Where did the numbers for ribbons come from??
Wolf-Brown was a military supply business that used to be located in New York City and Los Angeles some years ago. They were a company that supplied various uniform accouterments including insignia, ribbons, medals, belts and buckles, and even swords.
They and N.S. Meyer's ( Alot of WW2 Military related items came from them) were bought out by Vanguard Industries  ( http://www.vanguardmil.com/store/splash.php ).  For Ribbon collector's, Wolf-Brown was the most refered to.

Wolf-Brown, N.S. Meyer, Inc., Vanguard Industries, Inc., and Ira Green all competed in the same business—manufacturing and selling medals, patches and military insignia for people serving in the United States armed forces, National Guard and local fire and police forces.  Of the three, N.S. Meyer was the oldest—it had been in continuous operation since 1868.

Wolf-Brown, as well as N.S. Meyers,  had a multi-page color chart Pamplet with generic ribbons made up for their salesman to use and the ribbons on the WB charts were  numbered from 3001-8016, not all #'s were shown and there is still discussion if all the #'s were used. The current WB/Vanguard #'ed charts are at: http://www.vanguardmil.com/schoolribbon.html
Thus a number of Organizations could have used the same #'ed ribbon for a variety of uses.

Greg Ogletree wrote a book-1988- on National Guard Medals/Ribbons and he created a number system starting with
001-Wash. D.C.  N.G. D.S.M and ending with 585-Massachusetts N.G. Volunteer Militia 3rd C. Marksman-Tp2 & 3
There are some number's after the 585 and there is still discussion on who made them up, etc.

GRACO is a Texas company, a large Medal/Ribbon, etc. suppiler and they created number's starting with
1001 and up to 1183 as of 10/2006. (http://www.gracoind.com/)