ting sales both to consumers and other businesses. The breakdown of reporting firms was 45 percent selling more or less exclusively to consumers, 28 percent business-to-business, and 27 percent hybrid. However, the most likely case is that the total number and percentage of business-to-business mail-order firms is larger than shown in these statistics, since many of these firms do not report themselves as mail-order businesses, but only report their principal line of business (e.g., office supplies).
The aggregate revenues of Bruce, Dean respondents was $3.5 billion, a mere six percent of the estimated total catalogue revenues of $57.4 billion. If we assume that the firms responding to the survey tended to be larger on average than those that did not, we may infer that the total number of mail-order firms is very much larger than the twelve thousand responding firms. The vast majority of both responding and non-responding firms are thus probably quite small specialty firms. Of responding firms, 79 percent were privately held, and 21 percent publicly held, again presenting a picture of an industry composed primarily of small firms. Information on the smaller firms is very fragmentary, but it is probable that a great majority of the total are not exclusively or even primarily mail-order businesses, but retail stores that send catalogues to their customers.
If we examine the size distribution of the industry by volume, a different picture emerges. Out of the nearly twelve thousand identified firms, the 300 firms with revenue of $25 million or more accounted for a minimum of $14.6 billion in sales, or more than a quarter of the total. Since this estimated total volume assumes that each firm is at the low end of its assigned revenue bracket, it is certainly an understatement, and these three hundred firms -- about 2.5 percent of total firms, probably account for about a third of total industry revenue.
Nevertheless,...