Stroll: Center City ecommerce shop has nearly 200 employees

Stroll CEO Dan Roitman

Center City-based ecommerce company Stroll is growing fast.

The firm, led by University of Maryland grad Dan Roitman, now employs 170 people.

Stroll uses analytics and internet marketing tools to sell educational products, and Roitman says from 2010 to 2011, Stroll has increased sales of its lead product, a language learning program called The Pimsleur Approach, by 135 percent.

In 2005, publisher Simon & Schuster licensed the rights to the Pimsleur Approach to Stroll, according to the company’s website. Stroll is now Simon & Schuster’s biggest audio program retailer. The company is looking to acquire more educational products to sell, Roitman says.

In the first half of 2012, Stroll has been hiring at the speedy rate of eight people per month, Roitman says, and is continuing to hire. Most of its 170 employees work out of its offices at 16th and John F. Kennedy Blvd., but 25 work out of its distribution center in Northeast Philadelphia. The majority of Stroll’s staff work for its call center.

And there’s been buzz about the company: Roitman won an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Award last month, along with Monetate founder David Brussin. The company was also featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer a few months ago.

Roitman, 33, says he started the company in 2000 in his dorm room and moved to Philly in 2003 to be close to a supplier and cut down on delivery costs. But he ended up falling in love “with the energy of the city,” he said. He now lives in Fairmount with his wife and daughter.