Growing Companies in Southeastern Wisconsin: 2025 Future 50 Award Winners
At Valency Fund, our goal is to help fuel the growth of scalable Wisconsin companies. As part of our outreach and planning, we’re exploring features of fast growing companies in various parts of the state. In this post we’ll look at the BizTimes (Milwaukee Business News) 2025 Future 50 Award winners, which are all privately held companies in southeastern Wisconsin. BizTimes covers nine counties that make up roughly 38% of Wisconsin’s total population. Companies submit their data for the prior three years, and BizTimes verifies the information. BizTimes then ranks each company based on employment and sales growth as well as projections for current year growth. In this case, company size is accounted for when determining the ranking.
Below we’ll take a look at an industry breakdown, revenue and employees, time since company founding, and finally a longitudinal look at these companies. This exploration gives us a better understanding of the characteristics driving southeastern Wisconsin’s leading private companies forward.
Industry
Out of the 50 companies, 7 are in manufacturing and another 7 in construction. The next popular industries were insurance, professional services, and marketing, each with 3 companies. After looking at industry representation, the next natural question is scale of the companies.
Revenue
Past and projected revenue were part of the data submitted for review. Twelve of the companies had 2025 projected revenue in their profiles. The revenue projections ranged from $3.1M to $746M.
Two companies, RJ Schinner (wholesale distribution) and Palermo Villa (dba Palermo’s Pizza; food manufacturing), were at the top with $746M and $730M in projected revenue. Both companies are family owned, founded in 1951 and 1964, respectively. Our recent review of Wisconsin companies on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list included the logistics company Atomix Logistics, and the Future 50 includes the logistics management company G10 Fulfillment. Founded in 2009, G10 projected their revenue to be $315M. Inpro, a manufacturer of architectural products, was anticipating $273M in revenue. The company was founded in 1973 and reached $100M in revenue in 2013.
On the other end of the spectrum for revenue, Newaukee, a marketing and events company founded in 2009, projected revenue of $3.1M. Promotional products company Magellan Promotions projected $10M in revenue 20 years after their start. Commercial interior design firm CJ & Associates projected $21.5M in revenue for 2025, after thirty one years in business.
Company Age
Despite including some legacy firms, the 2025 Future 50 winners skew young, with most founded in the last 20–25 years. The largest concentration (21 companies) were founded between 2000-2020. There are also 5 companies founded in the last 5 years (see “Young” winners list below).
The handful of legacy companies on the list may be igniting growth by adding new product lines. For example, Palermo’s has added new pizza products, including Cheez-It™ Frozen Pizza, RAGÚ® Frozen Pizza, and in partnership with Netflix a Stranger Things Pizza. In 2022, Palermo bought a majority stake in Funky Fresh Spring Rolls and recently announced a pivot related to that brand.
Employment Numbers
The number of employees was part of the data that companies submitted for review, and there was a large spread. The wide gap between the median (55 employees) and average (195 employees) highlights how a handful of very large employers shape the region’s employment growth. The more labor intensive industries (manufacturing, distribution, senior living, and logistics) had the greatest number of employees.
Consistent Growth
We were able to take a look at the growth track record of the 2025 Future 50 award winners. The awards began in 2016 as a partnership between the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the BizTimes. (There were no awards in 2020 and 2021.) Of the fifty companies that won in 2025, twenty won for the first time. Five of the fifty companies (see graph) have strung together 5+ years of growth. Of the companies with 3-4 awards, most were clustered from 2022-2025. The exceptions were Capri Communities (awards in 2025, 2018, 2017, and 2016) and Briohn Building Corp (awards in 2025, 2024, 2023, and 2016).
Southeastern Wisconsin’s fastest growing companies span a number of industries with manufacturing and construction in the lead (14 of 50 award winners). Growth is seen across a wide range of projected 2025 revenue ($3-700M+). While there are some older outliers, half (26) of the companies were formed in the last 25 years, including 5 companies since 2020. The employment numbers appear to track the labor needed with manufacturing, senior living, and distribution have much higher headcount than other industries. Forty percent of the 2025 award winners were new, and ten percent have shown consistent growth over the past 5-8 years. Many of these companies are navigating the messy middle between early stage startup and an established enterprise, and understanding regional growth patterns helps Valency Fund identify how to find Wisconsin's next generation of scalable companies.
In a future post, we’ll expand our lens to all the Future 50 award winners from 2016–2024. By comparing trends across industries, revenue, company age, and headcounts, we’ll look at how southeastern Wisconsin’s growth companies have evolved over the last decade and what may be coming next.
We want to provide a special thank you to BizTimes and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce for collecting the data, giving the awards, and making the information available.
“Young” 2025 Future 50 Award Winners
Founded 2020
Craft Beverage Warehouse - direct-to-can digital printing and wholesale distribution of related products
Founded 2021
Midwest Construction Group - general contracting, construction management and design-build services firm offering services locally and in six states across the Midwest
Walker Media Agency - full-service advertising agency offering marketing, advertising, branding and design, website and app development, public relations, and business consulting
Harmoniq Residential - third-party residential property management company providing services to apartment communities across Wisconsin and Illinois
Founded 2022
A.O. Handy - masonry restoration and repair services for residential, commercial, industrial and institutional properties