Fast-growing companies are all young, small and online these days, or at least that’s that the stereotypical profile.

So what’s United Oil, a Gardena-based retail gas station and convenience store chain founded in 1955, doing on the Business Journal list?

In fact, with $2.85 billion in revenue and 142 gas stations, United Oil is the largest company on the fastest-growing list. It is one of five companies on the list with more than $1 billion in sales, demonstrating the fact that not all fast-growing businesses are small.

In United Oil’s case, the secret to rapid growth was having the wherewithal to take advantage of opportunity.

The third-generation, family-owned company recently secured a contract to operate 78 Shell stations in Los Angeles. It also acquired 15 independent stations whose owners had overpaid for their properties during the real estate bubble.

“The oil companies are interested in crude, so they’re leaving the (retail) marketplace and selling their assets,” said Ron Appel, whose father started selling gasoline in Los Angeles in the 1930s and whose son is a company executive, too.

United Oil’s growth didn’t come cheap, though. The company spent about $20 million on acquisitions in the past 18 months.

Indeed, several of the largest companies on the 2011 list had this much in common: the experience and financial resources to leverage the recession by expanding into new lines of business, or by acquiring ailing competitors and distressed real estate.

Altour, a full-service travel agency, with $1.2 billion revenue in 2010, is a prime example. It was the fifth largest company on the list and registered 111 percent revenue growth through business lines that range from corporate travel bookings and leisure travel to handling entertainment clients such as musical groups.

Owner and President Alexandre Chemla saw opportunities in the hospitality industry two years ago when travel dropped during the height of the recession.

He acquired Advantage Performance Network, a Minneapolis company focused on planning and booking corporate events, and the Travel Authority, a Louisville, Ky., corporate travel firm serving the Southeast, where Altour lacked a robust presence.

“One (acquisition) grew our corporate business and the other brought us new business in meetings and seminars we didn’t have,” said Chemla, a Paris native who founded Altour on his dining-room table in New York in 1991. He moved the company to Los Angeles four years later.

Another contribution to the company’s growth was a dozen walk-in travel stores purchased from American Express, which sold foreign currency to clients traveling internationally.

“That led us to applying for a banking license to sell foreign currency, which is a new business for us,” Chemla said.

Cost-conscious management

Another travel-related firm on the fast-growing list, TravelStore grew 25 percent over the past two years and had $319 million in revenue last year.

“The downturn in the economy, and the more cost-conscious management style that resulted, helped us tremendously,” said Chairman-Chief Executive Wido Schaefer, a German immigrant who founded the company in 1975 and sold it to his employees under an ESOP five years ago.

The firm is a retail travel agency that also offers corporate travel management programs. TravelStore’s services help corporations control costs and save money by making sure employees use preferred airline, hotel and car rental vendors.

“We’ve added quite a few customers that probably traditionally, because of company culture, were not that interested in managing (their costs) because it would be seen by employees as a take-away. But in today’s culture, everybody is empowered to make the company more profitable,” Schaefer said.

Outside the travel industry, Pelican Products is a company that completed an acquisition at the height of recession. The Torrance manufacturer of lighting and cases purchased Hardigg Industries for $200 million in an all-cash deal in December 2008. Hardigg was an East Coast competitor of Pelican that made a line of larger equipment cases.

“It was quite the risky move and a gutsy move,” said Chief Executive Lyndon Faulkner.

The company would have been just fine without the acquisition, he said, but expanding its product line allowed Pelican to acquire clients and invest heavily in R&D, which has produced several top-selling items for military and first-responder customers.

The company’s revenue grew 87 percent over the last two years to $327 million last year.

“We didn’t need (the acquisition), but it really accelerated our goals and aspirations,” Faulkner said. “We knew it was the right thing to do.”