Welcome to the inaugural edition of Profile, a weekly newsletter that we hope you will find interesting, educational, and on occasion amusing as we explore the richness of applied geography expressed through maps, data, analytic techniques, apps, and case studies.
Nearly twenty-five years have passed since Applied Geographic Solutions released its first two products – a limited scope 1997 estimates and projections dataset and the industry first drive time trade area system, Freeway. Our innovative approach to pricing and data licensing radically changed the industry by powering a new generation of affordable and highly capable desktop site location packages which featured AGS data and often quietly relied upon AGS geoprocessing tools.
Since then, we have rather quietly expanded our data offerings to over thirty-two thousand attributes including –
- The industry’s most comprehensive and long trusted estimates and projections series
- An extensive historical census database covering 1980 through the 2010 census
- Panorama geodemographic segmentation
- Consumer expenditures, retail potential by merchandise line and store type, and our recently released retail gap series
- CrimeRisk, the industry standard for nearly two decades
- Natural hazards, climate, and air quality
- Business demographics
- Healthcounts detailed health care system demand estimates
- Panorama based behavioral and attitudinal data from the highly trusted gfk MRI survey panel
- Our modeling products Demographic Dimensions and Business Dimensions
We have supported the products and services of well over one hundred resellers and consulting firms with an extensive array of quality data, software tools, and our freely dispensed knowledge of site selection tools and modeling, geoprocessing, and demographics. Many of these relationships have been ongoing success stories since the early days of AGS. Through this channel, we have been an integral but usually silent part of the location decisions of thousands of firms.
We have never been a company that makes much noise, and we have always avoided gimmicks and hollow marketing catch phrases – often knowingly to our detriment. For much of the time, our marketing strategy we actually called ‘polite indifference’. So why after all these years do we feel compelled to start a newsletter? It has been two decades since we first challenged then changed the rules, and it is time for us to once again be disruptive.
Over the course of the next several months, AGS will be introducing an on-demand data delivery system unrivalled in performance and flexibility to fuel the next generation of web based site analytics platforms, new statistical and graphical approaches to analyzing trade area demographics, and a revolutionary site analytics and selection model that is transparent, affordable, and effective.
At the same time, we will continue to quietly create and improve the vast array of data you have all come to know and trust, to guide you through the inevitable maze of pitfalls of the upcoming census, and to plainly explain the concepts, methods, benefits and limitations of industry innovations and trends and help you to separate the hype from the substance.
On behalf of the AGS team – Holly Ross, Matt Needham, Lori Aune, and our newest member, Elyse Robinson – I hope that you will join us on this journey.
Gary Menger
President
Applied Geographic Solutions, Inc.
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