American Greetings to Establish americangreetings.com

as Separate Internet Company Cleveland (PROTEXT) - American Greetings (NYSE: AM) announcedtoday it will reposition its electronic marketing division,americangreetings.com, as a separate subsidiary in order toincrease its efforts to grow and promote that business. American Greetings is exploring various strategicopportunities for americangreetings.com, including thepossibility that a portion of the new company be offered tooutside investors later this year. Also, American Greetings saidit expects to increase its cash investment inamericangreetings.com. However, the full extent of the investmentwill not be determined until business and financial plans for thenew company are finalized later this year. "americangreetings.com will focus its efforts to take fulladvantage of the opportunity to provide online greetings as wellas other electronic communication and creativity products," saidMorry Weiss, chairman and chief executive officer of AmericanGreetings. He said americangreetings.com will continue to use theInternet and color printer technology to expand the socialexpression industry." Research indicates 27 million American families are sending orprinting electronic greetings from their home or office, anincrease of 35 percent from a year ago. American Greetingsbelieves most of this activity is incremental to the existinggreeting card market. "Technology may change the way we live, but it doesn't changethe basic fact that people need to communicate," Weiss said."Helping people fulfill their needs with technology is thebusiness and opportunity of americangreetings.com." John M. Klipfell, senior vice president of electronicmarketing for American Greetings, will serve as president andchief executive officer of americangreetings.com. "We already have a solid business built upon a strongportfolio of electronic products and services and established keydistribution relationships with industry leaders like AmericaOnline and The Learning Company," Klipfell said. "Building uponthis base, americangreetings.com is positioned to aggressivelyexpand and meet the needs of the electronic marketplace." American Greetings is the world's largest publicly heldcreator, manufacturer and distributor of greeting cards andsocial expression products. With headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio,American Greetings employs more than 21,000 associates around theworld and has one of the largest creative studios in the world.For more information on the Company, visit our site on the WorldWide Web at www.americangreetings.com americangreetings.com offers more than 3,000 online greetingsfor just about any occasion and holiday. These greetings areconveniently available on www.americangreetings.com and onAmerica Online at keyword: American Greetings.americangreetings.com is a pre-eminent supplier of brandedcontent to the digital market providing tens of thousands ofquality electronic designs annually. This content is madeavailable to consumers through multiple electronic distributionavenues. These avenues include the award winningamericangreetings.com web site; a marketing partnership withAmerica Online as their premier provider of online greetings; keyrelationships with other Internet service providers; and AmericanGreetings branded consumer software programs with The LearningCompany. The statements contained in this release that are nothistorical facts are forward-looking statements. Actual resultsmay differ materially from those projected in the forward-lookingstatements. These forward-looking statements involve risks anduncertainties, including but not limited to, the following risks:unforeseen difficulties in making it impractical or inadvisableto form a separate subsidiary, failure of the public to acceptonline greetings and other electronic communication andcreativity products, inability to attract investors on termsacceptable to American Greetings, and adverse financial events atAmerican Greetings that make it impractical for it to increaseits cash investment in americangreetings.com. ots Original TextService: American Greetings Corporation Internet:http://www.newsaktuell.de Contact: Dale A. Cable, VicePresident, Treasurer, (USA) 216-252-7300, or Jim King, Manager,Investor & Media Relations, (USA) 216-252-4864 both of AmericanGreetings Company News On-Call:http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/044150.html or Fax, (USA) 800-758-5804, ext. 044150 Web site: http://www.americangreetings.com

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