With Regrets: Hallmark Outsourcing Jobs

By DAVID MARTIN

Hallmark is outsourcing work to China, costing dozens of Missourians their jobs.

Carrollton Specialty Products Co. is closing two plants after losing a substantial piece of the card assembly work it performs for Hallmark. A facility in Mexico, Missouri, will close on December 20. A plant in Carrollton, 70 miles east of Kansas City, will fold its last Peanuts birthday card some time early next year. The operations employ about 175 people.

“It was a surprise to us, and it certainly wasn’t something that was pleasant to hear,” Carrollton Specialty CEO Erin Boster says.

Thanks to Hallmark, Carrolton will have to shut down one of its Missouri plants.

Carrollton Specialty has worked for Kansas City-based Hallmark since 1990. Boster says she is losing assembly and packaging business to companies that print Hallmark cards, some of which are overseas. “It’s true that part of the work is going to China,” she says.

Workers who lose their jobs can apply to work at Carrollton Specialty’s remaining plant in Moberly, Missouri. Moberly, however, is 40 miles from Mexico, and even further from Carrollton. “I don’t know how much response we’ll have,” Boster says.