On Thu, 28 May 1998, Marshall Burns wrote:
> #bacx2 (Bruce Christie) wrote:
>
> > The Kinko's example actually demonstrates my point pretty well. Kinko's
> > (and other chains like Mailboxes etc.) are displacing the mom-and-pop
> > shops. So even though there are many storefronts, there are few actual
> > corporations.
>
>
>
> Well, let's take a look at some numbers. "Service Industries USA," 3rd
> edition, lists data for SIC code 7334: Photocopying and duplicating services,
> for 1992. (Let's call them "copy shops.") Kinko's of course is at the top of
> the list with $130 million in sales. The top 50 copy shop companies in the
> country range in sales from $130 million down to $2 million and account for a
> total of $676 million in sales. The data do not include the total number of
> copy shop companies, but it does give the number of establishments: 4,949.
> (An establishment is a single operating location. A chain is a company of
> many establishments.) Furthermore, the total sales for all copy shops is $3.5
> billion, indicating that the top 50 companies account for only 20% of the
> total copy shop business in the country. Put another way, 80% of the copy
> shop business is done by companies with less than $2 million in sales. Since
> the average sales per establishment is $700,000, none of these companies is
> likely to have more than three locations and the vast majority of them are
> probably single-shop, i.e., mom-and-pop companies.
>
1992? I think it would be even more interesting to see how things have
changed in the last 6 years. I'm willing to bet that as Kinkos and other
large chains have flourished, the mom and pop shops have taken a beating.
Was Kinko's a household name in 1992? Not really. Now ask any "soccer
mom" and she'll tell you where the closest one is ;)
I still think that copy shops are being consolidated as the "big names"
take the business from the small ones, so why not the same thing with
SB's? With the current market for RP, I think that the consolidated shop
using FedEx will work. As the RP market expands to a) the other 395,000
mfg. companies and b) use by those same "soccer moms" for whatever reason,
that's when the explosion will occur and you'll see one on every corner.
But doubtfully before.
-Justin
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Justin Kidder, Research Asst. | Automation and Robotics Laboratory
jrkst34+@pitt.edu | University of Pittsburgh
Home page: http://www.pitt.edu/~jrkst34
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