Small business spotlight

Cell-Mail Greetings provides stationary for prisoners and their families

Karen Dybis / Special to The Detroit News

Oak Park — The modern stationery store carries greeting cards for many occasions: retirement, divorce, National Boss Day.

So you would think that Shawntia M. Wright would have been able to find a card for her cousin, who is incarcerated. Nope. Every store she visited came up empty.

Wright toyed around for months with the idea of a greeting-card company for inmates and their families. She eventually contacted friend and businesswoman Lucretia Williams, who did some research. The market, Williams found, was ripe for the picking.

The result is Cell-Mail Greetings, a full-service inmate communications company that provides a cost-effective and secure method for families and friends to connect with incarcerated loved ones.

“Cell-Mail Greetings provides the opportunity to restore, rebuild and reunite relationships between inmates and their family and friends,” said Wright, CEO of the Oak Park-based business.

Cell-Mail Greetings does all of its work online through its Web site, making it easy for people to exchange encouraging and uplifting greetings with inmates, Williams said.

“I know we’re all busy. But now we’ve made (sending a letter) just as easy as texting or using Facebook,” said Williams, who also uses the service to keep in contact with her brother.

“We think it’s a diamond in the rough. It could be big,” Williams said.

So does Detroit’s Tech Town, which inducted Cell-Mail Greetings into its business incubator. Cell-Mail is part of its two-year accelerator program, Williams said, with Tech Town investing in the company to get it off the ground.

The connections between prisoners and their families are not only significant emotionally, but they also have proven to improve inmates’ lives in a more socially important way, Williams said. Studies show inmates who receive mail are treated better while they are incarcerated — and they tend to stay out of the jail and prison system once they are released.

“The interaction refocuses them so that their fellow prisoners are not their primary social circle. Maintaining outside social circles helps to reduce depression and recidivism,” Williams said.

Hallmark Cards spokeswoman Sarah Gronberg Kolel acknowledged the card giant doesn’t have cards for this occasion, but has others that could work.

“We don’t have any cards specifically captioned for this sending situation, but there are many that could be applicable. For instance, cards in the category of ‘Care and Concern’ or ‘Thinking of You’ or those designed for people facing a challenging time,” Kolel said.

Since its launch in March 2009, Cell-Mail Services said its revenues are showing real potential. Its sales more than doubled during the 2009 holiday season. As a result, the company is hoping to see similar results for Valentine’s Day.

For example, the company Web site provides customers with a variety of “Perfect Word” greeting cards, the ability to send money electronically, upload photos and even compose individual messages. “Perfect Word” is the company’s best-selling service. It helps loved ones express their feelings through greeting-card messages written specifically for that inmate.

Once an order has been placed, it is processed, packaged and shipped to the jail or prison. The firm’s services also include a feature for locating inmates housed in state and federal prisons, Spanish-translated products and services and recurring automatic online money transfers to most U.S. prisons, which enables prisoners to pay for educational courses, restitution fees and prison store purchases.

Cell-Mail Services also has auto-ship options, where customers set a future date to send items and “Constant Chat” messaging, where customers can send unlimited messages to an inmate to keep communications flowing.

Karen Dybis is a Metro Detroit freelance writer.

Samples of cards from Cell-Mail Greetings can be found at God’s World bookstore in Detroit. Cell-Mail is part of Tech Town’s incubator. (Steve Perez / The Detroit News)