"Things have turned around a lot," said Yewell, whose company laid off 17 workers last year because of economic reasons. "We have lots more clients, and this has been our best year ever."

Welocalize, which also has dropped the ".com" from the end of its name, was founded as a provider of localization and globalization services for clients worldwide. Put simply, globalization includes the steps a company needs to "go global," including building the computer software code to the point that it can support other languages, and localization, which is taking the code and making it specific to other national markets, Yewell has said.

"The biggest challenge we've faced since 1996 is our reaction to the economic downturn," he said. "All of a sudden, the market basically went away. We had to change, and fight hard to differentiate ourselves from the competition."

Recently, the company has expanded to offer globalization consulting and software engineering services, including testing and training, making Welocalize more diverse than its competition in the integrated globalization services industry, Yewell said. The biggest challenge this year has been more complicated projects and getting "all the procedures down and implementing them," Yewell said.

"Through our training program, we are getting involved with clients earlier," he said. "The program was designed to train and advise, and then it grew to a consulting group, which is the fastest-growing part of our company. This has led to our being able to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace."

Willem Stoeller, Welocalize vice president of globalization, said the consulting work is important because it assists executives in changing their products, publications and processes to "go global while reducing costs, both on the planning and development side."

While expanding, the company has also streamlined its focus to four main "verticals," or areas of expertise: eLearning, storage, security and supply chain management. By focusing on these four areas, the company can "understand a customer better" and have more success at drawing clients from these specific areas, Stoeller said.

Although only a handful of companies nationwide offer globalization services, stiff competition remains among them, Yewell said. Basis Technology in Boston is Welocalize's strongest competitor in engineering, but Yewell said his company has an edge because of its background in translations and localization. Calls to Basis Technology were not returned.

Stoeller said making the company stand out is important.

"When you look at the basic localization market, the sections are very clouded in terms of who does localization of desktop software," Stoeller said. "Welocalize is focusing away from that and focusing on other things, such as enterprise software and [specific areas of expertise] and not such a broad range."

Some major clients Welocalize has picked up include Washington, D.C.-based Blackboard, Lawson Software in St. Paul, Minn., and San Jose, Ca.-headquartered Cisco Systems Inc., Yewell said. The company has more than 100 clients in its clientbase, with 54 active clients this year, Yewell said.

Welocalize records more than half of its revenues through the consulting and engineering aspects of the company, Yewell said.

The company employs 42 people, 22 of whom are in Frederick, and the rest are scattered worldwide. Yewell said Welocalize does not release revenue information, but earned about $60,000 in 1996, its inaugural year. The company was ranked fourth on the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 list as recording more than 3,000 percent in revenue increases from 1996 through 2001. This would make Welocalize's annual revenues about $1.86 million, according to the figures. Yewell would not comment on the annual revenues.

Stoeller will also be teaching a course on software localization in the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., which provides graduate education for students seeking careers in international settings, according to information from Welocalize.

Yewell said he plans to continue expanding the consulting and engineering arm of Welocalize for the rest of the year, as well as hire more employees to do so.

"Beyond that, we just want to become the clear leader in those areas of expertise for globalization," he said. * *