I'm David Hoffman, filmmaker, and I'm going to tell you a story about a time in my life and a company that I started, which I'm really proud of and came in a very historically interesting time.

So the time is 1975 cold winter night.

My production company is in a small town in Maine and I'm having a party.

And two women are at the party who we're talking to each other, and I hear what they say.

And it's when men on around women talk differently.

Mmm.

Interesting idea.

Say aye.

Can we do something with it?

And it happened that at that time I was noticing greeting cards.

Now greeting cards were largely Hallmark, all nicey pretty perfect little cards.

Sweetie, Sweetie, sweetie, kind of like the 19 fifties.

Everybody doing everything right.

Everybody just all perfect.

And I knew that when men on around women talk differently because these women said it.

So I started a greeting card company with these women called mainline greeting cards because we were in Maine and I had these old postcards that I collected, and I said, Hey, let's print up these old postcards with some more contemporary phrases.

So his a few Walter keeping it under his hat.

I must get something off my chest.

You can fiddle with me any time now.

That one.

That was a phrase that was on the old card, but we put it in a more contemporary typeface and then a couple that don't have anything at all like this one made in Germany in the 18 nineties or this one.

France in the 19 twenties.

And we go to the New York gift show the New York.

If you fancy big card companies, everybody's there and our little postcards 40 of them are a major hit.

Ah, sellout.

What's going on?

Everybody's excited about what was saying.

So we start the idea of women's cards for women by women.

Women are making the cards.

We have a little shop.

We invite women around the country to send in phrases and art, and all kinds of stuff comes at us.

Wonderful stuff.

Hilarious stuff, including the famous Sylvia.

She did so many cards for us.

I bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you're a man.

That was a song at that time that woman must be on drugs.

It's sad but true.

When you want zip a man's pants, his brains fall out.

It's amazing that these cards just was so provocative.

They were selling all over the country in independent gift shops.

On we were doing really well getting Sylvia getting other great artists.

Young guard is his one.

Come on, admit it.

It's a man's world.

But men can't do everything you can't fake orgasms, Huge hit.

I'm gonna show you two that were really big hits.

This one an old postcard.

I'm always making the wrong choice.

Huge seller.

I think it may be sold a 1,000,000 copies and another one probably one of our biggest hits.

I give good phone, 1905 photograph and I don't know, it worked.

So we were booming.

We had 45 50 people working all kinds of news.

You're about to see a clip, and this clip was national prime time television.

Eight minutes on our little company.

Stick with it.

When it's over, I'm gonna tell you what happened in the company.

We were supposed to make a lot of money.

We were destined to make a lot of money.

But that didn't happen.

Here's a good one.

There we were alone in his penthouse.

I slipped out of my dress, turned off the lights and whispered.

Make me feel like a real woman.

So he asked me to rinse out his socks.

Well, no one ever accused the mainline greeting card company of being traditional, the brainchild of Joyce Boas and Perry Aardman Mainline cards, our collection of humorous, perceptive, woman oriented communications.

And Joyce and Perry are laughing all the way to the bank mainline.

We started about five years ago, and it was very scary.

We had no idea what we were really in for, but the competition is very fierce.

We were working in our homes with working out of bathtubs.

We had chords in our gardens and, um, Perry and I would count 10 12 cards.

12 envelopes wrapped them, ship them.

In those days, I wished I could type with my feet so I could answer the phone with both my hands.

It was just It was crazy.

In the beginning, This'll year, we expect to gross and 1,000,000 in sales, and it's wonderful.

The outside of the card would read behind every successful woman.

There's you charge account massive anxiety.

There's a man waiting for cards.

Start with the words because of the things that we're trying to convey in the point of view that we have messages really important way.

Look for a point of view that most women will be able to identify with.

If the card could only be sent by somebody who's five foot two and has blue eyes, then it's not a good card because it's a very limited market.

So one of the first things we're looking for is is a universality and an element that we call send ability.

Your heart is broken.

You're sure that you will never, never get over him.

I know how you feel.

I cried for days over what's his name.

The greeting card industry is dominated by man, which is quite surprising when you think that women are more than 90% of the market and what comes out of those companies is very often a man's view of what a woman is in our company.

What we come out with is a woman's view of what a woman is, and sometimes we really have to reflect on that ourselves because it's been a man's world for so long that even our own view of ourselves is colored by what we've learned from men.

My name is Gertrude Clause, the elves and I would like to wish you a very merry Christmas.

We're the ones who do all the work.

You said you wouldn't tell.

I lied.

I know you were hoping I'd spend the holidays with you and your delightful family.

But my doctor has insisted that I go to the mountains for my health.

Happy holidays.

Women and men.

They both like our cards and they read a car and they say, Oh, I have felt that way.

Congratulations.

You'll find that marriage is the second greatest challenge.

The first is swimming the Amazon River covered with peanut butter.

Good luck.

Yeah, it is a different talent writing a greeting card.

You have about five seconds in a greeting card store to catch somebody's attention, so it's very difficult, and we put very complicated messages out there.

It's not just happy birthday.

Have a wonderful day.

We talk about things in our cards that traditional card traditional card manufacturers are.

Card companies won't discuss how it feels when you make a mistake in your choice of a male and have a relationship with what it's like to have kids, what it's like to be dealing with a boss, there's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

There's no place like the office.

There's no place like the office.

Don't think of your break up with him as the end of a relationship.

Think of it as a narrow escape from being trampled to death by a herd of drooling water buffaloes.

You could help food all the way across the way.

We do things with a woman's point of view, but we don't do guards that are intentionally nasty.

Two men.

We like men.

We need them.

So what we do is for women, But it's not against men, although we do like to poke fun it both ways.

When you live in Maine, it's a different kind of experience than living in the city.

There's good printing here.

Most of our suppliers air here on.

We can rely on local talent.

We'd like being able to support the state in that way.

We've been brought up with the idea that to be a successful woman in business.

You have to be nasty.

You have to give up something of yourself in your femininity and we're out to prove that that isn't true.

We get letters from people who have received our cards.

And somehow the cards have made a difference in their attitude toward life.

Have given them a more positive outlook.

Have made them left when they've been crying before.

Behind every great woman is another great woman.

Thanks, Mom.

Now here's a card.

That's kind of interesting.

If you knew what a good time you could have you come like a rocket.

You'd think we'd made that up.

But this was from 1905 We just changed the typeface and they sold this in kind of beach resort towns as a postcard.

This was a postcard, so we certainly weren't any more obscene than they were way back then.

So what happened?

Well, in 1979 big year for us, we have probably 200 cards, and when they're at the show and all the cards on the wall and three men come over very dark suits for it properly dressed with dip recorders, and they're opening up all lines and they're reading all our lines.

Who are these guys?

Hallmark.

Hallmark.

I contact my local lawyer.

What am I supposed to do about this?

These guys is stealing our ideas.

And the lawyer says, David, you got 15 years and several $1,000,000.

You can sue Hallmark.

If not, they're just gonna steal your ideas.

And six months later, Hallmark came out with a shoebox.

Greetings now a multibillion dollar business off women's cards.

They've changed the company totally, and we were a factor in that.

So I was forced to sell the women I was with.

All got little bits of money we sold basically for the stock we had and we were going.

What's a lesson in that Number one?

I didn't understand how the market works, how you have to take market share and get market share so fast that you could beat the other guys before they beat you.

I didn't know anything about that until years later, when I moved to California and I start to see startups.

So I hope you've enjoyed this.

You can probably still find some of these cards out there.

But if not, I guess, for Mark isn't making those anymore.

Thank you very much for watching.

And if you're a young start up, we'll take a lesson from me.

I just didn't know how to beat the big guys.

Maybe that's something you gotta know if you've got a great idea.

Like we did take care.