Paul Adams, left, and his sister Andrea Underwood, owners of the Adams Hallmark at Crossroads Mall in Beckley, are shown at a ribbon cutting and grand opening on April 29, 2022.
Paul Adams, left, and his sister Andrea Underwood, owners of the Adams Hallmark at Crossroads Mall in Beckley, are shown at a ribbon cutting and grand opening on April 29, 2022.
RICK BARBERO | AP file photo
HUNTINGTON — Adams Hallmark, a family-owned chain of seven Hallmark stores based in West Virginia, was recently sold to Pam’s Hallmark.
Michael and Charlotte Adams started the business in 1969 in Milton. They eventually passed it on to their children, Paul Adams and Andrea Underwood. In total, the family has been operating the business for 56 years.
They moved their Milton store to the Huntington Mall about two years after it opened. The Dudley Farms location in South ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä opened in 2001. The third and fourth stores were both in Morgantown: one at Pierpont Centre and one at University Town Center. The fifth location is Grand Central Mall in Vienna and the sixth was the Meadowbrook Mall in Bridgeport. The most recent location opened at the Crossroads Mall at Mount Hope in April 2022.
Paul Adams said his mom, Charlotte, was “always a Hallmark fan.â€
“I think that Hallmark, they’ve always been the standard bearer. They’ve grown that reputation with their television network and movies,†he said.
He said the stores had some regular customers who have been around since the beginning and “they’ve grown to be a part of our family.â€
“I think when it’s been a part of your life for your entire life — definitely going to miss doing it every day, but I think the main thing you miss are the connections you make with the employees and with the customers and with the suppliers, people that have been our representatives selling to us for all of these years, so I think it’s definitely a matter of missing the people and hopefully we can stay in contact with a lot of them,†he said.
They don’t have plans to leave West Virginia anytime soon.
Pam’s Hallmark is a family-owned chain out of Maryland operated by Kevin Hugel and his sister, Julie McCoy Hugel. The family has ties to Greenbrier County and has been looking to expand to West Virginia for a while. Kevin Hugel graduated from West Virginia University and still attends sporting events there.
Kevin Hugel said the acquisition has been a little overwhelming, as they’ve never purchased seven stores at the same time like this. They currently have nine stores in Maryland, one in Virginia and two in Delaware.
They’ve also kept all employees from Adams Hallmark who wanted to stay on.
Kevin Hugel said one of the unique things about the West Virginia stores is the variety of collegiate merchandise and the customer base looking for those items. He said it’s not something his company currently has in its other stores, but he is excited to get into it.
He said he also really likes how much local merchandise the West Virginia stores sell, like Blenko Glass. Local vendors are something Pam’s Hallmark stores plan to expand into with the acquisition.
“We’ve always had a lot of respect for the Adams Hallmark stores,†he said.
