Official: Women’s businesses likely to continue growth trend

Michelle Swafford

Friday, July 1, 2005 | 11:16 a.m.

Women-owned businesses are not only here to stay but their numbers are likely to increase dramatically.

The Center for Women's Business Research reported that women-owned firms grew twice as fast as all firms from 1997 to 2004, the center's Executive Director Sharon Hadary told executives of women-owned firms during a Thursday conference in Las Vegas.

Majority women-owned firms -- meaning the businesses are at least 51 percent owned and operated by women -- increased 23 percent to 6.7 million from 1997 to 2004, compared with 9 percent for overall firms during the same period, Hadary said. Those women-owned firms generated $1.2 trillion in sales.

The Las Vegas Valley ranked No. 1 in the country for its growth in the number of privately held majority women-owned firms, recording a 51 percent increase to 38,512 firms from 1997 to 2004, she said.

"Women are in fact transforming the face of business," Hadary said. "It is a defining economic and social trend today. I expect that trend to continue into the next few decades."

Those transformations not only increase opportunities for women to be entrepreneurs but also increase diverse supplier options for large corporations that have contract goals, she said.

Hadary was one of several speakers during the Women's Business Enterprise National Council's sixth-annual conference, which is a professional development and networking event that linked female-business owners with large corporations for contract opportunities.

A variety of factors are contributing to the rise in women-owned operations including increased access to financial products and services and access to networks of decision-makers, Hadary said.

Access to about 150 Fortune 500 companies is the main reason 2,000 conference attendees -- primarily women -- gathered in Las Vegas for the WBNEC conference and business fair.

"WBNEC has helped me grow my business by introducing me to big corporations that I wouldn't have otherwise met," said Julie Levi, president of Progressive Promotions in Edgewater, N.J.

She said her promotional products company has grown substantially based on relationships forged at the conference with American Express, Cendant and other large corporations.

"Supplier diversity is one of the best marketing tools your corporation has in attracting and retaining customers," Hadary said. "Fifty percent of women-business owners take into account a corporation's support for women's entrepreneurship when selecting a service provider."

Women-owned firms target a variety of customers, but 33.7 percent of the women whose companies have annual revenue of more than $1 million and were surveyed by the Center for Business Women's Research said they focus on large corporations as their primary customers, Hadary said. Nearly 12 percent of all women-owned firms said large companies were their target, she said.

About 16 percent of the $1 million or more revenue-generating women firms said they focus on state and local governments as primary customers, while 4.6 percent of all women-owned firms identified state and local governments as their targets, she said.

Hadary said companies looking to do business with women-owned firms should consider several things before forging a relationship including: