Chances are you’ve received a bill that’s been processed by InfoSend Inc.
The Fullerton company makes and processes paper and electronic bills for cities, water districts, hospitals, companies and public and private utilities.
InfoSend prints and packages paper statements at its 30,000-square-foot headquarters and delivers them to post offices via two delivery trucks. The company has handled bills and payments electronically since 2001.
Its key rival is Napa-based Regulus Group LLC.
InfoSend processes about 36 million documents per year and keeps backup printing and processing equipment and electronic data at a 6,000-square-foot building in Redlands.
Customers include the cities of Anaheim, Huntington Beach and San Clemente, the University of Southern California’s School of Medicine, Huntington Beach Memorial Hospital, the El Toro Water District and Culligan Water Co.
In January, InfoSend won a bid to provide paper and electronic billing for the city of Santa Ana’s 45,000 customers.
Mahmood Rezai, who is of Iranian heritage and a Chapman University graduate, started the company in 1996 out of a 1,600-square-foot office in east Anaheim. The business moved to Fullerton in 1998.
Son Russ Rezai is InfoSend’s vice president of development and the creator of the company’s electronic services department. Russ Rezai was a senior in high school when his father started the company. The younger Rezai helped his dad after school before going off to study business at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Dad and son now run the company, which has 28 employees.
“Almost nobody likes processing and mailing bills,” Russ Rezai said. “We do it for companies that don’t have the time to do it.”
Yearly sales are about $12 million, up from $4 million three years ago, Mahmood Rezai said.
Earlier this year, the Rezais said they entered contracts with the cities of Roseville, Santa Cruz, Petaluma and San Bruno, as well as Albany, N.Y., and the state of Oregon.
The company has had offers to be bought, Mahmood Rezai said. He said he’s turned them down because he likes working with his son and wants to grow the business.
Green Move
When Spencer Brown moved from Ladera Ranch to Huntington Beach, the last thing he wanted to do was spend $800 on cardboard boxes. It led Brown to his “aha” moment.
Brown owns Earth Friendly Moving, a Huntington Beach-based company that makes and rents recycled and reusable moving boxes called RecoPacks.
The company has served 1,300 movers since starting last summer. The company’s RecoPacks are made out of recycled plastic waste such as detergent bottles. Earth Friendly Moving also makes a bubble wrap substitute made out of recycled cardboard boxes, box fillers made out of recycled paper and delivery pallets made out of recycled diapers.
The company buys trash from salvage brokers and makes its products at plants in Ohio and North Carolina. Earth Friendly Moving stores its products at a 15,000-square-foot warehouse in Costa Mesa and rents each RecoPack box for a weekly rate of $1. The company also charges $29 to $99 for RecoPack deliveries and pickups.
Earth Friendly Moving has 17 workers, six vegetable oil-powered trucks and four vegetable oil-powered sedans called “green machines.”
Brown said his goal is to take a “green” approach to doing business by using only recycled materials and reusable or biodegradable products.
“Cardboard boxes and styrofoam are wasteful and environmentally damaging. What I’m trying to do is make moving more environmentally efficient,” Brown said.
Brown wouldn’t disclose Earth Friendly Moving’s sales. He said the company has been profitable since its inception. Brown said he plans to buy 34 delivery trucks and hire more workers.
Cosmetic Couture
Los Alamitos’ Mor Cosmetics Inc. is taking a couture approach to cosmetics. The company makes high-end sugar scrubs, body butters, soaps, perfumes, lip-gloss, powder puffs and candles, among other goods in flavors such as marshmallow, pomegranate and fig.
Dianna Burmas and Deon St. Mor started the company in 2001 in Australia and brought it to the U.S. in 2003 with the help of Nicolle Lubman, former executive for Solana Beach-based Mistral LLC, a French-style soap and perfume company.
Mor Cosmetics makes its products in Australia with native ingredients such as Australian sugar cane, and packages them in vintage style tins, boxes and bottles. They’re then stored, distributed and marketed from the company’s 5,000-square-foot building in Los Alamitos.
The company sells bath and beauty products online and at stores such as Fred Segal and Anthropologie. Its body butters, soaps and scrubs have attracted celebrities such as Tori Spelling and Mariska Hargitay of “Law & Order,” according to Lubman.
The company wouldn’t disclose yearly sales. Revenue’s grown 45% every year for the past two and a half years, according to Lubman.
