WipWare has grown from a home-based business to being ranked 127th on the 25th annual PROFIT 500, the definitive ranking of Canada’s fastest-growing companies.
The North Bay company, an innovative developer and manufacturer of photoanalysis software and hardware systems, made the list with five-year revenue growth of 524 per cent.
“We have made great gains, and mostly in the last few years. Certainly when I formed the company in 1995, it didn’t really grow the way it should have,” said president Tom Palangio.
As a subscriber to PROFIT Magazine, he was contacted by the publication and asked to be part of the 500 list survey. After several requests, WipWare submitted the required information.
“We thought we didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. The list takes in all of Canada and some companies are in the billions of dollars. We are not there,” he said.
Most of the companies that make the list are from larger centres such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
“We were really pleasantly surprised making the list,” Palangio said.
The company began with Palangio and two partners. One was a rock mechanic and the other was a basic programmer.
I started in my home and the partners were both academics. They were told that if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door. They were reluctant to advertise and do marketing,” he said. “WipWare didn’t even own a computer or a copy machine. I had another company, Topex (an explosive consulting firm), and I would do all the work through it and then bill WipWare.”
Things began to change when he bought the last partner out in 2006. His brother Robert and son Thomas joined the company and he credits them for building the foundations and building the team it currently has.
“That is the reason for the growth over the last five years,” Palangio said. “No one knew of us, really, before that. I wanted to know how well I was blowing things up and measure the blast fragmentation and that was really the need.”
WipWare has a dozen employees in North Bay and has distributors and agents in 21 countries.
“I think we reached a critical mass now, and we have enough people and we are doing a lot of R and D and branching out into other agencies.
The growth should be quite steep now and if we maintain the momentum, we will do quite well,” he said.
The hardware and software systems have uses in several industries, including mining and aggregate. “For those who aren’t blasting, but crushing and grinding and milling, there is an opportunity to measure size and shape,” Palangio said. There have been attempts to copy the technology, but no one has the same knowledge gained from trial and error.
“It’s relatively easy to copy a product, but a lot more difficult to innovate and keep improving,” he said. “We pioneered it.”
