How Marware Rediscovered its Mobile Mojo — and Returned to High Growth

Back in the late 1990s, Steve Jobs of Apple fame wasn’t very popular inside the offices of Marware, Inc. Shortly after his return to Apple, Jobs had lobbed the equivalent of a harpoon into Marware’s side when he killed off Apple’s Newton — a mobile messaging gadget that Marware had been outfitting with software as well as rubber encasements. Within an instant, it seemed that Marware became a cautionary tale among middle-market companies whose fortunes were perhaps too intricately linked to that of another firm. Nonetheless, the company kept its taste for mobile gadgets — and, thankfully, so did Apple.

When Apple introduced its iPod in 2001, Marware was among the first to introduce a custom carrier — a quick and simple repackaging of one of its earlier Newton cases. Having already established relationships with resellers of Apple’s defunct Newton, Marware had no problem in finding Apple’s early iPod adopters. From the original iPod and then to the iPhone, the Marware tale quickly snowballed into one of the middle market’s most surprising second acts. Then came the Apple iPad, which supplied the firm with enough mobile mojo to more than double the privately-held firm’s annual sales, according to sources.

Meanwhile, it’s no longer just about Apple products. Today, Marware is a preferred supplier of carriers and accessories for Amazon’s Kindle offerings, and the firm is busy building relationships with a variety of mobile players, says Marware CFO Larry Litowitz, who identifies the firm’s competitive edge in the mobile arena as speed to market.

“Marware can now have its product on the shelves only a week after some new device gets released,” explains Litowitz, who says that Marware uses a rapid prototyping capability that allows it to quickly enhance its product designs and supply new specs to the company’s manufacturing partners in China. The Chinese firms then modify their molds and begin producing product. The technique is especially useful when dealing with Apple, which is well known to be tight-lipped about future product designs and enhancements.

By outsourcing its manufacturing to a number of Chinese firms, Marware is able to keep its operations relatively compact within the U.S., with its workforce divided largely between design and sales professionals. When it comes to operations, the less is more philosophy has allowed Marware to more effectively manage its growth, says Litowitz, who has served as a CFO for multiple fast-growth companies, including a neighboring Boca Raton firm named Campus Management that grew by 40 percent annually during Litowitz’s tenure

“When you double in size once and double again, the management techniques and processes that you use change significantly, and it’s this ability to change and manage growth that sets a company apart,” Litowitz adds.

“What becomes challenging is the fact that techniques that you deploy when you’re a 10-person firm are significantly different from those that you use when you’re a 50-person firm. And some of the people who have been with the company a long time and to whom you’ve been loyal may no longer be the right people when you double in size,” says Litowitz, who views people issues — not management or technology — as being the biggest challenge that middle-market companies must confront as they grow.