Business's that are becoming obselete

Uber changed the Taxi Industry ,Sydney Taxi plates went from $425,000 in 2011 to about $200,000 today and still going down.

Whilst there will always be a need for taxis they have been hit very hard.

But other business's such as the 1 hour photo shops are gone, now i see a lot of newsagents are for sale, seems Newsagents are the next to go it seems with deregulation into lotto etc.
A Newsagent business use to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars but now seeing them on Gumtree for under 100k.

Remember Blockbuster , Video Ezy, and all the others, thry used to make a killing in their day , i remember every Friday night going there and there were families renting videos, later DVD and buying popcorn drinks etc .
They used to fine you for being 1 day late etc .

I dont see as many Deli's as there used to be, I still think that would be a good business in certain areas.
I noticed Cyril's Deli in Cambpell Street Sydney has closed after 70 years , not sure if it moved or closed up ?

 

I think the highly specialised niche businesses will always do well.
Limousines or larger taxis don't compete with uber
Luxury resorts don't compete with air BnB - only the cheaper ones do.

Good restaurants can't compete with fast food. - different target market.

We used to pay thousands of $$$ for graphic design work, logos, branding etc. now we Outsouce overseas for a small percentage of that cost.

I still see stationary printing shops around - printing wedding invitations etc.
that can easily be done through fiverr and printed overseas for a small cost so the market cannot hold a lot of those.

 

A lot of the problem is that many businesses do not adapt to the disruptive technology.
We still want photos. We still want someone to drive us from one place to another. We still watch movies. What is changing is the way services are delivered.

Some businesses refuse to change their business plan while others forge ahead with new ideas. The problem is picking the right new way of doing business that is going to take off, because there are many ideas that fail.

A couple of years ago I did a bit of a study on Kodak. It had been around for over 100 years and become a very profitable and large company. They actually invented the digital camera. Senior management could see the future was going digital so they hired a CEO from HP to bring them into the digital age. Middle management however did not see the digital age coming and had the attitude "We are a film company, always have been and always will be. Look at the profits, their huge. we don't have to change anything." That lead to Kodak going bankrupt.

 

Chemist shops are being eroded by supermarkets, chemist warehouse and online.

Another wave of bricks and mortar banks being chewed up by electronic transactions, mortgage brokers and mattress suppliers.

Local councils being amalgamated.

Delis, haberdashers, haute coture tailors, widget manufacturers (though they're still teaching about them in schools).

 

If you look into most business models, trade based wise it would be very hard to undercut the price work model of most maintenance trades,but when you look at the financial services,from stock brokers-financial planners,analysis software and charting,skid row authors publishers magazines,then one can see all that changing very quickly,Real estate sales management would be another industry that will be forced to change,as most tasks take hours to perform manually,and people now want everything in sub-second performance,uber is only the first stage the wake up call or warning..

 

How about petrol stations?
Maybe not right now, but may not be too far away.

 

Few businesses or INDUSTRIES are safe from catastrophic disruption unless they remain agile, nimble, adaptive and highly aware of the exponential/revolutionary technologies that are ticking away in the background.

@peastman's Kodak example is one of many.

I will not stop if I start on this topic so I'll share a video and be done with it for now.

EVERYTHING is going to be disrupted, including the things we can't see how (yet):

 

Sport/clothing stores. With the rise of the internet more and more people are discovering how much easier/cheaper online shopping is. Xenia makes a good point that if you have a niche/custom product you would still be able to survive, but I think traditional bricks and mortar retail will be in for a struggle in the future.

 

May be Petrol stations + Tesla power stations as well

 

I don't think ANY business is immune to change and ultimately obsolescence.

As you know my businesses were one hour Kodak shops. I still have a number of industry friends that have continued and are doing well (www.fotofast.com.au being the largest of them ) but certainly the business model is vastly different than the license to print money we all had in the 80's and 90's

Even our current business of security screens has changed over the past 20 years. We now no longer do much retail work at all but are focused on wholesale supply to other smaller screen companies, window companies and maintenance guys. The costs of retail just started getting too high .. The cost of quoting, follow up to get deposits fitting and then chasing final payment was up 60% of the retail price of the job. The labour to manufacture is actually one of the smallest % bits , add in materials and our nett profit was looking less and less . Diversifying into wholesale has seen us grow hugely in the past 3 years or so.

You do have to keep an eye on trends and be ready to jump on opportunities as they happen. Very often these changes can push you well out of your comfort zone and can be quite painful.

Nothing stays the same, one of my business mentors taught that, if you are not constantly moving forward, you are actually going backwards.

 

Australia Post should become obsolete, they're hopeless !
We need good, reliable delivery systems for all the online purchases which will be made in future.
I wonder if drone type delivery systems will progress?

 

Who do you think runs Startrak?

 

Australia Post unfortunately.

 

They will.

Amazon are investing heavily in this area and next step is combining drone delivery with machine learning algorithms to predict what people will buy before they know themselves, setting up delivery depots in strategic locations and stocking them with predicted goods for ultra fast delivery.

And further down the track we'll order products online and immediately have our desktop 3D printer make it.

 

You can pay extra and employ a courier like FedEx or DHL. The business models have changed, Aus Post still have their place, but they're not longer in the business of basic delivery overnight on a budget.

 

Don't hold your breath, new laws are about to become effect that requires even hobby drones to be registered. Too many people spying on their neighbours I guess...

 

Yes and when they malfunction and fall out of the sky on to your head I hope your health insurance is up to date

Half the world will be walking around with helmets on, how many parcels can one drone carry?

 

So far StarTrack is still being run autonomously , hopefully maybe some of Star Track's procedures might rub off on aust post. But i am sure it will be the other way around