The largest minority-owned businesses with headquarters in Orange County combined for $14.4 billion in revenue last year, a 9% increase over 2013.
This week’s Business Journal list features 68 companies that are at least 51% owned by minorities—including Latino-Americans, African-Americans and Asian-Americans—following federal guidelines for designations of minority status.
The entries are ranked by 2014 revenue, with a minimum of $5 million. Other data on the list, such as OC employees and companywide employees, did not affect the rankings.
Our annual list of minority-owned businesses has been growing, and this year’s is the largest yet, with 15% more entries than a year ago, which itself represented a year-over-year increase of about 31%.
Thirty companies on this year’s list posted revenue increases, and 12 had decreases. One company said it had no change, and 25 companies did not provide numbers, leading to Business Journal estimates.
The minority-owned companies here made hires at a faster clip this year, marking an 8% boost in workforce to 11,804 employees as of January, versus a 2% growth notched by the entries on last year’s list. The faster pace of growth also compared with the 2% increase in Orange County’s job base, which totaled 1.5 million as of December.
The top three minority-owned companies remained in their respective rankings.
• Kingston Technology Co., the perennial No. 1, had an estimated $5.9 billion in 2014 revenue. The Business Journal had estimated $5.4 billion for the Fountain Valley-based maker of computer products in 2013 revenue.
Kingston is owned by cofounders John Tu and David Sun, who serve as chief executive and chief operating officer, respectively. It has 750 employees here and more than 4,000 workers companywide, both flat from a year ago.
The company is believed to have seen gains across its product lines, with pricing strength on its core memory products a key.
• Irvine-based Vizio Inc. stayed at No. 2 with $3.5 billion in 2014 revenue. The company, headed by founder and Chief Executive William Wang, designs and sells televisions, audio products and other consumer electronics products.
Vizio has 241 employees, up by 63, or 35%. It has 427 employees companywide, up 8%.
Vizio had strong sales of its larger TV sets last year as it continued to duke it out with Samsung for the top spot for smart TV sales in the U.S. The company also continued to post gains on sales of accessories, such as TV soundbars.
• Northgate Gonzalez Markets was No. 3, with an estimated $745 million in revenue. The Anaheim-based Latino grocery chain is estimated to have about 1,900 employees here and 5,500 companywide.
This year’s list had 11 newcomers.
• Mortgage lender New American Funding had a 36% increase in revenue to $199.5 million, good for the No. 9 spot. The Tustin-based company is headed by Chief Executive Rick Arvielo and President Patty Arvielo. It has about 700 employees in OC and more than 1,500 overall.
• Consolidated Contracting Services Inc. in San Clemente debuted at No. 20 with $63 million, up 12%. The general contractor has 72 employees here, its sole location.
• Brea-based DSS Staffing Inc., also a newcomer, made the list at No. 29 with $28.2 million, about double its year-earlier total.
The firm, which provides executive search, placement and payroll services, had “an outstanding period last year,” according to Chief Executive Fred Flores.
“In part, I attribute [the growth] to the [Affordable Care Act],” he said. “Employers are looking for options. And it’s also due to the economy itself. It’s been a growth-oriented economy, and we’ve seen different sectors reach out that had been dormant for many years.”
DSS primarily focuses on the logistics and automotive sectors, and it also serves retail and manufacturing clients. The company employs 1,400 in OC, up about 75% year-over-year, and it has a total of 4,000 employees across other offices, including in Texas and Georgia.
“We had significant employment growth in the second and third quarters last year,” Flores said. “We picked up an automotive group that just exploded, and we also picked up a medical equipment group. We’re looking at doing business with various utilities companies and organizations that are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. We’ll be looking at the energy industry heavily this year.”
The listed companies exhibited a wide geographic spread, with their headquarters covering 22 cities.
Irvine was home to 14 of the 68 companies, a higher concentration than any other OC city. Santa Ana was home to nine companies on the list, and Brea and Anaheim each had seven. Several cities, including Newport Beach, La Palma and Placentia, had one company each on the list.
