With Its Unique Approach, the Premium eCommerce Agency Records a Three-Year Sales Growth of 975%

CHARLESTON, SC, August 22, 2013 – This week, Inc. magazine ranked Blue Acorn No. 474 on its 32nd annual Inc. 500, an exclusive ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. With the highest three-year aggregate growth rate in the Inc. 500's 32-year history and a minimum required growth rate of 918%, this year's list was the most competitive to get into and represents quite an achievement for Blue Acorn, a bootstrapped startup that has received zero outside funding to date.

"It validates the unique mission and vision on which our company was founded," said Kevin Eichelberger, Founder and CEO of Blue Acorn. "More importantly, it celebrates the efforts and execution of the amazing team we've assembled."

Since its inception, Blue Acorn has differentiated itself from the competition by taking a relationship-based approach with its clients. An eCommerce entrepreneur himself, Eichelberger noticed that the business models for most eCommerce agencies revolved too much around always chasing the next big implementation, the initial building of a site. His goal for Blue Acorn became not just to bring on new clients, but to maintain those clients and ensure their success for years to come.

"When agencies' volume of new implementations makes up the lion's share of their business, it usually results in their post-implementation clients being treated as an afterthought," said Eichelberger. "Helping brands and online retailers achieve revenue growth doesn't just happen with a one-time event, and it doesn't happen by providing nothing more than technical support after the fact. With that in mind, we built a model focusing on the depth of relationships with our clients, putting their revenue as the focal point, and aligning our success and growth with theirs."

Its relationship-based approach wasn't the only way Blue Acorn has chosen to differentiate itself. The company takes what it calls an Intelligent Approach to eCommerce, which is centered around the concept that better decisions are made for its clients when they are based on qualitative and quantitative data derived from the clients' analytics. It involves optimizing the user experience through testing best practices, intuitions, and opinions, as opposed to blindly following them. To deliver on this model, Blue Acorn has partnered with the leading software companies in the eCommerce platform, analytics, and optimization spaces - Magento, Google, and Optimizely (respectively) - and they are the only agency in the world to hold certifications with all three.

Within Blue Acorn's headquarters, Eichelberger goes to great lengths when it comes to consideration for his employees because he knows the company's success starts with them. When Eichelberger chose Charleston, SC as the location for Blue Acorn's headquarters, he knew it wasn't an obvious choice, but just as most tech companies want an ideal office environment for their employees, he wanted such an office to be in an ideal city as well. His choice couldn't have been better, as Charleston has been named the Best City in America by Condé Nast Traveler's Readers' Choice Awards the past two years in a row.

Ironically, Blue Acorn's mission was never to become one of the fastest-growing companies in America. They didn't take any funding. They didn't even invest in a sales team until 2012. Their mission was to deliver results to our clients and do it better than anyone else. "Our primary focus wasn't growth," said Eichelberger. "We focused on being the best at what we do. Growth was just a byproduct."

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Justin Poole

Marketing Manager, Blue Acorn

justin@blueacorn.com

877-944-2583 x215

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