Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Bread
True for the higher end, but nearly anything not five or six figures pretty much collapsed, resale wise.
|
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Garmin watches and the like are incredibly popular right now, I have one, most of my friends do, and so on. It lets me record activities, provides data, notifies me of messages and calls, etc. I went a long time without wearing a watch...then a few years ago I "won" this in a charity auction, but I haven't looked back. The watch industry is alive and well...but if you didn't adapt...you died.
The real answer I think is whether or not you (the product) exist in a niche. If you don't exist in a niche, it's evolve or die. Someone or something will always come along that can do things better than you, faster, more efficiently, cheaper, etc. The real success is to keep developing new stuff, getting into new markets, reaching new customers (as far as demographics), inventing new processes, and so on. Just sitting around producing the same widgets year after year is a sure-fire way to eventually have the floor collapse out from under you. Maybe not on your watch, hehe, but at some point down the road.
So then there's the niche. The niche doesn't need to be competitive, people will buy it at pretty much any price. Either no one else makes a competitive product, the uniqueness can't be matched or the loyalty and other perception factors are so high it's not worth challenging unless you are going to lay out incredible amounts of money and time, well beyond any payoff you'd see for likely decades.
There's always a lot more businesses/products that *think* they are a niche that really aren't. It's the issue of not being able to see the forest for the trees and it's simply really hard to do this when you are inside of an organization.
So V8 cars isn't a "niche", it's nothing special, but certain models with certain features might be and they might gain value in the future. V8 M3...possibly. But the same idea above applies...just because it's a V8 automobile, even one in good condition, doesn't mean it's special.