According to IBISWorld, record stores, textile mills, DVD and game rental and the photofinishing industries are in decline. Unfortunately, you can’t continue doing what you’ve been doing and still be successful if the world has changed around you. Below I’ve listed a couple ideas for each industry that I believe could revitalize them or at least inspire you to think of new ways to make money from things that you thought were dead.
Record stores
Americans are now shopping for music online, which is cheaper and easier for consumers to download music right onto their phones or iPods. For purchasing CDs, consumers are shopping at big-box stores such as Walmart, since they offer a great selection of music at lower prices.
Become An Alternative Concert Location
Record stores don’t have to be on their way out, they just need to rethink their purpose. No longer do consumers visit to browse through hundreds of different cd cases, looking for something they heard earlier that day on the radio. Why do musicians only play in bars and nightclubs? The only time I’ve ever gone to a bar or a club to see show a band perform was when my brother was in one. Otherwise, I have no interest in going out to listen to music and buy overpriced drinks after dark. Record stores should put on concerts during the day time when people that aren’t club people can attend them.
A Place for Expert Advice
Although algorithms can recommend new artists based on the preferences of the listener, there’s still something to be said getting listening advice from a real live person with actual knowledge and experience.
Textile mills
Decreased demand from clothing manufacturers and surging import penetration from low-cost countries has caused revenue for textile mills to decline drastically.
Solar Power Generating Fabrics
Textile mills need to broaden their scope and begin creating entirely new types of fabric. Eulanda Sanders and Ajoy Sarkar in Colorado State University’s Department of Design and Merchandising are making prototypes for solar-charging apparel that can be worn while biking, snowboarding, skiing or hiking. This
Fabric Displays
Electroluminescent material emits light when an electrical charge is run through it. Fabric woven with electroluminescent material can be used as a replacement for incandescent and fluorescent lighting and can, with the right equipment, display lights in patterns and sequences.
DVD, game and video rental
Revenue for the DVD, Game and Video Rental industry has declined from 2006 to 2011 and added only a limited amount to the country’s economy. This industry includes subscriptions for mail- distributed and in-store media rental, but it excludes on-demand and web streaming rentals.
Vending Machines
Companies like Redbox have shown that vending machines are the wave of the future for DVD and video game rental. This trend can only continue to revilatize the industry and new entrants imagine new ways to offer videos for rent and new locations to place the machines.
Disposable Videos
The technology already exists and was tried in the early 2000s, disposable DVDs containing a chemical that renders them unwatchable after a period of time have never really been effectively marketed in the United States.
Photofinishing
With Americans quickly adopting digital cameras, smartphones and online social networks, consumers have had little need for photofinishing services.
Digital Enhancement
The rise of the ubiquitous camera in cellphones has lead to a generation of children being documented by fuzzy, blurry, under and overexposed photos of their childhood. Services that could digitally enhance these photos to make them look as good or better than the photos of their parents’ childhood would be a huge win, both for the business and for their photos themselves.
Photo Time-Lapse Generation
I’m sure you’ve seen the time lapse photos on Youtube of children, with one photo taken every day and then combined into a high speed time lapse video. After watching, have you kicked yourself that you didn’t do something similar? What if there was a service that you could dump off every digital photo you’ve ever taken of your child and they’d manually find the correctly age-spaced and posed photographs and merge them into a similar time lapse?
Photo by corepics/ShutterStock.