For 30 years, Holly Stricker said her relationships with her customers at her Park Ridge greeting card store were like those in the television sitcom Cheers. “Everybody sort of knows everybody… everyone knows your name,” she said.
But like the sitcom, Stricker said she is also closing the tab on this chapter of her life. She and her business partner, Laurie Safton, have sold Hill’s Hallmark, closed the store last week and are planning to retire. A new Hallmark store is expected to open in July, Stricker said.
“Everybody has been so sad and so happy,” Stricker said of her customers, who came for their last visit from Park Ridge, Des Plaines, Edison Park, and beyond. “I just can’t believe it.”
Stricker said the store was the oldest Hallmark store in Illinois, dating from 1937, and she and Safton bought it from the owner 30 years ago. She said the store was named after the Hill brothers, two entrepreneurs in Park Ridge’s yesteryears who also operated a hobby shop on Main Street under the same name.
“Laurie and I were in the hotel business, and I said, ‘Do you want to open up a store?’ and she was very easygoing,” remembers Stricker. “I just thought it’d be so fun to have a Hallmark store because of everything they represent. It’s just like happy things and happy times and nice occasions,” she said.
Over her 30-year run in Park Ridge, Stricker said the store has had at least 100 employees. She said the busiest time she ever went through was the Beanie Babies mania, when customers flocked to purchase the small, limited-edition plush toys. “It was unbelievable because people would follow UPS trucks to try to get Beanie Babies. I mean, it was just like a craze,” Stricker said. She also said the ’90s saw a boom in customers asking for invitations for all sorts of events and personalized ornaments and gifts.
Stricker said the business started to decline after the COVID-19 pandemic’s lockdown. “You don’t have to go out to a store. You can go on Amazon, you can go to Target.com. You can get all the clothes (and things) you want.”
Stricker said the reason the business was able to survive for so long in a market where greeting cards are sold in big box stores and many other places was because of its loyal customer base. “Even though business has changed, there’s so many people that still want to support this small business in Park Ridge. And it’s also nice because it’s a (walkable) town.”
“I can’t imagine being in a strip mall. I can’t imagine what that would be like,” Stricker said. “I mean we just have people going to dinner, (and then) come into the store, (they’ll be) going to the library and coming into the store, going to lunch with their girlfriends (and then) come in the store. So we’re very lucky that way that it brings lots of traffic.”
When asked for her immediate retirement plans, Stricker said she would sleep, read a book, pray and try to avoid cicadas.
