As I whittled down the pile of family Christmas cards we are sending to family and friends this year, I started to think about the tradition of sending holiday greeting cards and how Spanish and bilingual greeting cards have become increasingly popular.
According to Hallmark* estimates, greeting cards are a $6.6 billion dollar industry with more than six billion cards purchased annually.
Hallmark and American Greetings, the two biggest players, both have lines of Hispanic-themed greeting cards and e-cards and the latter’s Blue Mountain site has a Spanish-language section (though according to Hispanic Market Weekly, Hallmark is the only greeting card company that advertises to Hispanics).
There are also several smaller companies that create and market Spanish-language and bilingual cards and related products, such as YoSoy Expressions and Lantigua Designs.
On the cyber side, “greeting cards (tarjetas)” was among the 2007 Top 10 Social Networking Search Terms on Yahoo! Telemundo. Clearly, the appetite for culturally relevant greeting cards is out there.
So now the next time you want to send a greeting, you can send it in Spanish, via e-mail or snail mail. And as Maribel pointed out, with so many custom greeting card services available, you can create your very own in Spanish too. Happy Mailing!
* = Hallmark is a Fleishman-Hillard client.
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