Some Oregon businesses hold up well in the gloom of the recession

Source: The Oregonian


Feroshia Knight has seen a growing stream of clients in need of her career coaching services.
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You have to look hard to find bright spots in what's shaping up to be Oregon's worst recession in at least three decades... Yet hidden among the grim statistics are businesses that are holding their own, even thriving, despite it all. Some fall into two of the state's 11 economic sectors that have added jobs, including private education and health services. Others have built cash reserves or taken other steps to withstand a slowdown. Or they reside in a niche such as career counseling that often gets more work when times are tough.

"Even during a recession there are companies that are expanding or opening up," said Art Ayre, the state employment economist. "Not as many as are closing or shrinking, but they are there." Statistics are not yet available on how many Oregon companies have added jobs since the recession started last fall, but the number is certainly in the thousands. At the peak of the last recession --between the second and third quarters of 2001 -- 26,620 companies reported adding jobs in the state, versus the 28,598 that cut them.

Business is good at the Baraka Institute, a leadership consulting and training company in Northeast Portland. "We're flourishing," said Feroshia Knight, executive director, who is adding another full-time life coach and is expanding her company's contract staff from five to 18. Knight said the upside of a recession is that it can help people envision a different future. Workers who suddenly find themselves out of a job can invent what they want to be instead of waiting for it to happen, she said.

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A Grants Pass-based coffee chain is expanding even as its biggest rival is scaling back. Dutch Bros. Coffee added 20 locations last year and is planning 30 more in 2009 even as the behemoth Starbucks moves to shutter hundreds of stores and reduce its staff by the thousands. Curt Hugo, a Dutch Bros. franchisee with four locations and another on the way, attributes the growth to beating the competition on price. He notes that a 16-ounce mocha can be had for about 40 cents cheaper than at Starbucks. "Most of our customers come in and get coffee daily, so the less expensive price can really add up," he said.



Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/02/some_oregon_businesses_hold_up.html

Makes sense, if you've got a good, three year business plan:

In October, 644 companies took out business licenses in Portland, nearly four times the average of 168 for June, July and August, said Stephen Green, the business equity coordinator for the Portland Development Commission.

"When layoffs go up we do see more people starting companies," said Steve Morris, executive director of a technology incubator called OTBC and managing director of OregonStartups.com.

"You can find more good people for cheap, office space is cheap," he said. "If you have enough buffers so that you can survive well without income, recessions can be a good time."

But let me know when they get angel funding in this economy with a half-baked idea that they're only pursuing because they have no other good option at the moment.

But everyone should do the best they can, no doubt about it.


Oh - and since that story was approvingly approvingly cited, I guess that means we've seen the last of people bitching about Them Damn Foreigners Lowering Good Americans' Wages, right?

If I planned on living in the states- I'd be opening up one (or more) of these:



http://www.darbyspies.com.au/

A buck a pie- gourmet pies 2 bucks:

Cute phrase, though.

Aussie bacon is a bit more like English or Canadian bacon... very tasty.

The chicken ones are a buck a piece. 2 of them makes a fine lunch.

and while the recession has yet to hit hard here- business is booming at that place.

Their ultra rich coffee is really a shitty sugar concoction worth $4 bucks or more a pop. They are a DAMN FRANCHISE system, and 50 locations of entrepreneurs going under or in debt doesn't help them in the long run. UE is at 10% and climbing fast. They went from small trailers to huge, elaborate drive ups (so how streamlined can they be with such overhead). Id put my money on the whole damn thing going under. There is a coffee shop on every damn corner in Oregon, and many that do it way better than Dutch Bros.

I belong to a mailing list where journalist from all the big outlets are looking for sources (50k members.) And I have to tell you, that the stories we keep seeing in the media like "people putting of having babies because of the recession", 'weddings being scaled down because of the ... " etc. etc. etc. are all being manufactured by the kneejerk, unoriginal media. They decide on an angle, then put out calls to try and find someone to fit the story. NO, these things are not trends, they are ideas by an editor or freelancer. So many times I see "pitch stage" for these stories that keep the fear in our hearts.

Half the economy is consumer confidence, and guess where it stays? In the basement.

If I never hear the fucking word RECESSION again, I'll be happy. It's like the bird flu and shark attacks. Yes, they're real, but we have too many media outlets with too many stories to fill. And since the stock market is human/emotion driven, guess what that means?

covered. Well, like the story about the people and Vets living in the streets, oh wait that wasn't in the corporate media. In fact poverty is very rarely a topic in the corporate media. Here are the facts:

"FAIR’s study examined the three weeknight network newscasts—ABC World News, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News—over a 38-month period (9/11/03– 10/30/06). We considered every story mentioning the words “poverty,” “low income,” “homeless,” “welfare” or “food stamps,” compiling a list of all stories that dealt with issues of poverty in more than a passing manner.

It was a short list. During the more than three years studied, there were just 58 stories about poverty on the three network newscasts, including just 191 quoted sources. For perspective, a FAIR study of network newscasts (Extra!, 5–6/02) found that in just one year (2001), the three networks included a total of 14,632 sources. Assuming that the nightly news still features a like number of sources per year, that would amount to some 46,000 sources over the 38 months of FAIR’s study, making sources appearing in poverty stories just 0.4 percent of overall sources.

Among individual networks, NBC ran the most stories related to poverty, with 25, followed close behind by CBS with 22. ABC aired only 11 stories addressing poverty in the 38-month study period—a rate of about one every 15 weeks."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4946434

No, the crashing economy it is NOT in your head, it is not even in the news.

I am convinced towing and ransoming LEGALLY parked vehicles is the largest business in the entire state of Oregon.