Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map: the US

Prepared for Jim Binch · Lex · August 2026
You asked how we found you, so here is the same research turned outward. Lex sells into four markets that share a product and share almost nothing else: entertainment, industrial, defense and emergency power. Each one has its own buyer, its own trigger and its own trade press. This is where those buyers sit across the US, who signs inside each group, and roughly how many companies are there. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Film, television and studio production
The market that knows the name best, and the one that buys through rental houses and technical staff rather than procurement. Purchases follow stage builds, studio expansions and equipment refresh cycles, all of which are announced in public before the order is written.
Who signs: rental house owner or general manager, head of lighting or rigging, technical director, studio facilities manager, purchasing manager.
9,000 to 10,000
US employers registered in motion picture and video production and related services; roughly 1,200 to 1,500 carry 20 or more people
Live events, staging and touring production
Smaller by count than film and more concentrated. A handful of staging and production companies serve most large tours, festivals and corporate events, which means the addressable list is short enough to work by name rather than by campaign.
Who signs: owner or president, production manager, head of power distribution, warehouse and asset manager.
3,400 to 3,900
US employers across event promoters, staging services and audio visual production; the equipment and staging layer is roughly 1,100 to 1,300 of those
Industrial plants and manufacturing operators
The largest group on this page by a wide margin, and the one furthest from the entertainment channel. Temporary power, work lighting and welding cable are bought on maintenance, shutdown and expansion cycles by people who have never attended a lighting trade show.
Who signs: plant engineer, maintenance manager, facilities or reliability lead, EHS manager, MRO purchasing manager.
20,000 to 24,000
US manufacturing employers at 100 or more people; the wider manufacturing base is far larger and mostly too small to fund a standing power program
Defense, aerospace and government suppliers
The slowest of the four to buy and the stickiest once specified, because qualification carries forward from one program to the next. The decision is split between a prime contractor supply chain and a government program office, so the reachable name is often one step removed from the end user.
Who signs: supply chain or subcontracts manager, program manager, systems or electrical engineer, contracting officer on the government side.
4,000 to 4,600
US employers registered in aerospace, defense and ordnance manufacturing; roughly 1,000 to 1,200 at 100 or more people
Emergency power, restoration and utility response
Buying happens under time pressure, which makes it the hardest market to reach with a campaign and the easiest to win once you are already on the approved list. The work is to be there before the storm, not during it.
Who signs: operations director, fleet and equipment manager, emergency management coordinator, utility restoration lead.
2,800 to 3,300
US employers across utility line contracting and disaster restoration services; roughly 600 to 800 at 100 or more people
Electrical distributors and equipment rental houses
The channel layer, and the reason the specifier is often invisible. Where product moves through a distributor, the person who chooses the brand and the person who places the order sit in different companies. Distributor counts are published; the specifier behind each order is not recorded anywhere public and has to be identified one at a time.
Who signs: category or product buyer, branch manager, outside sales manager, owner at independent houses.
6,000 to 6,600
US employers in electrical equipment and construction equipment wholesale distribution; roughly 1,400 to 1,700 at 20 or more people

Where the openings are

1
Four markets, four buyers, one channel. A rental house buys from a technical conversation. A plant engineer buys on a shutdown calendar. A defense supplier buys on qualification. A restoration firm buys the week the lights go out. Any single channel keeps returning to whichever of the four already knows the name, and the other three stay quiet. They are not uninterested, they are unaware.
2
Industrial is the largest segment and the least reached. Roughly 20,000 to 24,000 US manufacturing employers at 100 people or more, and their power, lighting and cable spend sits with maintenance and MRO purchasing. None of those roles read the entertainment press or walk the entertainment show floor, which is exactly why the segment stays open.
3
The specifier is not the purchaser. Through the distribution and rental layer, the brand choice is made upstream by an engineer, a technical director or a spec writer, and the order arrives later from someone else. Reaching the specifier is a naming problem rather than a catalog problem, and it is the part a distributor relationship cannot do for you.
4
The trigger is public before the order is. A new plant, a line expansion, a studio build, a tour announcement, a facility relocation, a defense award. Watching several thousand named companies for those moments is mechanical work, and it is the one thing a referral or trade show channel structurally cannot do.
Built from public registries covering US employers, current to the most recent published filing year, and counts are banded deliberately. Sector codes are self-reported by the companies themselves, owner-only and very small firms are not published in this data, and the specifier layer behind distribution is not enumerated anywhere public.
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