User:JWprogr/I3

Irresistible Ink, Inc., founded in 1991, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hallmark Cards. It is doing business in Duluth, MN. Controlling interest was sold to Hallmark Cards in 1997. The company creates a form of personalized direct marketing.

History

Irresistible Ink was Started in February 1991 in the home of Jon Petters. Jon was working on something new in mail order that used an old fashion idea, writing letters by hand. The idea definitely worked. It generated far better than the usual 2% response rate for traditional direct mail.

As the business grew, people were needed who could spend several hours a day handwriting messages. The company needed to balance the need for quantity, maintaining quality, and being aware of the issues of repetitive motion syndrome. To accomplish this people were hired who preferred seasonal and part time work in a resort oriented town, Ely, MN. The work schedule also incorporated breaks for exercise to reduce the stress on muscles from hours of handwriting.

At the same time, another business was using technology to make cursive handwriting easier to reproduce. Signature Software in Portland, OR could take anyone’s handwriting and turn it into a font. Using proprietary software, they did more than just make another script font with one small and one capital character for each letter of the alphabet, they allowed for random variation and for the variety of connections that are employed when writing in script, known as ligatures.

External Links

vLetter Handwriting Fonts company Signature Software, old website

temp3

Above added just to show that ToC is auto generated