Dickson City. It&#8217;s a trend he&#8217;s seen for years as dwindling card sales have continued to be the norm.
Martin decided that with the lease on the Viewmont Mall location ending this month, the time had come to close the store. A decision has not been made on the Honesdale location that is still under lease for two more years.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not easy,&#8221; said Martin, an Annapolis, Md. native who purchased his home in Clarks Summit in 1964. &#8220;We&#8217;re all struggling.&#8221;
He said the glory days of greeting card stores are likely gone. A variety of reasons are at play. From increased competition from grocers, drug stores and big box retailers to a younger generation that just isn&#8217;t accustomed to purchasing paper cards for all occasions.
&#8220;It&#8217;s been very clear to me that it&#8217;s a different generation,&#8221; said Martin. &#8220;The older generation we&#8217;ve had around here, they don&#8217;t change and we&#8217;re lucky we have them. But the young people, they&#8217;re not a generation that will visit Hallmark gift shops.&#8221;
Throw in increased cost of postage over the past few years and card giving has become a pricey endeavor, Martin acknowledged. The U.S. Postal Service just announced that starting later this month, the price of a first class stamp will rise to 49 cents. Hallmark.com reported Americans purchased 1.5 billion paper greeting cards last year during the holiday season, a decrease from a total of about 2 billion just a decade earlier. This year&#8217;s figures are not available yet. From 2011 to 2012, consumer spending led to a 3 percent decline in revenue for the operating unit which includes greetings, gift wrap, partyware and gifts, according to Hallmark.
Martin isn&#8217;t the first to close a Hallmark store in recent years. He said the number of Gold Crown stores has dropped from more than 4,500 at its peak to about 2,600 today, though Hallmark corporate owned stores are increasing. Among the area stores that closed were the Shoemaker&#8217;s Hallmark store in the Midway Shopping Center in Wyoming in 2009 and the Heritage Shop Hallmark store on Public Square, Wilkes-Barre, that closed in 2008.
Martin said he has no regrets about his life choices, including turning down a promotion from Hallmark while he was on the sales team to settle down in Clarks Summit and raise a family and own some stores.
Assigned to the Baltimore region, Martin was then sent to work in Wellsville, N.Y. before being relocated to Elmira, N.Y. He rented the entire time but when he was sent to a territory that included the Scranton area, he began looking for a house to buy. He found a home along Carnation Drive, purchased it and settled down eventually having three children along with his wife Barbara. Fifty years later he&#8217;s still there and a great-grandfather.
&#8220;Where is there a better place to live than Clarks Summit?&#8221; he said, recounting an offer to take a better job with Hallmark in the Philadelphia area. He turned it down and went on to purchase four Hallmark stores along with Bill Matus in 1983. The two operated the stores in Keyser Oak Shopping Center in Scranton, the Wyoming Valley Mall, Honesdale and the Viewmont Mall. But a falling out occurred a decade in and the two split up the business with Matus keeping the Keyser Oak and Wyoming Valley Mall locations and Martin continuing with Honesdale and the Viewmont Mall locations.
Martin has scaled down his involvement with the two stores, usually visiting them a couple of times a week and keeping the books. He said he has been telling customers, many who are saddened by the closing, to continue to support Hallmark stores, especially Lynn&#8217;s Hallmark on State Street in Clarks Summit.
Martin laughed when asked if it was strange driving by another Hallmark store so close to his home to get to the ones he owned. He said the Lynn&#8217;s Hallmark is run well, still strongly supported by the community and one he hopes his customers will support once the Viewmont Mall store closes if they&#8217;re not willing to drive to Honesdale.
For those who want to grab a good deal on plenty of Hallmark products from cards to ornaments to sports-related gifts, most of the Viewmont Mall store items are marked down 25 or 50 percent and inventory will continue to be sold at a deep discount as the closing day nears.
Messages left with Viewmont Mall spokeswoman Holly Jones about what the mall will do with the space and seeking comment about the loss of the Hallmark store were not returned.
With the closing of the Rite Aid last month, the mall has no retailers that sell greeting cards.

Goodbye wishes to the Hallmark store in the Viewmont Mall