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"I didn't realize Valentine's Day was such a big deal until I owned a Hallmark store"
- Cathy Kessel.
On an average day, Cathy Kessel sees 100 people in her stores, whereas on Valentine's Day she sees about 800 people wandering the aisles of a place that supposedly fuels this mass-marketing holiday.
"It's insane; it's truly mass hysteria," said Kessel, who owns a Hallmark store in Scripps Ranch and Imperial Beach. "There's no other day like it. Valentine's Day has a personality all its own."
Last year, 853 cards were sold on Feb. 14, and 708 people were in her Scripps Ranch store. The same location sold 1,246 cards on Feb. 13 and 793 people stopped by Cathy's Hallmark that day. In a typical day, the store makes $700. Last Valentine's Day, it took in $7,000, and on Feb. 13, it made $8,000.
"We have months where we don't do $15,000," Kessel said.
Although her Imperial Beach store is usually slower, it does two-thirds the volume that her Scripps Ranch store does on Feb. 13 and 14.
"The store is half the size; it's like a corral," Kessel said. "There have been times when you can't let people inside the store because people can't move."
Her Imperial Beach store is only five miles from the Mexican border.
"Down there, they want it to be a Hallmark card, and it's the only Hallmark store down there, so they'll wait," she said.
People procrastinate until Valentine's Day, and they wait in ridiculously long lines and just laugh for bringing it on themselves, Kessel said.
"They'll say, 'I'm not gonna do this next year,' and then I'll see them again the following year," she said.
When she first opened her Scripps Ranch store 15 years ago, Kessel said she would see something along the lines of 750 men and 50 women, whereas now it's an even split of 400 for each sex. Her co-worker Tex Sandlin said this is most likely because more women are in the workplace now and they are just as pressed for time as men. Luckily for procrastinators of both sexes, Hallmark won't take down its Valentine's Day paraphernalia until Monday. That way, even if people are traveling during the week, they can still pick up something on the weekend.
But on Feb. 14, it's a different story. Men and women alike will wait in line together because even if they have a dinner reservation, they can't go without at least a card.
"It's so crazy, you almost can't get mad," Kessel said. "I'm the one who's stressed."
She joked that Sandlin has to remind her to breathe at times.
It's a good thing Kessel has a helium tank because if she had to blow up the same amount of balloons this year that she did last Valentine's Day - 154 to be exact - she'd probably collapse.
"All I will do for 12 hours is blow up balloons and wrap presents," Kessel said.
On Valentine's Day, most people don't have time to go to the mall, so they stop by local stores, she explained.
"Being a neighborhood store, we're open as long as we have customers," Kessel said. "We pretty much work 48 hours straight."
Kessel said she and her co-workers stay until 2 or 3 a.m. the night of Feb. 13 while they clean up the store, put everything back in its rightful place and restock the items that ran out. Then, they go home for a brief respite and come back at 5 a.m. to prepare for Valentine's Day.
Yet, no matter how many times Kessel strays from the helium tank at the front of the store to reorganize the cards that have been shuffled to the wrong place and make the rows look presentable, large groups of customers come in and turn the store upside down.
"It is a disaster area," Kessel said a few weeks before the mad rush, sitting in the back storage room among countless greeting-filled cardboard boxes. "It's like a tornado hit."
The 50 packages in her storage room arrive brimming with Valentine's Day cards on Dec. 20, and then she puts them on display Jan. 1, she said.
"I tell the driver, 'I don't want Valentine's Day; I'm not done with Christmas yet,'" Kessel joked.
During February, Hallmark's suppliers will ship products in two days if particular cards run out, she said.
As far as demographics go, tray cards are popular with elementary school kids; Hallmark's new line of song-playing cards, Sound Stage, is bought by teens; people in their 20s seem to purchase 99-cent cards; and senior citizens and people shopping for their co-workers tend to lean toward Valentine's Day packs that include six to 10 cards each. Her best sellers in order of popularity are cards, balloons and gift bags.
Kessel said when she was raised, you just gave a Valentine's Day card to your significant other.
"Until I owned a Hallmark store, I didn't know you gave a Valentine's Day card to your mom," she said.
One holiday item Kessel never thought anyone would want at her store was a frame for a risqué picture. In one of Kessel's more embarrassing Feb. 14 shifts, a woman asked her to frame an intimate photograph and mistakenly showed Kessel more than she cared to see.
Another one of Kessel's more poignant memories was when a man proposed to his girlfriend at her Hallmark store.
"She loved Hallmark stores, and on Valentine's Day in the middle of the insanity, I heard a scream," Kessel said with intensity. "I thought someone was hurt. So I rushed over because a child had climbed up on one of our glass fixtures before … When I asked the girl what happened, she was hysterical, and once she finally managed to catch her breath, she explained that her boyfriend had just proposed to her while they were waiting in line."
Kessel smiled and left the happy couple to look at wedding invitations, which were mere footsteps away from their place in the line that wrapped around the entire store.
"It was so cute; the scream was not," Kessel said laughing. "The 13th and 14th of February are my favorite part of the year. It's crazy and fun because it's the season of love."
Sandlin said he has seen couples in the store on the same day, but never at the same time.
He reminisced about the worst customers he has ever had.
"One year, we had a lady walking up and down the back aisle talking on her cell phone at the top of her voice and complaining about how Valentine's Day sucks because you can't break up with someone," he said.
When Sandlin politely asked her to leave, she seemed stunned and he explained that he couldn't have her killing the good-spirited buzz, he said.
During the winter holidays, you have to be politically correct; on Valentine's Day you can experiment, Kessel said as she wandered the colorful aisles and stopped next to a display of talking stuffed animals. She pressed the stuffed tiger Leonardo and he purred in a French accent, "I understand, you need your rest."
Apparently, stuffed animals are still big sellers even though collectors of Beanie Babies seem to have lost their aggressive edge in the past decade. Sandlin says if you've really messed up things for your girlfriend, there's always The Great Big Kiss. Because what says "I'm sorry and I still love you" more than a $200 stuffed bear?
According to Sandlin, Hallmark moments are all about people coming into the store and telling the employees what emotion they're trying to express and then the staff members find a product that they can really connect with.
Who knows? Some last-minute shoppers may experience that moment today.
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