5000 List of Fastest-Growing U.S. Companies

For a fourth year, Inc. magazine has named Tiger Optics LLC (USA) to its 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in the United States. Among manufacturers on the 2012 list, the magazine ranked Tiger as the 76th fastest-growing concern, based on its percentage revenue growth from 2008 to 2011.

In the greater Philadelphia area, the magazine rated Tiger Optics as the 71st fastest-growing private company. Nationwide, Tiger ranks 2,285th on the 2012 Inc. 500|5000.

Founded in 2001, Tiger makes extremely sensitive, laser-based environmental air monitors for continuous emissions and agricultural process control, as well as gas analysers to monitor highly critical processes for semiconductor fabrication plants, High Brightness LEDs and gas manufacturers. With close to 1,500 robust Tiger units serve these demanding applications, along with the metrology institutes of 16 nations. The company’s devices utilise Continuous Wave Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CW CRDS), a patented technology developed in the early 1990s by Kevin Lehmann, then a chemistry professor at Princeton University.

The company makes all of its products in Pennsylvania, while over 50 percent of its sales occur in foreign markets. Its 2011 revenue of $10.3 million rose 110 percent from 2008 revenue of $4.9 million. Previously, Inc. magazine named Tiger Optics to its 500|5000 lists in 2011, 2009 and 2008.

To qualify for the current list, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2008. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2011.