How many graphic design businesses, advertising agencies, prepress
companies and printers are there in California?

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Clarification of Question by mspouce-ga on 05 May 2004 09:41 PDT

I provide a technical service for graphic design and ad agencies,
prepress companies, and printers. I would like to know how many of
these businesses there are in California.

Hello -

After talking to several companies and government agencies, I
discovered one source that has this data:

"0-0 DataNetwork Corp. is one of the largest collectors and compilers
of business information in the country. The company has developed a
brand new advanced data mining spidering/retrieving technology that
provides highly specialized and targeted data from any Internet web
sources. The company's products include information on more that 75
million registered organizations in 203 countries. The Company's
Services include Web Mining and Web Copying solutions for any Internet
website.  0-0 DataNetwork's customer base includes Fortune 1000
corporations, small and medium-sized businesses, educational
institutions and individual consumers from around the world. 0-0
DataNetwork products are in use in over 200 countries."

The company has informed me their information on the total number of
businesses is very comprehensive.  Their database at
http://www.1011.com/Search yields the following numbers:
 
7,409 businesses under category "Graphic Design"
8,395 businesses under category "Advertising Agencies"
6,992 businesses under category "Commercial Printing"
2,581 businesses under category "Printing and Publishing"
3,986 businesses under category "Screen Printing"

There's no category listing for prepress (nor could I find one in
other databases), but there is a SIC code for prepress services, which
yields 70 listings.

Take a look at the web link above, where you can enter in various other categories.

I checked this numbers against SBC's smartpages.com (online yellow
pages), which doesn't list every company, but the numbers are in the
general ballpark:

Graphic Designers (6328)
Advertising Agencies & Counselors (3755)
Printers (7409)

Customized research of this type is available from infousa.com for about $1,500.

If you require any additional clarification, please don't hesitate to
ask before rating this answer.


Select Search Strategy:
  state yellow pages
  california yellow pages
  state-wide yellow pages

Additional Link:
  Acxiom (might have a fee-based database as well)
  www.acxiom.com

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Request for Answer Clarification by mspouce-ga on 06 May 2004 16:37 PDT

Thank you for your research. I wonder if you're sure that these
numbers are for California and not for the US. My numbers, from tne US
Census Bureau, for California in 2001 are:
Graphic Design Agencies	2,295
Advertising Agencies	1,750
Photo; studios, services, commercial, portrait	4,162
Printing, conventional	4,768
Printing: litho, gravure, flexo	2,119
Printing, digital	99
Prepress services	338
They seem so much lower than yours and their source is unimpeachable.
They are older though. What do you think?
Thanks, Erica

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Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 06 May 2004 18:40 PDT

Hi Erica -

It may be due to categorization and overlap.  A printing company may
also be doing graphic design.  A graphic design company may be doing
advertising.  The categorizations may be slightly broader.  Where is
the US Census Bureau getting their numbers?  Are they including sole
proprietorships, or just corporations?  Perhaps they're only including
those that "file" a certain way.  SBC Yellow Pages seems to be in a
similar ballpark to the 0-0 data.  You can actually see the very
companies that make up the 6,328 at SBC smartpages:

http://www.smartpages.com/directory/search.jhtml?PostSt=CA&Tag=services&HeadingCodeVerified=8009106&DirectoryVerified=&dn=&CityVerified=&StateVerified=CA&DirectoryStateVerified=&AreaCodeVerified=&ZipVerified=&HeadingDesc=Graphic+Designers&LocType=10&QueryString=graphic+design&AddressChoice=&Radius=2&QueryType=1&DirAvail=false&From=&ClearLevel=HeadingValidation&TotalRows=6328&listingid=&CityPostalF
lag=DD

Let me know if you have any other questions.

jbf777

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Request for Answer Clarification by mspouce-ga on 07 May 2004 12:08 PDT

Thank you. I guess I'll use your numbers because what you say makes
sense. And I'm glad you came up with different sources than mine. I
wish they had been a little closer though, the numbers.
Thanks again,
Erica

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Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 07 May 2004 14:14 PDT

Erica -

Thank you very much for the tip.  I'll take a look at the US Census
Bureau numbers and see if I can tell what the difference is.

jbf777

The research answered my questions and gave me additional (costly)
sources. However, I came up with very different answers which we can't
account for. This may not be something the researcher can change but
it's odd that there's no way to pinpoint an accurate public source.

Hello Erica -

I spoke with a rep from the US Census Bureau business economics
section, and the representative shed some light on why the numbers are
different.  Firstly, the numbers from the Bureau do not represent
self-employed individuals.  Secondly, if a business is doing more than
one thing, they are classified under the thing they do the most
revenue in.  So a printing company that does $1.2M in printing and
$500K in graphic design is going to be included in the printing
classification only.  The Bureau has data on self-employed-type
companies, but it's much more general.

In this case, the yellow pages numbers are most likely more accurate
(at least categorically), because they're going to include
self-employed companies.  This should hopefully shed some light on the
discrepancy.

jbf777

Incidentally, the 0-0 company gets some percentage of their data from yellow pages.

Thanks very much for this clarification, jb. That makes sense and I'll
be comfrotable using your numbers.
ERica