Reuters reports that according to a study by A.J. Kearney, more than half of U.S. auto suppliers face bankruptcy in 2009 which could result in the loss of more than one million jobs.
Archive for the ‘Industry Reports’ Category
Half of auto suppliers looking at bankruptcy
March 21, 2009$2 Trillion real property decline in 2008
February 20, 2009Other cheery statistics from the report:
*Nearly three-quarters of all metropolitan markets were experiencing home price depreciation in Dec. 2008
*Since housing bubble peak, prices have declined 19.3%
*California leads the way in the decline; 26.9% from a year ago.
National Restaurant Assoc. creates “Healthy Dining Finder.”
January 20, 2009
I think an online tool that assists us in making good restaurant choices is a positive development. I tried out the search for restaurants in my area and the first one listed was Burger King. To be fair, it gave me “healthy” options and listed out calories and other nutritional value but as I looked down the list of mostly chain restaurants, I realized this was more of a tool for the restaurant industry than for the consumer looking for restaurants big AND small near the house to take the family.
Speaking of the restaurant industry, check-out my report card on the National Restaurant Association which is a guide to how to utilize the website for competitive intelligence.
Organic trade org. partnering with Progressive Grocer
January 20, 2009
The Organic Trade Association has along with Diversified Business Communications and Progressive Grocer have teamed up to provide retail grocers with high level health and wellness trends to assist them to take advantage of the tremendous growth opportunities in this market.
I posted about the kind of industry research available at the Organic Trade Association website and have also create a downloadable report card available at my website here.
End of Web 2.0 bubble?
January 9, 2009
Deloitte says social networks have to focus on monetization more than growth in 2009. They can’t just focus on growing their subscriber base but have to figure out ways to make money beyond advertising because of a business environment where everyone is slashing their budgets. This is harder for social media because Deloitte says it takes 100 users to generate the same as one user for traditional media.
Where have I heard this before? That’s right in the first bubble back in 1999-2000!
Charity telemarketing: don’t give by phone
January 2, 2009In a report issued by the Attorney General of New York, they found that the telemarketers make sixty percent of the money raised by phone leaving the charity less than forty percent. Make donations online!
Online retail down 3%
January 1, 2009
I’m not sure how accurate these surveys are but if online retail is down, then retail overall must be down even more.
U.S. Manufacturing job losses: 20% since 2000
December 26, 2008
Congressional Budget Office released a report called, “The factors underlying the decline in manufacturing employment since 2000.”
Besides the overall percentage of job losses, the three biggest sectors were:
Textile mills: 59.6%
Apparel: 58.0%
Leather and allied products: 47.2%
Is there anything surprising about the findings of this report? Not really. Still, seeing the raw numbers in black and white is disturbing. The one finding that might assist in the fight for universal health insurance is how the fixed costs of employee benefits helped cause U.S. products to be n0n-competitive against goods from other countries because the employers paid health insurance costs. Hopefully, businesses will make the argument that universal health care will make the entire manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy more productive.
Newspapers embrace the web
December 20, 2008
But is it enough?
Here are some key finding from the 2008 Bivings Report, a survey of what newspapers are doing online.
*70% of newspapers allow users to comment on article up from 33% in 2007.
*Registration requirements have fallen to 11% from 29% in 2007.
*100% of newspapers have RSS feeds as well as feature online advertising.
*58% allow for user generating content; photos, videos or articles up from 24% last year.
The problem is that newspapers in every case are behind the curve, are responding where web-only sites have been for much longer and it raises the question, what makes the newspapers better than Dailykos, HuffingtonPost, Drudge report, the Associate Press website? If newsPAPERS were about the efficient and attractive dissemination of hardcopy news, what is their value proposition without that? One argument is that they have trained reporters and editors who offer a much high caliber of reporting than a “blogger.” True, but there is nothing about the web that prevents quality reporting. So then the question comes again to why newsPAPERS? I don’t see an answer which is why I cite back to my previous post on this matter:
New Census tool on employment
December 7, 2008The U.S. Census Bureau is a great resource for lots of macro-economic information. I have to admit that frequently the information is too macro to be useful to me. For business development purposes, some macro information is helpful but really only if its tied to specifics, like actual companies and that is not the mission of the Census Bureau.
I was interested in this new tool called “Business Dynamics Statistics” but turns out to be another geek-orama that I’m hard pressed to see how I’d use. Give it a try and let me know if can do something cool that I can use.
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 