Design : Innovation & Job News

Even though the graphics software company was born in Germany in 1999 it expanded to Royal Oak in 2006. And it has been steadily growing ever since. The company had 15 employees in the Royal Oak office last year and has grown to 25 today. It has plans to hire another 10-15 people this year.

Those new jobs will be range from design consultants to business development managers. The Royal Oak office can hold up to 55 employees.

RTT USA originally set up shop in California in 2005 and decided to expand to Metro Detroit a year later to be closer to the auto industry. Its graphics technology lets designers modify product design with software instead of real-life prototypes.

It's been doing a good job, expanding its client list to include General Motors, Audi and Volkswagen.

Source: RTT USA
Writer: Jon Zemke

The creative service studio recently earned several international awards for design, copywriting and video production from the likes of The Communicator Awards and the American Library Association. It's also set to win another nine awards from the Detroit Chapter of the IABC later this evening.

But the real joy comes from how much the nearly 50-year-old company has grown. In the last five years it has enjoyed between 20 and 30 percent annual revenue growth.

"We added a tremendous number of corporate clients," says Tim Smith, president of Skidmore.

It's stable of new clients has grown even faster in that time, prompting the hiring of five new people in the last two years and expectations to add a couple more over the next.

The company has also added three strategic partners in the last few months and it sees that avenue as the best way to generate more revenue.

"That seems to be where we're going to be the most successful," Smith says.

Source: Tim Smith, president of Skidmore
Writer: Jon Zemke

Henry Ford used to say, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."

Buying computer these days is an eerily similar situation with a vast majority of computers coming in either black, grey or silver. Dearborn-based Laptop Design USA is working to change that by offering artistically unique customizations for your desktop or laptop computer. Think of it as the paint job part of Pimp My Ride, only for computers.

"Anybody can paint parts," says Peder Blohm, founder and CEO of Laptop Design USA. "We give people an opportunity to express themselves. We basically put anything they want on a computer."

The idea came to Blohm four years ago while watching a cable news network and seeing an ugly sticker for the station on one of the laptops. He thought there must be some better way to get that message across, so he started researching the idea. Laptop Design USA was born six months later.

The company is taking off. It grew 400 percent in each of its first two years and Blohm is hoping for another 250 percent growth this year. So far 17 people work for the company, but he expects that number to triple within a year.

"We're sitting on a bomb," Blohm says. "It has taken two-and-a-half years for the fuse to burn down but it's blowing up."

And spreading like wild fire. Blohm expects to start marketing them in Saudi Arabia late this summer and even start setting up franchises across the U.S. He isn't sure that is the way he'll take the business because he is the first one doing this.

"It's like walking into a black room." Blohm says. "We were the first. No one else was doing it. We had no reference point. We just started in my basement."

At this rate it looks like Laptop Design USA could be in the penthouse soon.

Source: Peder Blohm, founder and president of Laptop Design USA
Writer: Jon Zemke