Meet the Bay Area’s 20 largest women-owned businesses

A new No. 1 has moved to the top of the ranks of the Bay Area’s biggest women-owned companies.

San Francisco skincare brand Rodan + Fields crowned our annual list of the region’s 100 largest majority women-owned businesses, which ranks by companywide revenue in fiscal year 2017.

Led by owners Katie Rodan and Kathy Fields, Rodan + Fields has been on a growth tear of late. The company’s revenue jumped 139 percent over the past two years, more than doubling to $1.5 billion in 2017 from $627 million in 2015. In recent years the company expanded to the East Bay, where it leases its biggest local office at Bishop Ranch in San Ramon.

Moving down to No. 2 this year is ASI Computer Technologies Inc., which serves as the region’s other billion-dollar women-owned company. The Fremont-based computer component hardware distributor reported $1.3 billion in revenue in 2017.

The top women-owned companies work in a range of fields — they construct buildings, distribute beer, provide aerospace engineering services and sell lumber, among myriad other trades. All together, the Bay Area’s 100 largest women-owned companies generated $5.3 billion in revenue in 2017 and employed 11,731 workers.

To qualify for the list, companies must be privately held and have 51 percent or more female ownership. They also must be headquartered in the Bay Area, which is defined as Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties and the city of Palo Alto.

The full top 100 list features 28 new companies. The highest new entrants include San Francisco e-commerce brand Treehut.co (No. 28), Fremont commercial printer Spectrum Lithograph (No. 35) and Oakland health care administrator Sterling Administration (No. 40).

Subscribers can view our full list of 100 women-owned companies at our List hub.

The top 100 women-owned businesses will be recognized as part of the upcoming San Francisco Business Times’ Women Who Lead event, featuring conversation with local female entrepreneurs about how they have built their businesses and how they define success as a leader. It will be held Tuesday, Oct. 2 at the Fairmont Hotel San Francisco. For information or to register, click here.

By Julia Cooper – Researcher, San Francisco Business Times
Sep 28, 2018, 1:11pm PDT Updated Sep 28, 2018, 6:17pm EDT