One of the treats of compiling Top Lists of the region’s top companies is seeing just how many are doing quite well. Yes, Virginia, there is prosperity in southeastern New England, despite what so many surveys say is the worst business climate in the solar system, if not the galaxy.
The core of this section is the collection of Fastest Growing Private Companies, four lists that rank companies and nonprofits based on percentage growth over the last three years (there are four lists based on size of companies). This year we list 59 companies that range in revenue from $350,000 (Liberty Mobility LLC) to $15.9 billion (Fidelity Investments). The leaders of all four lists have growth rates greater than 233 percent from 2013-2015.
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The growth of all the companies on the lists is impressive. Fidelity, for instance, saw 17 percent growth during the period on the largest base. The biggest percentage jump in revenue was registered by the Partnership for Rhode Island Streetlight Management, with 2,594 percent growth, from $189,941 in 2013 as a startup to $5,117,075 in 2015. That’s growth.
But these lists are more than a collection of healthy income statements. They are a portrait of the ever-changing landscape of success in the Ocean State and the region. For instance, of the 75 companies listed a decade ago in the 2007 Book of Lists among the fastest-growing (there was only one list for companies of all sizes that year), 13 show up on the 2017 lists of fastest growing.
And of the 799 entries in our Fastest Growing Private Companies lists in the last decade, only three have made it every year – Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co. Ltd. (known popularly as KLR), Atrion Inc.(which since has been bought by Carousel Industries of North America Inc., which made it every year but one), and The Claflin Co.
The fact that so few show up year after year can be seen a number of ways. There are limits to growth for sure, whether through the size of the market or the number of competitors or even changes in technology. (Remember portable CD players? Thought you didn’t.)
But the yearly turnover in the lists is also a sign of a dynamic economy, one in which new ideas are brought to market and new wealth is created. It belies the too-often-repeated complaints about Rhode Island’s ever-impending demise.
There are 42 different industries represented by the 59 companies on the four fastest-growing lists. It is a list of great variety, and includes old-school sectors such as automotive-parts manufacturing – Revision Automotive Inc. – right alongside Information Age standards that include data-center services – Provdotnet LLC.
A third-generation manufacturer of soups and other packaged foods – Blount Fine Foods – competes with a reseller of electricity to the commercial market launched in 2010 – First Point Power LLC, while a financial institution founded more than a century ago – today’s Navigant Credit Union – to serve French-Canadian immigrants in Central Falls shows up on the same list as a company whose entire mission is to help others bring innovative medical technology to market – Ximedica.
The Fastest Growing Private Companies are not the only ones contained in this section of the 2017 Book of Lists. There are many successful enterprises on the other lists. It’s just that when you especially want to see what is going right in Rhode Island, take a look at the companies listed from Pages 28-32. They’re the ones listed with a collective bullet. •
