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Friday, August 22, 2008
L.F. Driscoll is the biggest local firm on the Inc. 5000 list

I pay attention to fast-growing companies because they’re great consumers:

They consume capital, office space, labor, and any number of professional services you can think of.

Fast growth is normally associated with very small firms, because it’s much easier to double in size when you’re pulling in $2 million in sales than $200 million.

I took another look at the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies and was surprised to see some of the 158 local firms weren’t so small.

L.F. Driscoll Co., the Bala Cynwyd construction management firm, made the list with a three-year revenue growth rate of 124.5 percent. Its 2007 revenues were $780 million.

AmeriQuest Transportation Services, a Cherry Hill logistics firm, had revenues of $563 million, while Intech Construction, of Philadelphia, reported $285 million. Those are some big companies growing at a triple-digit rate.

As for what these companies have in common, 26 of them provide information technology services. There were 14 construction firms and, surprise, 13 manufacturers that made the list.

Where will you find these companies? The suburbs are home to most of them, but 19 of these gazelles are based in the city. The most popular suburban addresses were King of Prussia (14 companies), Wilmington (10), and Malvern (7). Blue Bell, Cherry Hill, Conshohocken, Fort Washington, and Newark, Del. each had five.

Finally, I added up the employment and revenues of all the local companies on the Inc. 5000 list. Combined, they employed 14,046 people and reported revenue of $4.46 billion for 2007.

For some perspective, Charming Shoppes Inc. had about 30,200 employees and revenue of $3 billion for its most recent fiscal year.

Quotable

All of the things that are undermining consumer confidence are still there. We’re one bad, unexpected event from really taking out the consumer confidence in a very serious way beyond where we are today.

- New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

Posted by Mike Armstrong @ 3:05 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
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About Mike Armstrong
Mike Armstrong, a business editor and writer for nearly two decades, is the Inquirer's business columnist and PhillyInc blog editor.
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