Ingram's May 2024

HALLMARK CARDS Year Founded: 1910 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Personal-Expression Products Number of Employees: 20,000

HCA MIDWEST HEALTH Year Founded: 2003 Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. Sector: Health Care Number of Employees: 9,000+

From its comparatively humble start in greeting cards, Hallmark is a Kansas City institution that became the world’s leading brand in that niche. But the drag on print in the digital age has compelled the company to explore multiple business channels in the broader field now called personal expressions, including its own television network, and the concept of a birthday, get-well or anniversary card has blossomed into a much broader field known as personal expressions, including greeting-card software and video cards. But there’s more to come, as it explores instant e-cards, custom streaming music, customized postage stamps, video flip books, creative-content search engines, and more. It has helped Kansas City develop a creative class that punches well above its weight for markets this size. The company’s leadership has progressed from Joyce Hall to Don Hall Sr., Irv Hockaday, Don Jr. and now Mike Perry.

With the stroke of a pen—and the $1.3 billion behind it— the nation’s largest health-care system became a dominant player in the Kansas City region when it purchased Health Midwest in 2003. A generation later, its seven regional hospitals and medical centers account for nearly one-fifth of the region’s total beds and patient admissions—more than 60,000 of the latter each year—generating in excess of $12 billion combined. That transaction also infused the region with nearly half a billion dollars worth of philanthropic muscle directed to health-care foundations on each side of the state line—what is now the Health Forward Founda tion in Missouri, and the REACH Foundation in Kansas. Keith Zimmerman, the current CEO, was appointed to the leadership role in 2022, succeeding long-time leader Mel LaGarde.

HILL’S PET NUTRITION Year Founded: 1907

HUNT MIDWEST Year Founded: 1969

Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. Sector: Animal Nutrition Products Number of Employees: 2,600

Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Real Estate/Logistics Number of Employees: 1,500

Last year, this maker of pet foods celebrated its 75th anniversary—but Leavenworth County and the city of Ton ganoxie got to open the present: A new, 365,000-square-foot production plant on an 80-acre site. In tandem with the legacy production plant in Topeka, covering nearly 489,000 square feet, Hill’s Pet Nutrition further cemented its role as a key regional employer. It produces the popular Hill’s Science Diet brand, and about 100 workers at the new site will turn out nearly 170 other food varieties. Based in Topeka for much of its history, the company relocated its headquarters to the sprawling Aspiria campus in Overland Park in 2023. It continues to operate a 170-acre research and development center in the state’s capital city, as well as a production plant in Emporia, and last year it generated an estimated $4.2 billion in revenue for global parent Colgate-Palmolive.

The late, great Lamar Hunt will forever be remembered for making Kansas City a pro football town (and also for inspiring a city to become the self-proclaimed Soccer Capital of America). But his business acumen extended well beyond the teams’ front offices—and, as it turns out, well below. In 1969, his Great Midwest Corp. partnership purchased a nearly 40-year-old maker of road-construction aggregates, a move that, well, paved the way for Hunt Midwest’s impressive growth in the region’s logistics and construction sectors. Among its expansive holdings, the company operates the world’s largest underground warehousing and business complex, Subtropolis, and is flexing its muscles in above ground logistics with KCI 29 Logistics Park, a massive, 3,300-acre development near Kansas City International Airport.

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I ng r am ’ s

May 2024

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