NUMBER TWO:
DEPARTMENT ZERO
1st Year

Gross Revenue:
2009: $1,406,208
2006: $252,133
Growth: 457.72%
Full-time employees: 13

The world of product promotion has many definitions for “experiential marketing,” but a common theme seems to be making potential customers feel a product. As specialists in that field, the crew at Department Zero is building on the concept, growing its client base and soaring to near the top of this year’s CR100.

And experiential marketing is just one weapon Department Zero brings to bear on behalf of its clients, which include names like Toyota, Verizon Wireless and 5-Hour Energy Drink (The connection? All have products involving user experience). DZ’s list of alternative-marketing applications includes product-sampling, event staffing, buzz stunts (an updated version of the publicity stunt), custom displays and street teams. Founded in Kansas City in 2003, it also operates from offices in Ohio and Oregon. The company’s growth, says Sara Soseman, “is due to expanding relationships with existing clients and new business efforts.”

NUMBER THREE:
SFP–SPECIALTY FERTILIZER PRODUCTS
2nd Year

Gross Revenue:
2009: $29,383,590.25
2006: $6,452,342.82
Growth: 355.39%
Full-time employees: 33

Last year was a CR100 debut for SFP, the Leawood, Kan.-based maker of nutritional supplements for agricultural products. No company came remotely close to matching its 4,300 percent growth in the CR100. As with many companies reporting this year, things have moderated, but CEO Larry Sanders and his crew are still riding a revolutionary whirlwind sweeping the nation’s farmlands.

The company offers two products—Avail and NutriSphere-N—that are remarkably effective at what they do, increasing crop yields and return on investment for growers. They make plants more efficient in their uptake of phosphorus and nitrogen in fertilizers.

Sanders, who founded the company in 1998, attributed success to the organizational focus shared by SFP’s nearly three dozen employees: “We’ve always considered ourselves a research and development company with one goal in mind: helping the farmer improve production efficiencies.”

NUMBER FOUR:
GRAGG ADVERTISING, INC.
10th Year

Gross Revenue:
2009: $15,347,317
2006: $3,513,642
Growth: 336.79%
Full-time employees: 57

Any number of early 20th-century business executives have been credited with the complaint that “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted; I just don’t know which half.” Regardless of the true source, Chuck Gragg is out to prove that mindset wrong.

Gragg Advertising, based in Kansas City’s River Market district, is a full-service direct-marketing and interactive agency based on the idea that the right media mix, result-driven creative work and proven direct-marketing strategies will generate an immediate, quantifiable return on its clients’ marketing budgets.

How, exactly? With a big box of decidedly 21st-century tools that make the most of Internet and mobile communication. Those products, all focused on customer ROI, Gragg said, have been key drivers in his company’s growth, as has “a commitment to quality and follow-through, as well as a metrics-driven system that shows clients the true value of their advertising.”