Command Center Inc., a Post Falls-based temporary staffing company with 51 offices in 22 states, posted a sharp gain in revenues last year—driven heavily by employers' reluctance to hire more permanent workers—and says it will be seeking this year to expand its national presence, partly through acquisitions.

Its renewed growth aspirations follow an aborted attempt a number of years ago to create a franchise chain and a staffing industry downturn that together caused it to scale back from a peak of around 70 offices.

"We had a very strong 2010, and 2011 is starting to move along quite well," says Glenn Welstad, Command Center's chairman and CEO.

The company recently reported fourth-quarter revenue of $19.1 million, up 45 percent from $13.2 million in the year-earlier quarter, and said it had full-year 2010 revenue of $70.1 million, which was up 35 percent from just under $52 million in in 2009.

It won't be releasing its 2010 earnings for a few more weeks, but it earlier reported net income of $1.1 million, or 2 cents a share, for its fiscal third quarter ended Sept. 24, up from a net loss of $250,000, or 1 cent a share, in the year-earlier quarter. For the first three quarters of last year, it posted a net loss of $302,800, or 1 cent a share, compared with a loss of $3.8 million, or 10 cents a share, for the first three quarters of 2009.

"We've actually got equity, about $1.7 million in cash at year-end, and things are looking very positive," Welstad says.

Reflecting on what's driving the company's recent resurgence, he says, "I think in the past we had a lot of 'temporary temporary' workers, but we're creating a class today that's going to be called 'temporary permanent,'" meaning employers are using temporary workers on a long-term basis.

They're doing that, rather than hiring permanent employees, because it gives them optimum work-force flexibility during this period of protracted economic uncertainty, he says.

"We're positioned pretty well to benefit from that eventually," Welstad says.

"At the present time, I don't see any end to it," he says of employers' hiring hesitancy. "We have to stabilize our economic environment in Washington, D.C., and how an employment situation with an employer is defined. I think we have a window here (for strong company growth) of at least four or five years, maybe 10. I just don't see that going away."

Command Center provides workers to businesses across the U.S., including unskilled and semi-skilled workers for manual-labor, light-industrial, and skilled-trade applications. It serves mostly small to mid sized businesses in the construction, transportation, warehousing, landscaping, light-manufacturing, retail, wholesale, and facilities industries. Its own work force ranges between about 200 and 250 employees, separate from the more than 2,500 workers it typically sends to customers' project sites each day.

Locally, along with its headquarters at 3773 W. Fifth in Post Falls, it has offices at 8 W. Indiana in Spokane and at 2506 N. Fourth in Coeur d'Alene.

Command Center launched operations in November 2005, and its stock is traded publicly on the OTC Bulletin Board Market. The company formed in a reverse merger involving Command Staffing LLC, of which Welstad was president and CEO, and Spokane Valley-based Temporary Financial Services Inc., of which John Coghlan was president.

The name of the surviving company was changed to Command Center Inc. Welstad and Coghlan were two of the founders of Tacoma, Wash.-based staffing giant Labor Ready.

Looking ahead, Welstad says, "We're going to open offices and grow the company organically where the market will support that. We just opened in Orlando, Fla., and in Westchester, Pa., and just signed a lease for Chattanooga, Tenn. As we find markets that will support additional competition, we will open additional offices as the year unfolds."

The company also, though, is taking steps to expand through acquisitions. A few months ago, it hired Jeff Mitchell, who has strong credentials in orchestrating such growth, to be its chief financial officer. Mitchell formerly served as CFO of Select Staff, a national staffing company based in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he was instrumental in growing that company to revenues of nearly $2 billion from $400 million over a five-year period, Welstad says.

Mitchell was responsible for the financial modeling and evaluation of each prospective acquisition by Select, which led to about 40 transactions in all, according to published biographical information. He also reportedly coordinated the business plan and credit agreements to recapitalize the company a number of times through traditional debt with various investment bankers.

"His role will be to aggressively seek out and execute acquisitions" that will add materially to the company's market share, Welstad says. "You have to control it. We're going to have more of a managed growth, but it's going to be on the aggressive side."

He says he would like to see Command Center grow eventually into a $1.5 billion enterprise, or more than 20 times its current size, "but not under a mandate. We will grow it as good accretive acquisitions come along."

He adds, "When we make acquisitions, a lot of times management (of the acquired company) will come with us. I think our business is at a turning point here," positioned well to acquire other staffing firms whose owners are tapped out financially, but have strong entrepreneurial skills.

"If Jeff has a good year, we could double our revenue this year. One good acquisition would double the size of the company," Welstad says.

Command Center's recent rebound contrasts sharply with struggles it was having a few years ago.

"In 2003, we set up a franchise company and sold franchises across the U.S., and in 2007, we realized running franchises is like herding cats and that we couldn't take advantage of opportunities to structure our company in the most profitable way," Welstad says. "We bought them all back for stock. It took a year and a half to two years to get that straightened up and worked out," but it has resulted in "a substantial increase" to the bottom line, he says.