For most of its 33 years of publication, Arkansas Business has researched, compiled and published regular business lists — the state’s largest private companies, law firms, banks, hospitals and so on.
This week, as part of our spotlight on minority business development, we present two new lists that, unlike most others, are not limited to the largest companies in the state. In fact, most of the companies are very small.
They are 135 minority-owned companies and 98 woman-owned companies who responded to our first-ever survey of companies in those categories.
The minority-owned businesses that responded were among more than 460 previously identified by the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. Surveys were emailed to every minority business enterprise or certified minority business enterprise that had registered with the state by the beginning of June, and 12 attempts were made between June 13 and Aug. 25.
Ultimately, only about 30 percent of the minority-owned businesses responded.
Most of them included additional information such as number of employees, the year the company was founded and, most importantly, a description of the products or services offered.
By responding, the companies also confirmed that the contact information is correct and current.
Our “starter list” of women-owned businesses in Arkansas came from the Department of Finance & Administration, which had identified more than 650 registered vendors that were at least 51 percent owned by women.
Get the Lists
This week’s Minority-Owned Businesses list and the Woman-Owned Businesses list are both available for purchase in a spreadsheet format.
This list was larger but not as complete as the AEDC list of minority-owned businesses. Electronic contact information — the email addresses and fax numbers that our survey system depends on — were available for only about two-thirds of those businesses.
That survey was sent to 435 woman-owned businesses 10 times between July 11 and Aug. 25, and the response rate to that was also about 30 percent.
Duplicate responses from companies, about three dozen of them, that are owned by women who are also minorities were not included on both lists. Instead, they were included on the minority-owned company list because it indicates whether a company’s ownership has been certified by the AEDC.
A change in state law that took effect Friday will allow the AEDC to certify woman-owned businesses in the same way that minority-owned businesses have been certified in the past.
In fact, the division overseeing the certification process has a new, longer name to reflect its expanded mission: the Division of Minority & Women-Owned Business Enterprise.
An article in this week’s issue explains the certification program and the state’s new goals for doing business with businesses owned by women, minorities and service-disabled veterans.
Most of the companies that responded to the surveys this summer had never been contacted by Arkansas Business for inclusion on any list.
Because the number was manageable, we chose to include every company that responded, ranked by number of employees.
Only 34 of the minority-owned businesses reported 10 or more employees. Only 25 women-owned businesses did.
A few failed to answer the question about employees, so they are included at the end of each list as “not ranked.”
No decision has been made on whether to publish lists of minority- and woman-owned companies on an annual basis, as we do with most of our industry lists. And future lists may not include all responses; like most of our lists, they may be limited to larger companies.
However, minority-owned and woman-owned companies that would like to be considered for future lists are invited to fill out the surveys. Both the survey for woman-owned businesses and the survey for minority-owned companies are available online.