Direct Marketing Association Hall of Famer Tim Litle’s payment processing company, Litle & Co., is No. 1 on Inc. magazine’s 2006 list of the top 500 fastest growing private companies in the country, the magazine announced Wednesday.
The Lowell, MA-based company Litle founded in 2001 had $34.8 million in revenue in 2005, representing a 5,629.1% increase over three years.
“An engineer to the core, Litle, 66, is responsible for some of the commercial world’s least sexy innovations, including those three-digit numbers on the backs of credit cards that discourage fraud, credit card rules that let consumers buy on installment plans, and the system by which mass mailers receive discounts from the U.S. Postal Service for presorting by carrier route,” said a profile of Litle in the magazine’s September issue and on its Web site at Inc.com.
Litle started an earlier Litle & Co., also a payment processing concern, in 1986 with a $1.6 million bank loan, and in 1995 sold it to First USA for $80 million.
Litle was inducted into the DMA Hall of Fame last year.
The first Litle & Co. made Inc.’s 500 fastest-growing companies list twice, in 1991 at No. 16, and in 1992 at 354. This year's Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies had a combined 2005 revenue of $19.7 billion and have created more than 90,000 jobs since they were founded, according to Inc.
