While Neat Co. considered several possible new locations, staying in the city was a priority for its mostly young, technology-savvy workforce, Garton said. Nearly all had been walking, biking, or taking public transit to work, and they wanted to continue to do so.
However, the 6,000-square-foot offices in the University City Science Center were getting a little crowded, Garton said, even for an operation with an open-office layout.
Starting Wednesday, those Neat Co. employees will rattle around in 14,000 square feet of space in the 36-story office tower that's also home to two document-driven companies, Radian Group Inc., the huge mortgage insurer, and KPMG L.L.P., the global accounting firm.
Companies generally don't move into bigger offices unless they expect to get bigger themselves. And Neat Co. has been one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the city for the last several years. Garton declined to provide sales figures for 2010.
Inc. magazine ranked Neat Co. at No. 1,282 on its 2010 list of the fastest-growing private companies with revenue growth of 231 percent between 2006 and 2009. The company told the magazine it had $28.5 million in sales for 2009 as well as 160 employees.
As for why its workforce is smaller now, Garton described a change in strategy that shows just how far the company has come since it was founded as NeatReceipts Inc. by Rafi Spero and his father, Les Spero, in late 2002. Back then, the Speros peddled a scanner to digitize business cards and receipts via their website and through a kiosk at the Philadelphia International Airport, snagging captive business travelers with time to kill.
