Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Mark Sabbagh, Diamond Trading Group · August 2026
Here is the map. Your business has two buyers pointing in opposite directions: the brand that wants a route to market, and the institutional buyer that wants product in volume. This page covers where the second kind sits, who signs, and roughly how many of them there are. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Convenience, discount and regional retail chains
The largest reachable group on this page and the one where a sourcing partner is judged on fill rate and landed cost rather than on brand story. Buying splits in two: the chains buy at head office, and the single-store operators underneath them buy through a wholesaler, so the wholesaler is a second door onto the same shelf.
Who signs: category buyer, director of merchandising, VP of purchasing, and at the smaller chains the owner or general manager.
148,000 to 155,000
US convenience store sites; roughly six in ten are single-store operators, so the company count behind them is far smaller than the store count
Casino and gaming operators
Small by count and unusually good buyers, because gift shop retail, loyalty redemption, hotel amenity and employee gifting are all purchased out of the same building. One relationship reaches several buying lines instead of one, which is rare in consumer product distribution.
Who signs: director of purchasing, VP of player development, retail or gift shop manager, hotel general manager.
900 to 1,100
US commercial and tribal gaming properties, concentrated under a much smaller set of operating companies
Hotel groups and management companies
The property is where the product lands and almost never where it is bought. Amenity, guest supply and gifting decisions concentrate at the management company or the brand above the property, which is why a property-level list looks enormous and converts badly.
Who signs: corporate director of procurement, VP of operations, regional director, and at independents the general manager.
60,000 to 64,000
US hotel properties; the decision sits with several hundred management companies and brands above them
Health systems and hospitals, on the non-clinical side
Non-clinical purchasing is a separate world from medical supply and a far easier one to enter. Gift shop retail, patient amenity, staff recognition and facilities consumables usually sit outside the clinical contracts that govern everything else in the building.
Who signs: director of supply chain, materials manager, director of retail or auxiliary services, facilities director.
6,000 to 6,200
US hospitals, sitting under several hundred health systems that increasingly buy centrally
School districts, colleges and public purchasing
Slow, procedural and durable. Purchases run through a published process and often through a cooperative contract, which is a barrier the first time and a moat every year after it. The cooperative itself is a buyer worth reaching in its own right.
Who signs: purchasing director, business manager, director of auxiliary services, athletics director, and the cooperative contract manager.
13,000 to 13,500
US public school districts, with roughly 3,700 to 4,000 degree-granting colleges and universities alongside them
The supply side: brands looking for a route to market
Your other market, and the opposite motion. A brand with product and no distribution is not on any register. It is found by category, by trade show floor, and by the moment it raises money, loses a distributor or takes on inventory it cannot move. That difficulty is exactly why the segment stays open.
Who signs: founder or CEO at emerging brands, VP of sales, head of national accounts, and the operating partner where a fund is involved.
No public register
identified one at a time by category and by moment, which is why almost nobody works this side of the market systematically

Where the openings are

1
Two buyers, pointing in opposite directions. One list is people who want product. The other is people who want distribution. A referral channel reaches whoever already knows the name and cannot tell the two apart, so both get the same conversation. Two named audiences is a different reach problem, and a solvable one.
2
The buyer here is a seat, not a company. Category buyer, purchasing director, director of merchandising. Those seats turn over often, and a new one reopens the vendor list inside a quarter. A channel built on named roles catches that moment. A relationship channel hears about it after the decision is made.
3
Liquidation is bought at a moment, not on a cycle. A closure, an overstock, a lease ending, a fund exiting a portfolio company. Those moments are visible from outside if someone is watching several thousand companies at once, and invisible if you are waiting for the phone to ring. Watching a whole market for a trigger is mechanical work, and it is the one thing a relationship channel cannot do.
4
The wholesaler layer is the multiplier. Underneath the chains sits a much larger tier of independent operators who buy through distributors rather than direct. One wholesaler conversation reaches hundreds of shelves, and it is a different pitch from the one you make to a head office. Most sourcing companies work one of those doors and not both.
Built from public registries and published federal and industry counts for the United States, counts banded deliberately. Store and property figures count sites rather than companies, and the buying decision usually sits above the site. Owner-only and very small operators are not fully published anywhere. The brand side of your market is not covered by any register and is described rather than counted.
ENQUIRER CONSULTING GROUP
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