Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map: the US

Prepared for Blima Ehrentreu · The Designers Group · August 2026
From the outside, The Designers Group reads as relationship led. In this market, the next project usually arrives from a developer who has worked with the firm before, and referrals carry a practice into the sector next door. That is a strong channel with a ceiling built into it: it reaches the part of the market that already overlaps a network, and it is silent about the rest. This map is the rest, counted across the US only. The sectors you name as yours, who signs inside each one, and roughly how many organizations sit there. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Senior living and assisted living operators
The sector where interiors are bought on a refurbishment cycle rather than once at handover, so the same buyer comes back every few years. It is also the sector where a hospitality standard is now the brief rather than the exception, which is the argument your own work already makes.
Who signs: VP of development and construction, director of design and construction, regional operations director, and at family owned operators the principal.
9,000 to 11,000
US employers registered across continuing care and assisted living; the multi site operator groups above them are a much smaller layer, in the low thousands, and that layer is where a standard gets set once
Health care outside the hospital
Urgent care, dialysis, outpatient surgery, physician groups and behavioral health. Fast build cycles, repeatable footprints, and a buyer who is rolling out several sites at once rather than commissioning a single landmark.
Who signs: VP of facilities or real estate, director of construction, practice administrator, and the chief operating officer at group level.
20,000 to 24,000
US employers registered across outpatient and ambulatory care, before counting the hospital systems above them
Hospitals and health systems
Small by count and slow to buy, but the design standard is set once at system level and then applied to every site under it. One relationship covers a great deal of square footage, which is why this segment rewards patience rather than volume.
Who signs: VP of facilities and planning, director of design and construction, capital projects lead, and supply chain for the standing vendor list.
5,000 to 5,300 hospitals
US community hospitals, most of them owned inside roughly 400 to 450 systems, where the standard is written once
Multifamily developers, owners and managers
The segment closest to where the firm started, and the one where amenity space is now the competitive line rather than the unit itself. Repeat buyers by nature, because a developer with one project usually has three.
Who signs: development director, VP of construction, asset manager, and the principal at owner operator firms.
12,000 to 15,000
US employers registered in residential development and property management; the single asset entities that own individual buildings are separate and are not the buyer
Workplace and commercial landlords
Two different doors into the same building. The occupier buys the fit out and the landlord buys the amenity and the spec suite, and in a soft leasing market the landlord side is the one spending to compete for tenants.
Who signs: head of workplace, director of real estate and facilities, tenant improvement lead, and the landlord side project manager.
20,000 to 25,000
US employers registered in nonresidential property operations and commercial real estate services
Institutional, education and community
Slower money and longer approvals, but unusually loyal once a firm is inside, and the segment where your stated interest in underserved communities reads as a credential rather than a claim.
Who signs: superintendent or business manager, director of facilities, board chair, and the executive director at community organizations.
12,800 to 13,500 school districts
US public school districts, plus a private, faith and community layer that no single public register counts

Where the openings are

1
Two buyers sit on every project. The developer or owner buys the build, and the operator lives in the result and re buys on a cycle. A referral channel usually reaches one of them, normally the one who made the introduction. The other is the repeat customer, and reaching that seat directly is a different job.
2
This work is bought at a moment, not on a schedule. An acquisition closes, a lease is signed, a license renewal forces a refit, a new wing gets funded. Those moments are visible from outside if someone is watching several thousand owners and operators at once, and invisible to anyone waiting for the right person to remember a name.
3
The refit rarely goes to open bid. In senior living and health care especially, the second and third project go to whoever is already known when the cycle starts. Being known before the cycle is not a credibility problem, it is a coverage problem, and coverage is mechanical.
4
Your sectors do not share one buyer. Senior living, health care, multifamily, workplace and institutional each have their own titles, their own vocabulary and their own trigger. A single network tends to keep returning to the door it already knows. Five named audiences running at once is a different reach problem, and a solvable one.
Built from public registries covering US employers that carry payroll, together with published counts of licensed facilities, and banded deliberately. Establishments are not companies, and the entities that own individual buildings are not the operating businesses that buy design, so these figures describe the reachable buying layer rather than the whole market. Sector codes are self reported.
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