If you know me, you know I’m not a person that really pays much attention to “important” dates. I don’t get all excited over birthdays and holidays, milestones, or count downs. My life is pretty much lived on a day-to-day basis. Which is probably mostly due to the fact that with all the information my brain has to hold – work, home, kids, husband, school, activities, etc. – it just can’t handle trying to track future happenings.

Even so, I did just realize (really, just now), that The Creative J has reached its 5th year of business this week. In October 2004, Jen and I officially opened our doors and started a new phase in our lives, chosing The Creative J as our name to reflect our own names. There’s been a few bumps over the years, but for the majority of the time, it’s been pretty smooth sailing – which is really awesome considering a lot of new businesses fail within the first few years. I’m proud to say that The Creative J is going strong and getting better each year. We started out just the two of us in Jen’s basement, and now we’ve got 2 sales reps, a marketing & sales assistant and a real office to hold us all.
From the beginning, we’ve always made our focus our customers, and I think that has shown in everything we do. It’s always been our mission to make sure our customers are kept updated and in the loop on every order. We do our best to help make the process as smooth as possible. There are times it might get a little thorny, but sometimes those pesky details just make it have to be that way. For most orders though, it’s a pretty simple process which ensures you end up receiving exactly what you were hoping to get.
The Creative J has worked so well because all of us who work here recognize in each other our strengths and our weaknesses, and we try to run the business based on those traits. Jen is an incredible sales rep who can come up with the perfect creative brand-building items a business needs to promote themselves. Ask her to give you a detailed breakdown of every line item of an order and how your artwork will need to be formated, she’ll turn the task over to me to make sure no detail is missed. That’s where I excel – making sure everything is accounted for and all the details are studied. Ask me to go out and make sales calls, and you might as well ask me to fly to the moon – it just ain’t goin’ to happen! I love helping our customers and enjoy talking to you all on the phone, but you’re not going to find me seeking out new people to meet. I’m just more comfortable here in the office, making the business hum.
And through the past year as we’ve added new people – Jeff & Val in sales, Angela in marketing and assisting me – we’ve been able to capitalize on their strengths, which has made The Creative J stronger. They all have unique abilities they add to our business to make it a place we all enjoy working. We hope that enjoyment shows through to all of you. We’re really glad to have such great people working for us. It’s hard to imagine now how we did it without them.
And that’s what The Creative J is – it’s no longer just Jen and Jill – it’s a unique bundle of personalities and abilities that all work together to make each customer feel they are getting the best possible experience when making their promotional buying decisions. And we hope that along the way, during that experience, we’re injecting a little fun, a little lightheartedness, to make your day just a little better. If we’ve done that, then we’ve done our job.

Thanks to all of you who have made The Creative J what it is today. You are the reason we have been able to thrive. And we thank you for it!