Just three Fairfield County companies cracked this year”™s installment of the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing businesses in the U.S., though about two dozen were included on the larger Inc. 5000 rankings published by Inc. magazine.
Nearly 70 Connecticut companies made this year”™s Inc. 5000 list, ranging from the Wilton-based digital advertising shop Zemoga, to Plan B Burger Bar in Hartford to Proforma Promotion Consultants in Stamford, which squeezed onto the list with 1 percent growth over a four-year period.
Companies self-nominate themselves for the Inc. 500 list, with the magazine ranking companies by their revenue growth rate between 2006 and 2009, provided they generated at least $80,000 in revenue in the baseline year and $2 million last year. Companies must be privately held and independent ”“ subsidiaries of other companies do not qualify ”“ but can have been acquired this year. Revenue figures used in the list can also be the result of operations acquired from other companies.
Dallas-based Ambit Energy led the nation in growth over the period studied by Inc., while Boston-based digital storage company Carbonite Inc. led all Northeast companies by placing ninth nationally.
EasyNet was named the fastest-growth company in Connecticut and 176th nationally, increasing revenue more than 16-fold to $2.3 million selling tickets online. The New Britain-based company was ranked the sixth fastest-growing retail company in the nation.
HPC Development was the highest-ranked company in Fairfield County to make the Inc. 500, increasing revenue by nearly a factor of 10 between 2006 and 2009 to some $7 million.
Stamford-based Cogent Fibre and Wilton-based Alteris Renewables were the only other Fairfield County companies to make the traditional Inc. 500, with Cogent revenue totaling $44 million last year exporting wood chips, and Alteris racking up $56 million installing solar arrays in the Northeast.
While Alteris”™ rapid growth has been well chronicled, less known are HPC and Cogent Fibre.
HPC is based in Danbury and has just under 20 employees. Co-founded by SBA Network Services veterans Marc Anderson and Joe Tassone Jr., the company consults on the installation of wireless telecommunications systems and wind turbines, among other services.
Cogent Fibre, meanwhile, was the largest U.S. exporter of woodchips to Europe in 2009, according to RISI Inc., a Bedford, Mass.-based company that tracks the paper and pulp industry. The cross-Atlantic trade dropped 19 percent last year, with Cogent and other U.S. exporters focused on Turkish manufacturers of particleboard.
Founding partner Don McClure spent five years at an unspecified private company specializing in the marketing of wood byproducts. He started his career on the derivatives trading floor of CIBC Wood Gundy, and has also worked at Arthur Andersen and KPMG.
Like many companies on the Inc. 5000, Cogent Fibre has been reacting to adjustments this year as the economy struggles to recover.
“In early 2010, the focus in the U.S. South shifted to importing woodchips, as both International Paper and Georgia Pacific scheduled vessels of hardwood chips from eastern Canada and Brazil,” wrote Bob Flynn, director of RISI”™s international timber practice, in an assessment this year of the overall market. “The availability of domestic hardwood chips has become so problematic due to prolonged wet weather that imports again seemed to be the only solution.”
