Incipio Technologies
Where: Irvine
12-month sales: $10.7 million
Two-year growth: 286%
OC workers: 20
Business: accessories for mobile phones, iPods, other devices
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Irvine-based Incipio Technologies was born out of a “what are you going to do with your life” conversation founder Andy Fathollahi had with a house painter.
Fathollahi, who now runs Incipio as president, was 25, out of college and unsure about his future.
“Why don’t you start a business?” said the painter, who was working on the house of Fathollahi’s parents. “If you were going to start a business, what would you do?”
Fathollahi thought about the question for a few minutes, and then he said if he were going to start a business, he would make mobile phone cases out of backpack material.
Armed with a business license, his grandmother’s sewing machine and a $500 loan from his parents, Fathollahi started Incipio out of his parents’ Orange County garage.
Incipio, which started in 1999, now makes cases and other accessories for iPhones, iPods, BlackBerrys and other handheld devices. It also sells a few chargers and cables.
The company ranked No. 10 on the Business Journal’s 2009 list of fast-growing private companies with 286% sales growth for the two years through June, according to Business Journal estimates.
For the 12 months ended June, Incipio had estimated sales of $10.7 million, up from $2.8 million for the same period in 2007.
The company has no debt and is profitable, according to Fathollahi. It employs 20 people in OC, up from three in 2007.
Fathollahi took on a partner for a short time. But he said he “quickly realized we didn’t have the same mindset.”
He since has grown the company himself.
Growth has been fueled by new customers—retailers, distributors and wireless dealers—as well as more visitors to the company’s Web site, where people can buy Incipio’s products.
Incipio’s Web traffic “has tripled or quadrupled over the last three years, if not more than that,” Fathollahi said.
The company has landed about 300 “substantial” customers in the past few years, Fathollahi said.
The newcomers, in turn, have helped Incipio sell its products all over the world, where people can buy its gear in stores such as AT&T Wireless and RadioShack.
The company’s growth also has been buoyed by the popularity of smartphones—iPhones, Black-Berrys and other devices that run on operating systems similar to that of a computer.
The recession has been easy on smartphones—their sales growth only has been lightly hit.
“(They’re) the largest small purchase you can make that’s worth talking about with your friends,” Fathollahi said.
The recession has been nice to Incipio in other ways.
It has allowed the company to showcase what it calls aggressive prices and the value and quality of its accessories, Fathollahi said.
Many of the products come with what Fathollahi calls “pack-ins”—items such as screen protectors and cleaning cloths that add perceived value to the $20 or $30 purchase, he said.
Each Incipio product also comes with a lifetime guarantee—something Fathollahi says pays for itself “in so many different ways.”
“There is no better salesperson than someone who has had a good experience,” he said.
The company’s flexibility and willingness to work with customers also has helped, Fathollahi said.
If a customer calls Incipio and asks that it make a certain accessory in fuchsia, Incipio is probably going to be willing to do it, according to Fathollahi.
Incipio is big on design.
“Our products and designs embody the passion that comes from our roots,” its Web site says.
The company’s Irvine office has a design team. Fathollahi works with the designers almost every day, he said.
The company also manages its online store from Irvine. The products are made in China.
Marketing is a big deal for Incipio.
It exhibits at major industry trade shows, advertises in “Mac-type” magazines and online, sends out newsletters and uses social networking sites such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com, Fathollahi said.
It also makes its products known through community and charity events, such as the Orange County Mud Run, the Chapman University 5K and the Case for the Cure event, where Incipio donates a third of all online October sales of pink products to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer nonprofit.
Incipio’s busy office, where Fathollahi, 36, spends his days on “two phone calls at once” surrounded by 20-something employees in flip-flops, may seem like an unlikely conclusion to a business idea that seemingly sprang out of nowhere.
But if you delve into Fathollahi’s background, the evolution of his business becomes clearer.
After college, he spent a few months traveling through Europe and Australia.
He noticed everyone had a wireless phone or some sort of mobile device, whereas in the U.S. at the time, few people carried them.
“This is crazy,” he thought. “We’re America, and we don’t have those things.”
Soon, the pinpointed trend from Europe and Australia mingled with a seemingly random conversation with a painter.
