Smithsonian's National Postal Museum last month opened a "virtual exhibit" to highlight the 200-year relationship between private industry and the U.S. Postal Service.
Included among businesses highlighted by the museum, which will also install a rotating series of exhibits for patrons, is AutoMail LLC of Jonesboro. The software company was founded in 1998 to help trim time and expenses for businesses that mail in bulk.
Founder Harry Herget estimates that the software has saved companies $1 billion in postage, labor, equipment and other costs. So seeing AutoMail, a subsidiary of Jonesboro's Trinamic Corp., included isn't a surprise.
What gives Herget pause is seeing AutoMail listed in the Financial Services Industry category along with American Express, AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and State Farm. Combined those companies did about $353 billion in revenue for 2015, or an average of about $88 billion each.
"It is laughable," Herget said. "Being with those big players, people probably assume we must be a big player, too. We're not a big bottom line, but in terms of the success of the product we think we're a big player. We're proud of that."
Herget and business partner Steve Smith founded AutoMail in 1998 to assist banks with their bulk mailing. They developed software that helped presort and apply postage, saving companies, Herget said, up to 30 percent on their mailing costs.
Smith and Herget both had prior experience as bank executives and recognized the need to help financial institutions cut down on their mailing costs. They helped persuade banks in Arkansas to embrace digital imaging of checks and bank statements, rather than stockpile paper documents.
Clients have grown to include utility, insurance, health care, manufacturing and distribution businesses. AutoMail has customers in all 50 states and Guam.
About 1,300 of AutoMail's 1,400 clients are banks, but consolidation has led Herget and Smith to turn their attention elsewhere. Five years ago they started Document Output Center, a service that allows companies with lots of mail to outsource their mail room work. As with AutoMail, banks and utility companies are among the target customer group for the service.
Today, the document handling business has 67 clients. Herget sees significant growth potential there and 100 percent of his company's new sales growth is coming from areas other than AutoMail. Document Output Center has sorting and mailing facilities in Jonesboro and St. Louis.
All 33 of the company's employees were dedicated to AutoMail in 2008. Today there are 30 employees with a 60-40 split between its software and mailroom segments. Their efforts focus on paper and digital document distribution, or what Herget describes as "the inevitable mailroom."
Centennial Bank and Bank of the Ozarks are both using Document Output Center. To initially break even, the company had to process 28,000 pieces of mail per month. It now processes 1.5 million pieces of mail per month "and the number is growing like crazy," Herget said.
Making it into the Smithsonian -- virtually or physically -- is nice, Herget said, but he doesn't want the Jonesboro business to become a relic of the past.
"This is where it's headed. We're trying to give folks the best of both worlds," Herget said. "The bank market is shrinking. We want to reinvent ourselves. We're simply a barometer of what's going on in that market."
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SundayMonday Business on 10/16/2016