Hallmark is furiously trying to make digital inroads around the world, though, with a vast array of new technological ventures: upwards of 20 apps for the iPhone and iPad; sound-activated robotic toys; 3D printers and laser cutter machines, the latter of which Hallmark’s 3,200 full-time employees in Kansas City use to craft prototypes of cards and toys.

Hallmark says these experiments have yet to bear fruit for the company. "While digital tools generate a lot of news and chatter, as an actual business opportunity they remain a fraction of the paper greeting card and gift business," Hallmark spokesperson Linda Odell tells The Verge. However, Odell points out that many of Hallmark’s other analog products are doing well still, too, including ornaments, Hallmark subsidiary Crayola, the Hallmark Channel and the Hallmark Movie Channel on cable, and the gift wrap business, which Hallmark claims it invented in 1917.

So Hallmark is far from imminent collapse. It counted $4 billion in revenue last year, and commands a dominant 44.4 percent share of the combined US paper and e-card markets, according to retail research firm IBISWorld. The next-closest competitor — American Greetings in Cleveland, Ohio — has 16.7 percent of the market. But the entire industry, which includes over 200 companies, is getting smaller: IBISWorld projects US revenue to decline further from $5.4 billion last year to $4.3 billion by 2018.

Hallmark’s golden age

More incredible than Hallmark’s earnest efforts to move beyond the greeting card is that the company was able to build an empire from folded-up pieces of paper in the first place. But back 103 years ago, when the company was founded by teenage postcard salesman Joyce Clyde Hall, snail mail was the most reliable way to stay in touch with distant family and friends.

Hallmark is furiously trying to make digital inroads around the world

For its first 90 years, Hallmark displayed incredible business savvy, securing a licensing deal for Disney characters in 1932 that continues to this day, launching a popular (if sappy) TV series called Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1951, and introducing ornaments in 1973, which have gone on to become a "significant portion" of the company’s business, Odell says. (Because Hallmark is still privately held, it releases few financial details, and selective ones at that.)

In the 1980s, Hallmark created a sprawling chain of "Gold Crown" stores to hawk its wares. But trouble began around this time, too, as the company belatedly moved to cater to specific demographics, launching whole lines of cards targeted at African-Americans ("Mahogany"), and Jews ("Tree of Life"). It experimented with darker humor through a line called "Shoebox," featuring a surly elderly woman character named Maxine. And it struggled to keep consumers away from cheaper cards offered by supermarkets, only to later make deals to be stocked next to them in the 1990s.

At its peak in the early 2000s, Hallmark employed about 20,000 people around the world. But for all its success in the physical world, Hallmark hasn’t yet cracked digital.