Saturday May 15, 02:25 PM

Gay marriage is on the cards
Greg Frost

BOSTON (Reuters) - "Here come the brides" -- that's the message inside one of a new line of gay-themed greeting cards that are filling a small but growing niche as same-sex marriage becomes a reality.

With hundreds of gay and lesbian couples set to legally wed beginning on Monday in Massachusetts, gay wedding cards are in demand. So, too, are gay wedding invitations. And here's a reminder for next year: gay anniversary cards.

The titans of the $7 billion (four billion pounds) U.S. greeting card industry, Hallmark and American Greetings, offer hundreds of different cards for every holiday and occasion, but they have not specifically targeted gays and lesbians.

It is the smaller players -- gay-themed businesses like 10 percent.com, Pink Rainbow Galaxy and Heygirl -- who are exploiting the market segment.

The niche may actually be quite large, as gays make up between six and seven percent of the consumer market. Multiply $7 billion in U.S. greeting card sales by six percent, and the result is $420 million.
"It's mind-blowing," said Jennifer Strickland, who co-founded Pink Rainbow Galaxy in Savannah, Georgia.

Strickland said the idea for a homosexual greeting card business was born last summer on a trip with her lesbian partner to visit family members.
"We realised we were often trying to find cards we ourselves could give to each other, as birthdays, thank yous, or whatever," she said. "They just didn't exist."

Among their products, which debut this week at the National Stationery Show in New York, is a card featuring a picture of a pink car with rainbow-coloured cans and a sign reading "Justly Married".
Another card has an image of two penguins holding flaps -- a subtle reference to two tuxedo-clad men. A third features a bride in a white wedding dress carrying another similarly clad woman through a doorway.

Wesley Combs, a Washington consultant who helps companies market to homosexual consumers, said that kind of imagery will likely play over well in the gay community, whose purchasing power is estimated at $485 billion a year.
"Many of the cards out there feature opposite-sex couples. I would never send something like that to my partner because we're of the same sex," he said.

Hallmark and American Greetings, which together control about 85 percent of the U.S. greeting card market, acknowledged that they do not focus specifically on gays but instead offer a selection for a variety of loving relationships.

"It's important that we're not excluding any groups and we're addressing the needs of all the groups, but we don't want to make them too limiting, either," American Greetings spokeswoman Laurie Henrichsen said.

But changing social values may herald change in the greeting card industry. Just as Hallmark and American Greetings have added cards for ethnic holidays, they might one day tailor cards specifically to gays and lesbians.

"Our only purpose in existing is to meet the customer need," Hallmark spokeswoman Rachel Bolton said. "We have to not lead, not really follow, but accurately reflect. That's what Hallmark has always tried to do."

I'm a great card-sender. Sometimes it's the perfect way to express yourself.

Awww.
That's... sweet, I guess.

hell, these things would find a huge market amongst males aged 13 - 20

It's great that they will legally be able to wed