Spray Guns

Foster Business Library

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Spray Guns


Assignment:    Spray guns:  spray gun manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe; the European market for this product; top buyers, sellers, and users in Europe, etc.
(IBUS 496, 10 November 2005)
Note:    For many of the questions in this assignment, library sources are unlikely to provide much detailed information. For that information, the best sources are likely to be insiders in the organization under study.
Foster Databases  >>>  Web Resources  >>>  Reference Books  >>>  Articles  >>>  Help

Foster Business Library Databases:

    The Foster Business Library offers an extensive collection of over fifty databases on its homepage; see under Databases. For a complete list of Foster databases, see the List of All Business Databases. Access to these databases from off campus requires that you first go to the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. These resources may not be accessed from off campus except by those with a valid UW Net ID and password. For more information on Foster business databases, click Databases, A-Z. For information on which Foster business databases to use, see the Database Index. For information on accessing Foster databases from off campus, see Database Access. For guidelines on responsible database usage, see Database Usage.

  • Gale Virtual Reference Library:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, listed under List of All Business Databases.   The Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research; go to Business for three major business sources:   the Encyclopedia of American Industries (4th ed., 2005), the Encyclopedia of Business and Finance (2001), and the Encyclopedia of Small Business (2nd ed., 2002).

    See SIC 3563:Air and Gas Compressors, in the Encyclopedia of American Industries, for spraying equipment.

  • Hoovers Online:   Under Business Databases on the Foster Business Library homepage. Hoovers Online offers information about 14,000 public and private companies worldwide, with links to company homepages and annual reports, charts, company capsule, competitors, divisions, earnings, financials, Fortune and Forbes rankings, history, industry information, insider trading, mission statements, news links, press releases, officers, patents, products, SEC filings, splits, subsidiaries, etc.

    See the company fact sheet and overview for the public company Graco, Inc., a major manufacturer of spray guns; see also the link to Products/Operations and Financials. See also their Competitors and, especially, the valuable Competitive Landscape, comparing the company with its top three competitors, its industry, and the market, across a variety of metrics. In addition, see the industry fact sheet for Fluid Control Equipment, Pump, Seal & Valve Manufacturing.

  • Kompass:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, listed under Databases. Directory information for 1.9 million companies in 70 countries, with indexes for company products and services, containing 23 million product and service references, and 500,000 trademarks and brand names.

    Kompass has a product category for Paints and Coatings, Spray Application, for which they list 459 companies in Europe, and Spray Guns, Electric, for Painting, with 131 companies. Worldwide, they list 767 companies in the former industry category and 289 companies in the latter. With this database, it's possible to sort lists by size.

  • Lexis-Nexis Academic:   On the Foster homepage, under Business Databases. To find company information, go to Business and then to Company Financial where you can obtain financial and other data for companies. Information is available from twenty different sources (each of which must be searched separately). SEC filings, particularly company 10K annual reports, are a particularly rich source of company as well as industry information. Use your browser's Find command (or Control-F) to locate references to particular terms of interest in 10K filings such as trends, strategy, competitors, industry, etc.

    The most recent S.E.C. 10-K filing for Graco, Inc. includes numerous references to spray guns but none about the market size or potential for such products.

  • ReferenceUSA:   Directory information for 12 million companies in the U.S. Companies can be searched for by name, business activity, size and location. With this database, it is possible to identify businesses by geographic area and type of business, as well as by number of employees and gross annual sales.

    Paint spraying equipment appears to be too small a category to have its own SIC code.

Web Resources:

    Unlike library databases, Web resources are available wherever you have web access; they do not require that you access them via the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. When using web resources, be sure to evaluate the credibility of these resources. For a subject index to web resources, see Business Resources on the Web on the Foster Business Library homepage.

  • Graco, Inc.:   "Founded in 1926, Graco is a world leader in fluid handling systems and components. Graco products move, measure, control, dispense, and apply a wide range of fluids and viscous materials used in vehicle lubrication, commercial and industrial settings." This public company (more information about them in Hoovers Online) is a major manufacturer of spray guns, among many other related products in the fluid management industry. See Products for sprayers.

  • Dux Area, Inc.:   This company claims to have "reinvented the way coatings are applied. Then we rigorously tested DUX technology in the marketplace. Today DUX brings to the global coatings application market a technology that exceeds transfer efficiency expectations while providing coating specialists the finish and productivity output they demand." As often with small private firms, this company provides little information about major customers, where they operate, the scale of their operations, or any in-depth information about its products, or even where the firm is located and who constitutes the management team.

  • ICON Group International:   "ICON Group International is the world’s single largest publisher of global market research and business intelligence. It does so with the heavy use of econometric models and techniques, which produce high value international research and reports. These high-end reports and exportable spreadsheets cover 2,000 product categories across some 200 countries, 2,000 cities and over 16,000 companies." See their reports for the Spray Gun market, and a sample from their report entitled The World Market for Spray Guns and Similar Appliances.

  • MarketResearch.Com:   Much of the most highly specific and targeted marketing research and intelligence is produced by commercial market research firms for corporate clients, with big business price tags (often in the thousands of dollars). Libraries, particularly at public universities, lack access to 75 page reports costing $2,000 but sometimes students find some value in the information disclosed in the abstracts of such research reports. MarketResearch.Com provides one-stop access to over 50,000 market research reports from 350 firms on 650 industry topics. Viewing of abstracts of reports requires free registration. See their eight reports for Spray Guns

Foster Business Library Reference Collection:

    The Foster Business Library Reference Collection consists of business handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other quick reference tools. It is located behind the Reference Desk in Foster, arranged by call number. Reference materials cannot be checked out; they may only be used in the library.

  • Directory of American firms operating in foreign countries.
    This three-volume annual publication lists 2,600 U.S. companies with 35,000 branches, subsidiaries, and affiliates in 190 countries. Volume one lists the firms in alphabetic order, detailing the countries in which the companies operate. The companies section is followed by listings by country, with Albania to Egypt in volume one, El Salvador to Mauritius in volume two, and Mexico to Zimbabwe in volume three.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4538 .A1 .D5 2005.

    See volume one, page 189, for the large spray gun manufacturer Graco, Inc., operating in Belgium, China, England, Japan, and South Korea.

  • Thomas register of manufacturers.
    This huge green annual multi-volume set covers the universe of manufacturing products and services in the United States and Canada, in three sections: products and services, arranged alphabetically by product or service (with an index to products and to trademarks); profiles of the manufacturing companies, arranged alphabetically by company name; and product catalogs from many of the companies in the register.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: T12 .T62. 2005.
    (Also available Online)

    See volume six for Guns—Spray, on pages 11743 to 11746, and volume twelve, for Spray Painting Equipment, on pages 22424 to 22432.

  • Washington manufacturers directory.
    This annual volume profiles over 8,000 Washington state manufacturers and suppliers, in six sections: a buyers guide listing companies by product or industrial service; an SIC code index; an alphabetical index by company name; a parent company index; a geographic index by city; and a county breakdown. Company profiles may include company name, subsidiary information, mailing address, phone (both local and national), fax, web address, the names of senior officers, the SIC code, number of employees and annual sales estimate, whether the company is public or private, parent company, and total employment.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: T12 .W35 2005.

    See Spraying Equipment on page 90, for just five companies.

Foster Business Library Articles:

    In addition to the 800 journals in the Foster Business Library Periodicals Collection, the Foster Business Library offers access to over 100 million full text articles in over 10,000 periodicals through its full text article databases such as EBSCO Business Source Premier, Factiva, LexisNexis Academic, and ProQuest Databases. These article databases may be found on the Foster Business Library homepage, listed under Databases.

    All four of these databases are available from any computer on the campus network as well as from home (via the UW Connectivity Kit or the Libraries' Off-Campus Access link, using your UW Net ID and password). The easiest of these databases to use is ProQuest Databases. For more information about accessing Foster Business Library databases from off campus, see Database Access. For more information about business databases, see the research guide entitled Databases, A to Z.

  • ProQuest Databases:

    This database--actually, a family of over two dozen databases--offers full text articles for over 10,000 publications, including scholarly journals, magazines, trade and industry periodicals, newspapers, and reports on a very wide range of topics. To find articles on specific topics, search by word or phrase by keying your search phrase into the search box--or search for your topic in the Topic Guide.

    Your search terms will be highlighted in red in each article. For tips on searching this database, see About ProQuest Databases.

    A search for Spray Guns produced over 740 articles, many of them not relevant.

    A narrower search for SUB(Spray Painting) produced over 230 articles. A similar search for SUB(Spray Painting) and Market Share produced no articles; SUB(Spray Painting) and Market produced just four articles; searches for SUB(Spray Painting) and Buyers and SUB(Spray Painting) and Sellers each produced just one article (in a database of over 100 million articles). A search for SUB(Spray Painting) and Europe produced just three articles. A search for Spraying Equipment produced just eight articles.

Help:
4 November 2005; updated 10 November 2005.   Peter Stevens, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu.