AmSher growth generates move, jobs

After doubling its revenue and adding about 40 new employees over the past two years, AmSher Receivables Management has moved into larger offices to accommodate all that growth.

And with the ink still drying on two new national contracts, brothers David and Martin Sher, who serve as co-CEOs, made sure the new space was large enough to handle further expansion.

Founded in 1986, AmSher is a family-run collection agency serving a range of clients in the medical, banking, retail and cellular phone industries, among others.

AmSher Receivables Management currently employs about 130 people, up from 90 in June 2004. It saw 2005 revenue of about $8 million, up from $3.9 million in 2003, according to Martin Sher.

And with work expected to start soon on two new contracts with national companies, he says the company could be "significantly larger" by midyear.

"I don't think it would be far-fetched for us to grow another 50 percent this year in job growth," he says.

To keep pace with hiring needs, the company last year hired its first full-time recruiter. It also took on two full-time trainers.

The company relocated Dec. 26 to new offices in Beacon Ridge Tower on Beacon Parkway West in Birmingham, where it has 16,000 square feet of space and access to 200 parking spaces, from its former Vestavia location, where it had only 10,000 square feet.

National clients boost growth
Much of the company's recent growth has come from national contracts.

While a greater number of the company's clients are local businesses, about 60 percent of its revenue is now derived from its national accounts, the Sher brothers report.

Much of the national work they have received has come from local companies that have grown larger and broader through mergers and acquisitions.

"It's a positive for Birmingham," David Sher says, because that collection business could have gone to companies elsewhere.

The brothers attribute much of AmSher's success to its customer-service approach to collections, a way of doing business that is deeply rooted in the company's history.

David and Martin Sher grew up in Birmingham working for their father's retail store, King Credit Clothing Co., which specialized in sales to customers with poor credit.

As part of their job, they brothers made collection calls.

"We were trying to do it with a lot of tact and empathy, and I think that was very successful," David Sher says.

They became so adept at it that other companies began hiring them for collections work.

"Because we didn't know what a collection agency was, we didn't act like a collection agency," he says. "We were persistent, but we weren't overbearing."

Soon, a new enterprise was born.

While the retail business has long been closed, AmSher Receivables has continued to thrive. "We both grew up learning customer service from our dad," Martin Sher says. It's a message he continues to pass on to new hires in monthly training meetings.

David Sher says AmSher receives thank-you letters from debtors "fairly regularly."

© 2006 Birmingham Business Journal