A Safe Business That’s Thriving

Add comment October 8th, 2008

Another business that’s “from the ashes”…Courtesy Business Week….by: Stacy Perman on October 06″While many small businesses are being squeezed during this economy, one outfit is actually seeing an uptick: Baumann Safe & Alarm Company in St. Louis, Missouri. “We have been fairly busy,” Christy Wilske, Baumann’s president told me. “Usually when times are bad and banks are bad people want safes at home to keep their money in.” Wilske, who is the great-great granddaughter of the firm’s founder John Baumann, a German immigrant who established the company in 1843 — originally as a hardware business that sold supplies and trunks to pioneers traveling across the Oregon Trail — said that she first noticed an increase in sales during the summer. “People started freaking out with the home mortgages. Now this past month the stock market has been tanking, and people are out buying safes.” As a result, Baumann’s business is up about 10% from last year. Moreover, Wilske’s noticed another buying trend: “more people are purchasing gun safes than normal,” she told me. With customers paying anywhere from $400 to $4000 for a safe, and the Dow hitting record lows, Baumann’s appears for many to be (pardon the pun) a safe investment”.

Rising from the Ashes-Where can Manufacturers Benefit from the Global Crisis?

Add comment October 8th, 2008

Saw this story in the U.K. Guardian…might provoke us to think of where we manufacturers might find some new business…

“Rising from the economic ashes Strangely, some businesses are set to profit from the global economic crisis. Can you add any more to our list?

These are bleak times and the climate of economic uncertainty is certainly not doing wonders for our morale. Some businesses, however, are benefiting from this unfortunate set of circumstances and probably welcome our economic demise with a big (if possibly guilty) smile.

We hear that sewing machine manufacturers are making profits as people learn to mend clothes rather than buy new ones, while home-made crafts are more popular than ever (and save money at Christmas). We would guess that cobblers are now happily busy, not to mention the bankruptcy advice agencies with booming workloads. On the cooking front, turnip growers are probably celebrating, and surely Tupperware will make a comeback in offices during lunch hours. What other businesses do you think could profit from the global economic crisis?”

So you see, not all is doom and gloom!