Built differently  from the start:

In 1994, two Fortune 50 marketers sat down over coffee and decided to build a different kind of market research firm. 

They had spent years working with research vendors that delivered data without context and reports that lacked human stories. They believed research could do more. So, they built a company around that belief, one that puts people at the center of the work. 

That meeting, over a literal cup of Folgers, became The Link Group. 

Every decision since has followed the same logic 

TLG has grown deliberately. The Atlanta office opened in 1996, and Durham followed in 2005. Both opened because the right people and relationships were in place to support it, not because a growth target demanded it. When recessions and a pandemic tested that commitment, we held to it. Thirty-plus years in business and zero layoffs. Ever. 

That same thinking shapes how TLG measures success. By 2008, 95% of our revenue came from repeat clients. That number still holds today, and it’s the result of our commitment to producing meaningful work. 

What builds when a team stays together 

When the same people stick around year after year, on the client side and ours, the work gets better. 

Institutional memory gives us the ability to walk into a conversation already knowing the context and history, including the decisions made five years ago, and the thinking behind them. That depth changes what our work can do. Research gets sharper, and the relationship becomes something a client can build on over time. 

By 2022, clients had started using different language to describe TLG. We were known as strategic partners and trusted advisors. That year, the Insights Association named TLG a Top 25 U.S. Insights and Analytics Firm, recognition that reflected what we had been building for nearly three decades. 

The decision that said everything 

In 2024, TLG faced the kind of moment that clarifies what a firm actually believes. 

Private equity firms came calling, and the payout would have been significant. TLG’s founders looked at what they had spent thirty years building and made a different choice. 

TLG became 100% employee-owned. 

For a company that had always run on long-term thinking and people-first values, it was less a departure than a formalization of how we had always operated. The people who built the company now own it, from our Associate Project Managers to our Managing Partners. Employee ownership keeps TLG free to operate the way it always has, with people at the center. 

Thirty years in 

Every person you work with at TLG has a genuine stake in what happens next. We bring that ownership into every project because that is how TLG has always worked. 

Thirty years later, the company that those two people imagined over coffee is still here, still growing, and still run the same way it started.