February 14, 2006 - Ed Is A Card

Happy Valentine’s Day! Yesterday, the dedicated staff of edhat.com was at La Cumbre Plaza looking at things people buy others to celebrate the day. We have visited the mall many times to gather Edhat data. Usually, a weekday afternoon at La Cumbre is a sleepy place where women shoppers saunter and talk in quiet voices.

Yesterday, however, the men were there in force. Motivated by love and guilt, and an overwhelming desire not to mess up, they crowded the shops buying traditional Valentine’s Day items. You could see them at Hallmark buying cards, at Victoria’s Secret buying things labeled ‘sexy’, and at See’s Candies buying chocolates.

At Hallmark, the Valentine’s Day card aisle was packed like the red carpet at the George Clooney tribute. People were elbowing for position in front of the card display area that stretched the length of the room like a big pink feeding trough of personal expression. You could buy a card for your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, your grandson, or just a friend. There were even cards for kids.

“Baby’s first Valentine’s Day” said one.

As you know, some cards are funny, some are risqué, some are sweet, some have birds, some have puppies, some show old people sitting on benches, some show old women looking at young men. With so much selection, there is sure to be a card for everyone. With methodical precision, people pick up the cards one by one. They take one off the shelf, read it, and put it back where they found it. Open. Read. Return - again, and again, and again. For men, the goal is often just to find a not-so-bad card.

When we were in the Hallmark Store, we heard one woman say out loud,

“This is perfect!”

We also hear a man exclaim,

“That’s great!”

But, it turned out he was talking on his cell phone.

As you might have guessed, the biggest crowd yesterday was in front of the section of cards for wives. Consequently, that section was the most messed-up and the most picked clean.

Yesterday, there was counting in the cards for the dedicated staff. The contest was to guess the number of unique cards on display on Hallmark. Given the crowded hallways of Hallmark and the length and height of the aisle, however, this was a formidable task – on a par with finding true love (or for men, finding the perfect card). We got on our cell phone and consulted with our in-house Edhat statistician (who we love dearly). He assisted us with a good estimation technique. With a high degree of certainty, we estimated that there were around 1,168 different cards. In other words, there are 1,168 different ways to say, “I love you”.

At Victoria’s Secret, where there are far fewer ways to say I love you (and some involve complicated fasteners), the crowd was not so thick. At See’s, we saw a friend of ours who had just gotten back from a trip to New York City. He described the crowd at the candy store as, “packed in like the New York Subway.” And he would know.

Of course, most of our subscribers far underestimated the number of cards. LinnyG was not fooled. She was the closest guesser and wins a token of appreciation from Ed - an Edhat t-shirt.

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