A growing technology company headquartered near Charlotte is closing the Wilmington office of HomeInsurance.com at the end of June, former employees said.

Red Ventures, a firm with more than 2,000 employees that works with clients to generate leads and sell various products, bought HomeInsurance.com in April 2012 for an undisclosed amount from founders Carlos Lagomarsino and Jana Bell, a previous Greater Wilmington Business Journal article said.

Before the sale to Red Ventures, HomeInsurance.com was a rapidly expanding local insurance brokerage with more than 100 employees. Founded in 2007, the firm landed on Inc. magazine’s 2011 list of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., ranking No. 61. Its revenue had jumped from $214,811 in 2007 to $7.6 million in 2010, according to the Inc. list.

After the sale to Red Ventures, Lagomarsino announced that HomeInsurance.com, headquartered at 4829 Carolina Beach Road in The Esplanade retail and office complex, would be adding 200 employees to its Wilmington workforce. The company hosted an interview day in January 2013, according to previous Business Journal articles. 

But after Red Ventures acquired HomeInsurance.com, the number of employees declined, said Patrick Cummings, a former HomeInsurance.com employee who joined locally owned James E. Moore Insurance Agency nine months ago. Cummings' job switch came before Red Ventures let current employees know that the Wilmington office will close by June 30.

Several attempts to reach Maghan Cook, media contact for Red Ventures, to ask about the Wilmington office were unsuccessful, and messages left with other Red Ventures employees produced the same result.

Some HomeInsurance.com agents in Wilmington will move to Charlotte or the Charlotte area and continue working at Red Ventures while others are staying here, former employees said, and some of those agents have already found new jobs.

“They have high-caliber folks,” said Adrienne Moore, co-owner of James E. Moore Insurance along with her father, James E. Moore Jr.

Moore said her agency at 1508 Military Cutoff Road has recently hired a few former HomeInsurance.com agents, including Cummings. For example, Jared Cranford, a former managing partner in HomeInsurance.com, is now a James E. Moore Insurance agent.

Cranford, who has a boat on Bradley Creek, said he did not want to move away from the area's beaches and the quality of life he enjoys in Wilmington. He said Red Ventures let local HomeInsurance.com employees know about the change eight months beforehand, offering many of them relocation packages if they moved, or professional help to find jobs for those who wanted to stay in Wilmington rather than relocate.

“They really gave a lot of people a great opportunity in this town to work, to grow in their insurance knowledge and marketing knowledge. I got exposure to a lot of really smart people in a very progressive culture,” Cranford said. “I just couldn’t part with the ocean.”

Red Ventures is headquartered in Indian Land, South Carolina, a town about 35 miles south of Charlotte, but the company plans to add employees to its office in north Charlotte’s University City, according to a Charlotte Business Journal blog post in February. The company also has an office in Fort Mill, South Carolina, which is about 25 miles from Charlotte.

Founded in 2000, Red Ventures has twice ranked in the top 20 of Inc.’s list of fastest-growing companies, the firm’s marketing materials say.

In January, Red Ventures announced in a news release that technology investment firm Silver Lake had made a $250 million strategic investment in Red Ventures.