August marked the end of an era for Tom Ungrodt when he closed Chelsea Shopping Center’s Hallmark Dayspring Gifts. In 1960, Tom’s father Skip opened the family’s first Hallmark store–Crown House of Gifts–in Adrian. Through the years as the economy “expanded and contracted,” Tom explains, they oversaw a retail gift empire that grew to include up to eight stores in four towns, a building at State and Liberty in Ann Arbor, and a national gift catalog and marketing company called Ideation, which Tom closed at the end of 2016.
Ideation rode the decade-long Beanie Babies craze (a “once in a lifetime thing!” Tom says), marketing the plush collectibles–as well as Garfield, the Smurfs, and other carefully selected gift items–via customized catalogs for card, pharmacy, floral, and hardware stores around the country. But the gift industry has changed a lot since, and he says fidget spinners are a good example. “They trended [for] just ninety days.” Nowadays, because of the Internet, “everyone can get things so quickly–and there’s no collectability.”
Because Ideation was both a retail and printing business, it slowed as those industries did. As for his retail store in Chelsea, “The younger generation doesn’t buy cards,” he explains. But although Ungrodt says it’s easy to get sad about the state of retail, he’s already got some consulting jobs lined up: “You can’t be in retail and not be an eternal optimist.”
Chelsea shoppers looking for Hallmark cards and gifts can still find them nearby, at the Little Green Apple Hallmark stores in Dexter and Saline (see Shopping in the Community Guide in this issue).
