The Sun News
November 30th, 2006

Making clients feel special grows new online business
by Norm Weber
Staff Writer

Special Client CEO Ryan Florio and his partner Adam Blumenthal base their business on what they call the two forgotten words in the world of transactions - "thank you."

Florio, a North Royalton native and Parma resident, and Blumenthal, a University Heights native and South Euclid resident, played soccer against each toher in club soccer and in high school, Florio at North Royalton and Blumenthal at University School. When they both went to Miami University to play soccer and study business, they became friends and eventually decided to go into business together.

Thus, Special Client a Web-based business, was founded this year. Special Client's entire service is based on quality customer service that brokers, salesmen, business owners and customer service representatives would like to offer clients on an ongoing basis, but don't quite have the time.

As an ancillary service to a company's regular services, Special Client provides gifts, important date cards signed in blue ink and sent out with a postage stamp, survey cards and reminder cards.

The trademark of the Blumenthal-Florio offering is handmade wine caddies, imported from Germany, valued at over $100, that are sent to a customer of a client upon the closing of a sale. Currently they are doing it for home mortgage brokers, but are adding any kind of business to their client roster. They also send out birthday cards, anniversary cards, holiday cards on behalf of their clients to show that their clients actually care about the people they, in turn, are servicing, making repeat business inevitable.

"I've been in the mortgage business since '98 and Ryan had been in for three years," Blumenthal said. "I noticed that none of the brokers were following up on their sales. I saw a need there."

The caddies are made out of steel and have a slot for a wine bottle, vinegar bottle or a bottle to fill up with popcorn. The caddies come in more then 100 styles and are shaped to typically go with an occupation or hobby, adding the personal touch. for instance, some are shaped into waiters, lawyers and cooks, and other into hockey players, baseball players and runners.

"My mom (Sharon, a Solon resident) has a small partnership in it, as well," Blumenthal said. "On a buying trip she came across this artist. she thought it would be a good one-time gift for real estate closing and I put together a business plan to expand it. I talked to Ryan about making a while program out of it and offer it to other business."

It took the two men nearly 18 months to finally launch the program after doing all kinds of research, testing and analysis.

"From the initial conversation, it took about two years to finally go live," Florio said. "We've done market research, product research, and we hired a consultant out of New York."

Special Client charges $150 for this package that provides ongoing service to others' clients, buyers and customers.

"We think it's such a great retention tool," Blumenthal said. "It costs so much money to obtain new clients. This is a small amount to retain the clients they already have."

In the past, people would buy a house and 30 years later have completed payments. Now, with upward mobility, people buy houses more often and are fefinancing mulitple times, opening up a huge repeat business market for brokers, aided by the efforts of Special Client.

"We've sent out hundreds ofthses caddies," Florio said. "We send out close to 50 a week. we've grown by 3,000 percent since our launch in April. We're in 13 different states."

The feedback from the people they have been servicing has also been spectacular.

"I like the fact that ehey give so much value back to the customer," said Claudia Vitulich, a special assistant to the business and Cleveland Heights resident. "Ryan and Adam have high customer service standards and we are hearing that from our clients."

Contact Special Client at www.specialclient.com or e-mail ryan@specialclient.com