ALEXANDRIA - Tastefully Simple Inc., the original national home taste-testing company featuring easy-to-prepare gourmet foods, enters the Inc. 500 Hall of Fame and will be honored in the business magazine's November 2005 issue. The Hall of Fame designation is given to organizations consistently on the Inc. 500, a list of the country's fastest-growing private companies.
Tastefully Simple joins only 80 other companies, such as Morningstar and Capella Education, with the Inc. 500 Hall of Fame distinction. These companies "represent the vanguard of American industry," says Ryan Clancy, Inc. magazine. Outstanding sales growth is one area where Tastefully Simple and other Hall-of-Famers excel; another is in job growth generation.
"When you look at the amazing job growth among Inc. 500 companies and contrast it with the stagnation in the Fortune 500, it underscores the changing nature of our economy," says Jim Melloan, Inc. 500 project manager. With today's business challenges, "Companies have to be able to turn on a dime and discover innovative new ways of doing business. Increasingly, it's the smaller, agile companies like those on the Inc. 500 that are best equipped to meet these challenges."
Challenges are one thing Tastefully Simple and fellow Inc. 500 listees take in stride, with CEOs exhibiting common characteristics of bootstrapping, a strong work ethic and keen ambition for growth. "We started in a small shed with no running water," says Jill Blashack Strahan, Tastefully Simple founder and CEO. "Today, while we've grown tremendously, we continue to live by the principles that brought us this far." As for future challenges, "I like to think of challenges as masked opportunities," Strahan says. "It's just a matter of unveiling the possibilities."
It's that attitude that catapulted Tastefully Simple into the Inc. 500 Hall of Fame and makes Strahan an Inc. 500 All-Star, a designation given to CEOs whose companies are household names and members of the Inc. 500. "It's an incredible honor to be recognized among such amazing entrepreneurial standouts," Strahan says. These standouts include Bill Gates (Microsoft®), Jenny Craig (Jenny Craig®), and John Paul Dejoria (John Paul Mitchell Systems) to name a few. And based on Inc. 500 indications, Tastefully Simple is likely to achieve further success. "Over the years, the Inc. 500 has identified the next generation of world-class companies," says Clancy.
Tastefully Simple credits its nearly 20,000 independent consultants with much of its growth by creating opportunities for people to taste-test the company's convenient gourmet foods and fostering awareness for others interested in operating home-based Tastefully Simple businesses. For more information about Tastefully Simple, call 1.866.328.6673 or visit www.tastefullysimple.com.