Tempe, AZ October 24, 2001 True or false: Minority- and women-owned businesses are too small to be cost-effectively included in your large corporation's e-procurement initiative.
If you answered "true," you may want to take a look at the Div100, the recently released second annual listing of what its organizers say are the top 100 diversity- (women- and minority-) owned businesses in the United States.
Topping the list: World Wide Technologies of Maryland Heights, Mo., an electronic procurement and logistics (e-PL) company in the information technology industry, with annual revenues in 2000 of $800 million.
The top 10 companies on the list represent a total of $4 billion in annual sales. The Div100 companies collectively account for more than $9 billion in annual sales and employ more than 10,000 people.
The smallest business on the list, Elgin, Ill.-based Capsonic Group, which specializes in high-volume production of insert and composite plastic injection molding, had 2000 revenues of $27 million.
The Div100 listing, in its second year, is a project of Div2000, a Web-based, non-profit central portal for diversity-owned businesses, providing a connection between corporate contacts and minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MBEs and WBEs, or, together, MWBEs). Div2000 itself is a project of Computer Consulting Associates International Inc. (CCAII), an MBE that supplies contract information technology (IT) staff to large corporations.
Kenton Clarke, president and CEO of CCAII, said that the second edition of the list included many companies that had appeared on the first version, released last year, but also many newcomers. Clarke noted that the cutoff point for companies on the first list was about $20 million in annual sales, while this year the lowest revenue level was $27 million. "What is significant is that the companies that were on the list, in spite of the economy, all experienced reasonable growth rates," Clarke said.
This means, Clarke continued, that the larger diversity-owned businesses are "capturing" an increasing share of diversity spending by American corporations, a continuation of trend seen earlier as major buying organizations seek to consolidate their supply bases while increasing their spend with MBEs.
Div2000 unveiled the top 100 listing last week at the National Diversity Awards Ceremony in Washington, DC.
MWBEs reportedly number more than 9 million in the United States.
The top 10 of the Div100 companies were as follows:
1. World Wide Technology (Maryland Heights, Mo.; www.wwt.com)
2. Wintec Industries (Fremont, Calif.; www.wintecind.com)
3. Prestige Automotive Group (Flushing, Mich.; www.prestigeautomotive.com)
4. Saturn Electronics & Engineering (Auburn Hills, Mich.; www.saturnee.com)
5. Warren Electric Group (Houston; www.warrenelectric.com)
6. The Bing Group (Detroit; www.binggroup.com)
7. ACT-1 Personnel Services/ACT-1 Technical & Professional Services (Torrance, Calif.; www.act-1.com)
8. Technology Integration Group (Englewood, Colo.; www.tig.com)
9. AVCOM Technologies (Sunnyvale, Calif.; www.avcom.com)
10. LeeMAH Electronics (San Francisco; www.leemah.com)
For additional insights into the challenges of mixing e-procurement and supplier diversity initiatives, see "Supplier Diversity and e-Procurement: Why Your Initiatives Are Not at Odds" (www.isourceonline.com/article.asp?article_id=1574) in the August 2001 issue of iSource Business.
