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With new alliances and 54 percent growth in revenue over the past three years, In2change is living up to its name.

The 15-year old office design and furniture supplier, led by Mike Piha, is in a strengthening phase, taking on new partners and diversifying its clientele. Customers now include SAP, WebEx, HP, Mozilla, Stanford, Aruba, Chegg and the Palo Alto school district.

It's resurgence for the company, which had soared to a high of $30 million and about 50 employees in the dot-com boom and then plummeted to $3 million and just seven staffers when clients began going belly-up.

"You haven't owned a business until you've faced the really tough times," Piha said. "We had to reinvent ourselves with new strategies."

The new In2Change, Piha said, is leaner and savvier."We used to win a big project and go hire people. We'd spend money in a way that wasn't smart. Today ... you get another chance and you do it better than you did the first time." Tough Decisions

Another chance at first meant looking for different, more stable clients. In2Change's bread and butter before the bust was designing and furnishing office space for tech companies, including ExciteAtHome.

Piha began getting work from K-12 schools, universities, libraries and some municipal offices. As part of that migration, the company fell into reselling interactive whiteboards from Calgary-based Smart Technologies. In2Change has provided boards to Palo Alto schools and Stanford University, Piha said and they are becoming popular in corporate offices.

In2Change in January 2005 moved from San Jose to a 5,000-square-foot showroom in Palo Alto. Not long afterward the company began offering modular interior construction for offices - movable walls and raised access floors - that jibed with an increasing interest in green building and sustainability.

But in January of 2007, In2Change went through its biggest transition yet, when it ended an 11 year alliance with office furniture maker Haworth in favor of Kimball Office.

It was a tough decision, Piha said. Ties between Haworth and In2Change were strong - Piha had once been an employee of Haworth.

"It was a difficult maneuver we did" Piha said. "We have customers who stand on one product. Were they doing business because of the relationship or because of the product and the manufacturer?"

It turned out that In2Change's customer service played a big part in its client relationships.

"That's the reason we've stayed with them even through changeover," said Chuck Hodgdon, director of real estate and facilities for WebEx Communications. In2Change has handled all of WebEx's interior office design and furnishings since 2004, including the company's 12-story Santa Clara headquarters building. "They have been excellent in execution throughout the design and development process," Hodgdon said.

In the end, In2Change lost only one customer and one employee due to the supplier changeover.

2008 revenue numbers, grew 20% over 2007 Piha said, In2Change's margins were also up about l0 percent. He hopes to grow the company to $10 million to $15 million in the next two years, but he's more cautious than he used to be.

"I had a vision of growing the company to $50 million in the past, but I don't feel that way today. I see us growing incrementally after $10 million to $15 million," Piha said. "If there's a job and it's a low-margin opportunity for the business, we'll walk away. Three years ago, we'd go after it."