Spokane-based Stay Alfred announces employee buy-in
Vacation rental startup Stay Alfred announced Thursday that its full-time employees will receive stock options, a move seen as a reward for the company’s early growth and an incentive for future success.
The options will create future ownership for employees “who helped make its meteoric rise a possibility,” the 6-year-old company said in news release.
“It was very important to me that we acknowledge the contribution everyone at Stay Alfred has made to get us here,” CEO Jordan Allen said. “I believe there are four keys to success – be humble, show grit, build culture and care for your people. I see giving our team ownership of the company as all of these things.”
The privately owned company employs 100 people, roughly 75 of them working from its offices at 123 E. Sprague Ave., and the remainder working throughout the country. The business generated $25.2 million in revenue last year from its rentals in Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Denver, Dallas, San Antonio, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C. It has since added accommodations in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago and San Antonio.
More growth is expected this year and into the future.
“We have plans just to explode,” Brenda Bening, the company’s vice president of finance, said Thursday when asked about employee levels.
That’s apparently the outlook for Stay Alfred’s rental portfolio, as well. When asked about future expansion, she said, “stay tuned.”
Providing employees the opportunity to buy into the company reflects this growth while acknowledging their importance to the company’s future success, Bening said.
“There are a lot of people that have gotten Stay Alfred to the place it is today, and … a lot of recognition of effort in these rewards,’’ Bening said. “We’re growing faster and have a lot of new talent on the team, and want people to … act like an owner, feel like an owner and help us grow in a real efficient way.”
For the second consecutive year this year, Stay Alfred was named an Inc. 500 company by the magazine, which annually releases the list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.. It ranked 470th on the Inc. 5,000 list and eighth overall in the state of Washington, the company’s release said.
“As I’ve built my business, I was told that we wouldn’t be able to find the talent needed to grow in Spokane,” Allen said. “Obviously, we’ve proven the skeptics wrong. We have an amazing team in Spokane and across the nation. To be able to share Stay Alfred with them is my biggest professional achievement to date.”