MDM Commercial Enterprises founder Steve Austin said much of his company's success is based on the simple idea that it is selling the right product at the right time. 

Although equipping hospitals and hotels with commercial-grade flat panel televisions, radio frequency systems and upgrading cable systems within facilities is a good start, there's more to the company's accomplishments than merely the product. 

Austin has taken the company, a leading commercial equipment provider to the health care and lodging markets, from its birth in 1990 to having about 1,500 customers on the health care side and more than 6,000 on the lodging side. 

"We're just fortunate," Austin said. "If I was a builder, I'd be like every other builder out there. I'd be dying. But I've been blessed to be lucky to be in the right business and that is a couple of things." 

The company may be lucky, but it also is designed well.

Part of the design has been to increase the health care sales force to become a nationwide team of eight that calls on existing health care customers along with cold calls to new customers. Three in-house lodging sales people handle that side of the business.

"We grew our health care sales force quite a bit," Austin said. "We have a more mature sales force than we had four years ago, and I think that has helped."

The first-time Business Journal 50 honoree has seen business increase to $34 million in revenue in 2008 from about $21 million in revenue just three years ago, with an average annual revenue increase of 28 percent. It also ranked No. 8 among the top 10 companies by dollarvolume, with an increase of more than $13.3 million over the past three years.

He points to the health care market as not being recession proof, but a market growing and buying, and the Federal Communications Commission mandate that televisions are now to be digital as the two key factors in growth.

"There is a big push for hotels and hospitals to get that old technology out of there and that's probably another two to three years of steady increase in unit sales," he said.

On the lodging side, there is a push under way by hotel chains to get properties up-to-date in the high-definition arena, which means business should pick up in that sector.

While that is good news for the future, the health care sector carries the load now. Austin said he saw the lodging side starting to slip earlier this year as the economy tanked. The lodging side is down about 20 percent to 25 percentfrom last year, but health care still is rising.

"Health care is where we make most of our money," he said.

Austin sees continued future growth, but probably not at recent levels. 

"Can we continue to grow at 30 percent a year? I don't think we can do it forever, but I do think in the health care side that we can grow at 20 percent a year for many years to come. It's a growing industry."

- Jim Nasella