Welcome fortune reversals

Published 12:01 am Wednesday, May 18, 2011

It’s time to add to the “Don’t declare that industry dead just yet” list. (It includes newspapers, magazines, vinyl records, books and the U.S. mail system.)

In the surprise category are shoemakers — an industry with one foot in the grave — who are now seeing a resurgent, fashion-inspired

and recession-related demand for hand-crafted, expensive shoes. (Meanwhile, people of all incomes are keeping shoe repairmen busy mending soles and heels and performing maintenance on footwear worth keeping. Sometimes, these workers are also artisans who can create a pair of custom-made shoes, or can point you to someone who can.)

In a downward spiral, the 90-year-old Allen Edmonds shoe company, located in Port Washington, Wis., laid off 8 percent of its workforce in 2008, the New York Times reported. This year, the company is on track to produce 500,000 pairs of shoes, up from 350,000 last year. Since January 2010, Allen Edmonds has added more than 118 employees and increased its work shifts.

While hipsters and fashion designers discovering venerable brands and making them boutique-worthy does count for some of the renewed interest in finely crafted shoes, industry watchers and economists say the recession, and a backlash against cheaply made goods overseas, has renewed consumer interest in investing in quality goods that will last a long time when taken care of properly.

In the less surprising industry-comeback category — nonetheless one whose demise has been predicted many times throughout the decades — is radio. The old-fashioned, free kind.

An average of 241.6 million people 12 and older listened to conventional radio stations each week last year, an increase of 2.1 million over 2009 — and up 4.9 percent vs. 2005, according to an annual study by the marketing research company Arbitron, USA Today reported.

That’s excellent news for an industry that saw teens and young adults cut their radio-listening time in half between 2000 and 2010, Edison Research reported. What’s helping the radio renaissance? The fact that, thankfully, we are not, yet, one totally homogenous country.

Radio stations are getting a lift from their ability to adapt to local tastes, USA Today reported. Radio owners “can shift their programming very quickly,” said Howard Bass, senior media and entertainment partner with consulting firm Ernst & Young. “That’s why they’re so resilient.”

For example, the Hispanic radio-listening audience has grown immensely, Bass said. Texas now has 154 Spanish-language stations, up from 25 in 2000.

Also benefitting radio stations is a stronger-than-expected market for local ads, especially auto dealers.

So turn on the radio and kick up your custom-made heels. And maybe go kick some car tires.