Published: February 23, 2008 08:28 pm         

Niche businesses still have place in economy

We’ve talked before about finding your business niche in the local economy.

Now, they actually have a name for it — “nichepreneurs” — according to a book by business and marketing expert Susan Friedmann, who wrote “Riches in Niches: How to Make It BIG in a Small Market.”

It all kind of started long ago when business people saw a need for a specific product or service not being provided by another business.

The butcher offered the best cuts of meat and cut them to the customer’s specifications.

The baker often specialized in a trademark pastry in addition to the daily bread for those who did not bake themselves.

Cheesemakers established businesses that have since become big names in the dairy industry.

Clothing, too, has been no less a specialty industry, from haute couture to the rag man.

Tinkers of old have morphed into specialty kitchenware shops, featuring a myriad of pots, pans and gadgets for the epicure of every taste.

And, how about the door-to-door salesmen, who sold everything from commode brushes to encyclopedias.

Once upon a time, furniture was hand made and each piece was unique. Then came mass production of everything from furniture to automobiles and niche businessmen such as the chair caner and the blacksmith began dying off.

For all of these businesses there was a niche or even a gimmick that others didn’t have that made them special or popular with certain consumers.

The old-fashioned general store, once found in virtually every small town in America, was the forerunner of the department store.

And as the industrial revolution got into full swing many of these stores were company stores that catered solely to miners or other large industries.

The employees were expected to buy only in these company stores, regardless of the prices, which were, like the wages, controlled by the company.

General stores and company stores carried almost every item the local populace might have a use for.

I learned about these stores when I lived in Elk Garden, W.Va., years ago. Norman’s Store was fairly typical of an old general store, complete with a cracker barrel and pot-belly stove around which locals gathered in the winter to pass the time and share information (or gossip, if you prefer).

The general stores in large cities became department stores and as they grew in popularity the niche market changed.

Only the very, very special product or service could stand alone against the one-stop shopping of department stores where there was a store section for virtually every product. But many did survive and new ones sprang up, some even becoming chains in their own right.

Leather shops, hat shops, dress shops, shoe stores, lawn care and snow removal equipment stores, appliance stores, book stores, jewelry stores and many others, not to exclude ethnic restaurants and delicatessens.

They were the staples of gigantic malls across the country, the department stores and the nichepreneurs offered one-stop shopping with variety, but not much.

Then came the discount department stores, each one offering lower and lower prices until one dominated the scene almost exclusively.

Oh, woe is me, the old nichepreneurs said, “I can’t compete.”

And as the small shops closed and disappeared from the retail landscape, consumers were lamenting the sameness of the products available, “It’s all the same, everywhere you go ... if you’ve been to one mall you’ve seen them all.”

The largest shopping mall in the world at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, was proof of that. Stores in that mall are the same stores found in malls all over North America. They just added a water park, an ice skating rink, a pirates cove and other amusement centers to entertain as well as entice shoppers.

In all the shopping meccas the biggest things that have been lost are quality and service. Retail has been reduced to a formula and that formula is not geared toward either.

Contact Mona Ridder at mridder@times-news.com.