Ideal Gifts

Ideal Gifts, a division of Friendly Toys and Gifts, was started approximately 50 years ago as a home business with Chris and Mary Hoffman as the only Ideal Gifts advisors. For many years the business was operated directly from the family home. The company occupies a 287,000-square-foot facility that houses a material handling system consisting of more than 3 miles of conveyors and electronic order picking and verification systems. Parties are picked by a touch light system, which virtually eliminates errors and are barcode inspected for 100-percent accuracy. Recipe cards, baskets, baking pans and mitts are some of the products the company distributes. In 1970, the company changed its name to Friendly to avoid confusion with Ideal Toy Company. In 2001, the company reintroduced Ideal Gifts as the name of its catalogs.