Advertising executives take their ideas and turn them into web pages for some old economy companies and find themselves on inc. magazine’s top 500 list Larry Cohen doesn’t really mind some old furniture in the lobby of his company’s new office. “We’re waiting for the new stuff to come, so this will do,” said the 30-something Cohen, just three weeks removed from an old office the company shared with another firm. Getting used to new digs is one of the easiest transitions Cohen has made lately. After all, as the result of a whirlwind of activity over the last few years, the Woodland Hills-based Glyphix was named one the country’s fastest growing companies by Inc. Magazine recently. Sporting a 563-percent growth rate during its five-year lifespan, Glyphix is just hitting its stride, said Cohen, company president and co-founder. According to Inc. Magazine, the company rocketed from $301,000 in sales in 1995 to $1.1 million in 1998 and $1.9 million in 2000. Begun in 1995 as a successor to Wordsmith, an advertising firm Cohen and partner Brad Wilder founded, Glyphix came into being as a hybrid advertising and web design agency, mixing technology with standard advertising services. It wasn’t much of a reach for Cohen and partner Wilder when it came to creating Glyphix, using $100,000 in startup funds they scraped together. “We were doing traditional advertising and we were very successful doing that,” Cohen said. “The technology at that point was going to change advertising, so we decided to change and create Glyphix.” Today, the company sports a client list of more than 100, including heavy hitters like Intel Corp., Mattel, Inc., Playmate Toys and Litton Industries., so-called Old Economy companies that uses Glyphix’s help in making the leap to the New. Charging anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands, Glyphix has managed to develop scores of web sites for its customers, many of whom also have hired them to take care of their traditional advertising needs too. “We really try to build a relationship with our clients so they can keep coming back to us,” Cohen said. Building web sites has been a large part of the company’s business. But building on what others have done before them has been important too. “Most web sites are bad because they’re not well thought out and they’re not made for the user. They’re made for the company and that’s wrong,” Cohen said. “It’s like saying, ‘Here’s what we want to tell you,’ but maybe that’s not what they want to hear.” Litton was their first client. “They believed in us,” Cohen said. “Brad and I walked out of a meeting and we said, ‘Oh my god, we landed a web site!’ We couldn’t believe it.” Fred Repich, Litton’s director of proposal management who works directly with the Glyphix staff, said the company’s expertise and advertising knowledge is especially valuable. “They’re very imaginative and, whenever there’s something wrong, I can just call. They’re like an idea factory for us and it’s great,” Repich said. Landing such a big fish after three months of hustling helped the young startup get even more clients who immediately took advantage of its web expertise. But as business began to catch on, Wilder and Cohen realized they needed a third wheel to make things work. So they hired Brad Brizendine, who left a successful ad agency to help move Glyphix forward. As a computer and web expert, Brizendine fit in well with the finance-oriented Cohen and the design-oriented Wilder. In Glyphix’s early days, the three of them made do with one computer terminal and one phone. “It was all on a shoestring budget, so we just tried to make things work,” Wilder said. In the company’s second year, it doubled sales and posted its first profit. Revenues consistently grew over the next three years by 33 percent, 23 percent and 69 percent, respectively. At the same time, the staff grew from two to 11, along with a number of outside contractors who work on a per-project basis. “After our first year, we knew we had a tiger by the tail. We really had a good business, so the question was how do we grow responsibly,” Cohen said. Cohen says working with clients who understand the value of advertising is the key to his company’s success. “People today are bombarded with messages. I think the average person gets something like 3,000 ads in the course of a day,” he said. “Why do they choose Heinz ketchup instead of the store brand? It’s because it’s a brand they trust. We work with clients who understand that.” But perhaps the key to Glyphix’s success is its team approach to problem solving. “We all bounce things off each other and when we put it all together, things seem to work,” Brizendine said.