Professor Elam

Sometimes this blog actually predicts the trend instead of just following, which frankly is all any economist ever did or will ever do.  How do we do it, well by following socionomic and business trends, part of the reason for all this is to attempt to train you to do so.   Go back to my entry on Oct 29 2006 and read the suggestion about boning up on Sherlock Holmes, nothing like sharpening your powers of observation.

The grad class did manage to score a perfect 100 or 0 Saturday morning depending on how you look at it.  Which is to say that not a single person had logged on the Hunter or MacGregor to investigate job order or process costing in action.  I also listed the site for www.cpi-usa.com on the syllabus and have for the last several  semesters.  This is a site for imported Chinese Motorbikes.  CPI hired an Italian design firm (there’s that design thing again) who made their motor scooters look like a motor cycle, eliminating some of the ‘geek’quotient’ from the product.  Well if you open this Sunday’s DMN to the business section, you will see  a dozen different scooter/ATV importers listed here in the Dallas area. It makes sense, DFW is center of the country geographically and telephone wise in the Central Time Zone.  I listed the site after noticing that a bicycle shop in San Marcos had started handling Asian import motorscooters.  THis is also part of the Vespa retro craze.

My point was that there is always a lower priced competitor coming into the markte to take the place of someone else that started low cost, and then went up market.  Note that Honda and Suzuki and Yamaha all started with scooters, Honda and Suzuki are now in the car business, Yamaha has done a lot of engineering work on car engines such as the SHO V 6 DOHC for the Taurus (why didn’t Ford put that engine in the Mustang?)  Well now here are other examples

Woolco, K Mart, WMT, TGT and now the new kid, Dollar General and other dollar stores
Honda and Vespa, now 12 Chinese imports
Church’s and Popeye’s now Williams Chicken and grocery store
Three big tv networks, now 100 and still nothing to watch on saturday nite….now YouTube
Big movie studios, fearing tv would eliminate movies, now more movies than ever as cable tv cranks them out
Nike and Adidas, now a $15 basketball shoe
Traditional newspaper, now the Thrifty Nickel
Honda and Nissan, now Kia and Hyundai, soon Chery and Tata!

Firms moving up market leave an opening for others to come in beneath them.  This can only be done with successful design, quality, and market research.
My point-to be a successful entrepreneur you have to find your niche, Roger MacGregor did and owns the 26 foot sailboat market, it ain’t a great saliboat but by golly Roger can laugh all the way to the bank.

DLE