Case Study: Certificate of Service

CertificateofService.com, a Kelley Create partner in Pasco, WA, started almost 20 years ago when CEO Jay Jump and his wife, Kathryn, were sending mailers in support of their business as bankruptcy attorneys. What began as just stuffing a few envelopes to send out before the close of business quickly became a tremendous business opportunity.

“We do mailings, legal mailings for bankruptcy, law firms, trusteeships, and panel trustees,” Jay Jump said, ticking through the services of his business. “We serve clients all the way from Guam to Puerto Rico and all points in between.

“One of the things that we always struggled with as part of our practice was at the end of the day,” Jump continued, “we must sit down and stuff hundreds of envelopes. I went and looked for a firm that would handle those short-run kinds of mailings. However, they simply didn’t exist.”

It was there Jump and his wife saw the opportunity.

“We sat there and said if we have this problem, every other bankruptcy attorney across the country does as well. Let’s create a solution for that. And that was the beginning of CertificateofService.com. We practice bankruptcy. We must notify all the parties in the case: all the creditors, all the trustees… Basically, anyone who’s involved in the case has to receive mail or first-class notice via USPS mail. We take those documents. We convert them into mailable pieces, and we send them out to all the creditors in the case, and we charge the attorney, the law firm, or the trustee of fee for doing that.”

CertificateofService.com needs special attention because their business can surge and pull back constantly. It can also be the opposite of the economy, just based on business circumstances.

“Our company is a counter-cyclical company, so when times are bad or when the economy is in recession or scaling back, we do exceptionally well,” Jump explained. “At that point, more people are filing for bankruptcy. They’re having more difficulty. So as times get harder, we get busier. When times are good, our business levels off a little bit. That’s the point of bankruptcy. It’s always there to give you a fresh start and to start over again.”

At any given time, a big project can come in almost overnight. What does a big job look like? On December 27, an order came in to send 4500 recipients 9×12 envelopes stuffed with 72 sheets of paper. It’s why they originally came to Kelley Create.

“We recognized that we had outgrown our old mail equipment, and we needed to expand,” Jump continued. “We needed a partner with the right strategic solutions who will grow with us and expand because we are entering an upswing as bankruptcies increase. We knew that we were going to have to grow with somebody. Kelley Create fit that bill.”

Jump continued that it wasn’t just about purchasing mailing equipment.

“We’re looking 5, 10 years down the road where we want to be,” he added. “This time around, when we picked our maintenance partner, we knew we wanted to pick someone who could live up to that standard and go the distance with us.”

We like to get our partners set up to take advantage of multiple opportunities to grow their businesses. We like it even more when they are up to speed with us and sometimes challenge Kelley Create to meet their needs. Jay chose Kelley Create to replace his current supplier and added two high-end folder inserter systems to handle their immediate mailing needs and expected growth in their business.

“We use Kelley Create because they are a forward-looking company,” Jump said. “I’m proud that we’ve gone from stuffing envelopes in the back corner of our law firm to having a factory floor with a team of employees, and we can give them health benefits, retirement benefits, and a matching 401k. We’ve built this company from the ground up. We created this niche. Nobody else had done it.”

Do you have a niche you’d like to help turn into a tremendous business? We’re all ears. Reach out, and we’ll start the conversation.