Honored
Leader: Paal Gisholt, President and CEO
Company Name: SmartPak Equine
Location: Plymouth, Mass.
Nature of Business: Catalog and Internet retailer of equine and small animal products
Founded: 1999
Revenue: $23 million
Growth Rate (2005): 50 percent
Number of Employees: 69
Average Tenure: 1.33 years
During the last two years, Paal Gisholt has observed that while demand is steady, growth has been slow in the horse supplies and equine supplements industry. However, his company, SmartPak Equine, which he founded in 1999, has been a tremendous performer. The organization has increased sales 177 percent in the last two years. During the same period, the number of employees has increased 35 percent from 50 to 70. Incentives like an employee stock ownership, open-book management and a quarterly recognition program by and for employees has kept SmartPak's workforce motivated and focused on the company's core values. The organization uses continuous improvement measures such as weekly "errors meetings" to simplify tasks or to automate manual processes that are prone to error. Rapid growth has led Gisholt to state, "I have become a believer in letting our culture serve as the primary mechanism to generate alignment of goals within the organization, an 'invisible hand' of sorts."