PBM makes magazine's list of fastest-growing firms

Gordonsville-based PBM Products has been named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Hot 500, a list of the nation’s fastest growing businesses.

Maria Anton, an executive editor at Entrepreneur, said this year marked the magazine’s 13th annual list. In previous years, the magazine has only ranked 100 of the country’s fastest growing companies.

DivX Inc., a digital media company in San Diego, was No. 1 on the list. Twenty-four Virginia companies made the list.

“The magazine is focused on how to grow and run a business,” Anton said. “Entrepren-eurial businesses are contributing the highest percentage of job growth and helping the economy grow.”

PBM, started in 1998 by Paul Manning, was ranked No. 242 on the list. The company now has 400 employees, including almost 100 in Gordonsville.

Most of the company’s other employees work at PBM’s manufacturing center in Vermont.

According to spokesman Joe Shields, the company began making private-label, or store-brand, infant formula when it was founded.

Before starting PBM, Manning had worked in sales and marketing for several pharmaceutical companies, Shields said. He took his experience with pharmaceutical distribution and applied it to the infant formula market.

The company now also makes pharmaceutical products - both prescription and over-the-counter medicines - along with other infant and pediatric nutritional products.

“The core of our business is still in private-label [items],” Shields said.

From an initial investment of $20,000, Manning’s company has grown rapidly, turning a profit its first year and posting $158.4 million in sales last year. That mark represented a $70 million increase over the company’s sales total in 2002.

To qualify for the Hot 500, companies had to have been founded between 1998 and 2002. Sales in 2002 must have exceeded $100,000, with 2006 sales falling somewhere between $1 million and $1 billion.

Entrepreneur used a database firm to canvass 19 million companies, and 95,000 of those businesses met the eligibility criteria for the Hot 500. The magazine evaluated growth at those companies before ranking the top 500.

“An entrepreneur is someone looking to grow a business,” Anton said. “They’re all about grow, grow, grow. Other business owners can look at this [list] as a benchmark.”