Draw a circle around a vacant storefront. It looks like geometry. In practice, it is a theory about people: how far they will travel, what they might buy, whether there are enough of them to keep the lights on. EASI Demographics has built a business around making that circle less of a guess.
- U.S. demographic data, packaged as databases, subscriptions and individual reports.
- A $15 Executive ring study offers a small starting point for location research.
- The boundary, data year and forecast assumptions matter as much as the headline number.
Its name expands to Easy Analytic Software, Inc. Bob Katz founded the company in 1995. Today, its products help retailers, property professionals, insurers and researchers ask specific questions about places. How many households? What incomes? What ages? How might those answers change over five years? The ordinary-looking report is the product of a much less ordinary assembly job.
A circle is a business assumption
On EASI’s on-demand site, an Executive single-ring study is advertised at $15. A Professional single-ring study is $30. Choose a location, choose a radius, and obtain a demographic summary. For someone considering a shop or advising a property owner, the attraction is straightforward: start investigating without first buying a year of software.
But the circle deserves attention. In its Right Move explanation, EASI says it adds the data for census block groups whose population centers fall inside the requested radius. The result depends on those underlying units. A clean edge on a screen does not mean households were counted individually along its circumference.
There is a revealing detail in the same FAQ: when EASI cannot reliably find population within the chosen radius, it widens the radius. That is useful behavior, and a reason to read the returned geography carefully. Your question may have acquired a larger neighborhood on its way to becoming an answer.
The work between the numbers
EASI combines material from sources including the Census, American Community Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis. The platform advertises more than 40,000 variables across more than 20 databases. Those are catalog-wide figures; a particular subscription contains a smaller selection. Breadth matters, but consistency is the more interesting problem.
The company’s historical methodology paper explains why. The shortened 2010 Census left vendors assembling some detailed benchmarks from other sources. Different surveys brought different definitions and time periods. EASI described reconciling those inputs, selecting usable tables and ensuring totals agreed where they should. Selling the answer meant taking responsibility for the arithmetic between sources.
Its current Master Database listing describes annual updates, ZIP Code rebenchmarking and delivery in CSV or DBF format. It also distinguishes consumer expenditure estimates, which model spending potential, from retail sales measures. That distinction changes the business question: residents’ potential spending and the sales recorded in an area describe different sides of a market.
A school can see its future neighbors
The National Association of Independent Schools offers a concrete example. Its Market View data guide identifies EASI as a source of population estimates, family income and five-year projections. Schools can examine the age profile around them and consider how affordable tuition might be for local families. A neighborhood report becomes an admissions-planning tool.
NAIS explains that the projections incorporate population changes such as births, deaths and migration. It also cautions that projections are imperfect starting points for conversations. That is a sensible description of their value. A forecast helps a school ask whether its future enrollment assumptions match the surrounding population; it cannot promise that a particular child will apply.
Three doors into the same database
The business has three entry points: own the data, access the data, or order a report. Database customers can work inside their own analytical systems, subject to licensing. Subscribers return to a web interface. Occasional buyers purchase a specific output. APIs and distribution arrangements also let EASI’s reporting reach people through someone else’s product.
Public catalog listings checked October 17, 2026. Editions contain different reports and variables.
The public web catalog lists Executive at $250 a year, Professional at $625 and Advanced at $2,500. The Master Database page lists $9,500. These are different purchases for different workloads. The useful comparison is between what you need to answer, how often you need to answer it, and where the resulting data must live.
The catalog needed a map, too
EASI’s own buying experience once needed attention. In a case study, its agency Consciously describes deep technical sales materials alongside outdated website architecture and awkward navigation. During a leadership transition, the company sought an audit before the next generation of census data arrived. Expertise alone had not made the catalog easy to understand.
The response was to organize the experience around those three buying intentions. Consciously worked on positioning, identity, ecommerce and content. The transferable idea is practical: ask what customers need to leave with. A database, recurring access and a finished report may share inputs, but they require different explanations and different routes to purchase.
“In most cases, it validated intuition but not always.”Patrick L. Johnson, Aussie Pet Mobile Broward County
Company-published customer testimonial
Check the radius before the result
EASI sits alongside alternatives such as Esri Business Analyst and Claritas, and alongside the option of preparing public data yourself. Its appeal is the combination of prepared data, accessible reports and several purchasing sizes. The customer still supplies the judgment: a high concentration score describes a characteristic; it does not certify a good location.
For a first comparison, keep the geography and data vintage consistent, separate observed benchmarks from projections, and test a second radius. Then take the report back to the actual street. A population estimate cannot describe a blocked entrance or a difficult crossing. It can, however, give you a better question to ask before the lease becomes real.