Record Store Industry

Saturday, April 19 is Record Store Day. This annual event happens on the third Saturday each April. On Record Store Day all of the independently-owned record stores (1,500 in the U.S.) in the world come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists across the globe make special appearances and performances. Since 2007, Record Store Day has provided lists of new and old releases, and specials at each store. Here is the full list for tomorrow's celebration. 

Rock in’ Robin on College Avenue and Bizarre Bazaar on Linden have both signed the Record Store Day pledge which means they have agreed to act in the spirit of Record Store Day, and sell the commercial Record Store Day releases to their physical customers; not to gouge them, or hold product back to sell them online.   

Oldest record shop in the world…

Spillers Records in the Morgan Arcade, Cardiff, Wales, is the oldest record shop in the world. It was founded in 1894 by Henry Spiller at its original location in Queen’s Arcade where the shop specialized in the sale of phonographs, wax phonograph cylinders and shellac phonograph discs. In the late 1940s, they moved to larger premises where it has happily remained and thrived ever since.

The newest record store…

The newest record store group, as far as I can see, is Rough Trade, an independent UK record store that just opened its fourth store in Brooklyn, NY. 

The Record Store Industry total revenue for 2013 was $2billion. Unfortunately, its annual grown is -7.4%. According to the research firm, IBISWorld , there are 4,031 record stores in the U.S. Over 1,500 of these are independently-owned.  Though the U.S. economy is set to improve over the next five years, the Record Store Industry will not. The usual competition from big-box stores and streaming music websites will continue to dominate the market for music, with consumers placing an emphasis on convenience and price. Some record stores will establish online storefronts to supplement their revenue, but these factors will not stop the industry's downward slide.  

Is Record Store Day a resurgence or a swan song?  Is there any hope for all those lovers of record stores?

Well, First Research (a research product of D&B/Hoover’s/Mergent available free at the library) in its study of the Music Store Industry cites several opportunities the might keep the industry alive:   

·         Develop your local music culture: By supporting local groups and artists, small music stores can differentiate from large chains and mass merchandisers, which typically focus on national best sellers. Local groups can have cult-like followings with extremely loyal fans. Relationships with local artists help small retailers establish a unique music “culture” that large retailers have difficulty developing. By creating a sense of community and becoming a destination establishment, independent music stores can develop a competitive advantage.

·         Offer complementary products:  Music stores can compensate for declining CD sales by stocking complementary entertainment-related items, like DVDs, video games, or books. DVD growth, while slowing in recent years, has been strong for the last decade due to strong demand for TV-based DVDs. In addition, synergies exist since many popular movies have accompanying soundtracks. In addition, music stores can generate incremental sales by offering music-related merchandise, such as t-shirts, posters, toys, instruments, and headphones.

·         Offer downloads - By offering websites or in-store stations that allow customers to download music, music retailers can participate in the rapidly growing market for digital downloads. For example, some independent music stores have banded together to offer digital downloads through the Think Indie website, which features store selected downloads as well as exclusive digital content.

·         Offer used products - By stocking used CDs, DVDs, and vinyl records, companies can create unique inventories and generate healthy profits. Digital formats have almost eliminated the difference between new and pre-owned CDs and DVDs. By facilitating the used product trade, companies can stock older titles that may no longer be available through major labels and studios. Used products generally have higher margins, since companies pay very little for pre-owned merchandise. At the same time, music stores can still price used merchandise at a substantial discount versus new, offering customers significant savings.

·         Offer superior customer service - Companies can meet the needs of true music fans and better compete with alternative retailers by hiring knowledgeable sales staff with a passion for music. Expert sales associates are especially important for stores with a large used music trade or vintage stock. Superior customer service is critical to attracting trendsetters interested in discovering new artists. Make the record store a destination meeting place for like-minded people.  

For Rough Trade record stores it’s all about the personality of the shop; assistants who love, understand and want to share music, excellent in-store programming, an active social media presence, an area to eat muffins, drink coffee, and read a magazine; and books. Essentially, a record store where shopping is an event.  Read more about Rough Trade Stores here and here    

According to Get It On Vinyl blog, record stores have to also be a place where young people want to hang out. What better place to tell young people about the new Cold War Kids album than at a record store. How about some family friendly events? Advertise a few community calendars and high school newspapers. Just get the young people in the door. Get them listening, searching, discovering and most of all, experiencing why a record store is so special.

Enjoy the first few hours of Record Store Day by tuning into the Grand Illusion  Friday night from 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. on 88.9 KRFC.  Each Friday night, James and Kyle play an all vinyl show with records they’ve picked up on their weekly jaunts through northern Colorado record shops.

Enjoy Record Store Day and go buy some records!

 

AtoZDatabases

Are you looking for a list of software companies in Loveland, Colorado? Are you thinking about opening another brewery in Fort Collins? Need the sales volume for each of the fourteen breweries in northern Colorado? (They will, after all, be your competition when you open yours). How about women-owned retail businesses in a five-mile radius of downtown Fort Collins?

AtoZdatabases can provide this information to you in simple, user-friendly, easy-to-navigate database—the Poudre Libraries’ newest addition to its group of premier businessreference and marketing databases.  AtoZDatabases provides details on nearly 30 million businesses and over 220 million households within the U.S.

Are you opening a ski shop but you’re not sure of the best location? You can search AtoZdatabases for a list of residents in 80538, or within 2 miles of downtown who are ski enthusiasts.  AtoZdatabases consumer module allows you to search its 220 million resident records by state, city, address, home income, area code, interests/hobbies/lifestyles and more.

When a physician, surgeon or dentist begins practicing they must file with their state. AtoZdatabases Healthcare module places all state filing into one databases of over 1 million practicing physicians, surgeons and dentists.

 

You can find a person, a business or a job using AtoZdatabases. Here are the search features.

 

Farmers' Markets

The Fort Collins farmers’ markets are up and running at three locations: Drake Road Farmers Market on Saturday 10am-1pm, CAMC Fort Collins Farmers Market  on Sundays and Wednesdays 11am-3pm, and Larimer County Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings in Old Town Fort Collins

As a summer business, how do farmers’ market fare in our economy? Who patronizes them? Is it a good place to sell your organic bread, herbs, garden vegetables, or even your jewelry and crafts? 

 According the IBISWorld in the five years since 2008, revenue for the Fruit and Vegetable Markets Industry has maintained positive growth. Interestingly, the number of farmers' markets in the country has increased at the same rate as the growth in the U.S. consumption of fruit and vegetables (2.3%): an average annual rate of 2.3% to 12,183 locations over the five years to 2013.   

Stable profit margins, low start-up and operating costs and growing demand for organic produce have been the driving forces over the five years. According to the most recent USDA survey of National Farmers' Market Managers (2009), Markets that are open 6 months or less report an average of 25 vendors, with sales of $20,770 per month, and 565 customers weekly. Markets open 7 months or more report an average of 51 vendors, with $57,290 in monthly market sales and 942 customers weekly.  Year-round markets reported an average of 58 vendors, monthly market sales of $69,497, and served 3,578 customers weekly.

However, the industry is fast approaching saturation, which will eventually slow growth. According to IBISWorld Farmers’ markets and cooperatives will need to design and launch new marketing strategies to compete with the convenience and product ranges of large supermarkets and grocery stores which are moving to organic produce. Operators may need to target a particular customer base, such as those with higher incomes or greater interest in cuisine and quality food products. They might need to find new distribution systems and give customers significant reasons to buy from fruit and vegetable markets instead of supermarkets or grocery stores. The quality of fruit and vegetables will be an increasingly important marketing tool in the coming years.

There are advantages to both the farmers and to the consumers in the growth of farmers’ markets. For small and medium sized farms, farmers markets can be the first point of entry into the marketplace, they can help incubate a small business, develop and test new product lines, obtain better prices, and obtain a reliable source of farm or artisan income. Farmers’ markets are also a good way for new growers to interact with customers, learn what customers want and perfect their production skills.

The Larimer County Farmers’ Market is here . This market is sponsored and promoted by the CSU Extension and Larimer County’s Master Gardeners.

The Colorado Agricultural Marketing Cooperative (CAMC) which runs the Sunday and Wednesday Fort Collins farmers’ markets is here. 

The Colorado Farmers Market Association is here. 

For consumers, farmers’ markets provide access to locally-produced, healthful farm-fresh food, one-on-one contact with the farmers who grow the food, and the opportunity to contribute directly to local farming and community viability. According to IBISWorld the bulk of sales come from consumers aged 45 to 54. These individuals and households are usually more health-conscious than younger groups and have higher incomes. Likewise, the 35-to-44-year-old market is an important consumer group. Because some of these individuals are not as health-conscious as their older counterparts, they account for a slightly smaller 19.0% of revenue. Individuals aged 55 to 64 also make up a significant market. Because the bulk of the income lies within this group, their spending power is strongest. Additionally, increased publicity and awareness of the health benefits of fresh produce has pushed these individuals to purchase higher volumes, especially from local and organic markets. This trend has created potential for strong consumption growth among these consumers, and IBISWorld expects their share of revenue to grow over the next five years.

The  USDA Factsheet on farmers’ markets is here

The USDA Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food blog is a good place to understand the farm to food movement.

In 1994, The U.S. Department of Agriculture started keeping track of all farmers’ markets in the country. The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is home to many of the Department’s leading farmers market research, technical assistance and grant programs. AMS’s Marketing Services Division, comprised of an interdisciplinary group of agricultural marketing specialists, economists, engineers, and facility design experts, has been examining direct marketing practices and opportunities, including farmers markets, and providing technical assistance to small and mid-scale agricultural producers, handlers, and distributors, for decades. AMS also manages the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP),a grant program that supports the creation and development of direct marketing outlets and offers a set-aside for projects that initiate the use of electronic benefits transfer (EBT) at farmers markets, the Specialty Crop Block GrantProgram, which provides matching grants to States for produce, tree nut and horticultural crops, and the Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program, which provides matching grants to state agencies for agricultural market research. In 2012, Colorado farmers’ markets received over $200,000 in USDA FMPP grants.

Know your farmer; know your food.  Enjoy this summer’s farmers’ markets! 

 

Recycling Industry

In the town of Yashiro, 27km outside of Osaka, Japan, washing machines, air conditioning units, television sets and refrigerators hum along conveyor belts, each having reached the end of its life cycle, and is about to be disassembled, shredded and, sometimes, pulverized. Machines capture noxious gases that comprise cooling refrigerants. Resins including polypropylene and polystyrene are recovered thanks to technology that can quickly sort and separate various types of plastics. New developments will improve the capture of rare earth metals from high end electronics.
This is the PETEC (Panasonic Eco Technology Centre) complex, a clean, ultra-modern and relatively quiet facility. Since 2001, over 1.4bn appliances have been recycled, producing enough materials to manufacture 95 jumbo jets, the equivalent of 81 of the Great Buddha statue at Nara and 158,000 cars from reclaimed aluminum, copper and steel.
Japan's Home Appliance Law, in effect for over 10 years, is in large part responsible for the innovation that facilities like PETEC have sparked. The law has forced the extensive implementation of extended producer responsibility (EPR) that has become common in Europe, but has found huge success and buy-in throughout Japan. The law places the burden and responsibility of recycling on everyone: consumers, retailers and manufacturers.
Consumers pay a recycling fee when they drop off their used appliances at either a retail outlet or collection center. They must also purchase a recycling ticket that proves to a collector that any recycling fees, which manufacturers themselves impose on products, have been paid. Recycling fees, which are supposed to cover the costs of collecting, transporting and recycling the appliances, are eventually transferred to the manufacturers. Retailers continue their roles as the middleman as they are tasked with collecting and distributing unwanted machines to the appropriate recycling facilities.
The vast investment in PETEC has provided an approximate 10 percent return on investment, and the thriving research and development staff in Yashiro keeps churning out best practices that filter to Panasonic's 48 other recycling facilities. UK Guardian has a good story on PETEC.

In the U.S. the typical life of most major home appliances is 10 to 18 years. We have local and state programs for recycling appliances but nothing like Japan’s. We probably should, given that major home appliances are made up of approximately 75 percent steel. About 10 percent of the steel processed by the recycling industry comes from large appliances. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the use of scrap instead of virgin materials to make new steel results in a 97 percent reduction in mining wastes, 90 percent savings in virgin materials use, 86 percent reduction in air pollution, 76 percent reduction in water pollution, 74 percent savings in energy, and 40 percent reduction in water use. The remaining materials in appliances include metals such as aluminum, zinc and copper, as well as recyclable plastics and CFC refrigerants.
More interesting, though, is the U.S. scrap metal industry. According to a 2011 study by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), the U.S. scrap recycling industry is not only a thriving economic engine, but also a pivotal player in environmental protection, resource conservation and sustainability. The industry recycled more than 130 million metric tons of materials in 2010, transforming outdated or obsolete scrap into useful raw materials needed to produce a range of new products.
In addition to being an environmental steward, the study confirmed that the U.S. scrap recycling industry plays a prominent role as an economic leader, job creator and major exporter. Specifically, the study found that the people and firms that purchase, process and broker old materials to be manufactured into new products in America provide 459,140 adults with good jobs in the United States and generate more than $90 billion annually in economic activity.
The export market is also a huge economic driver. In fact, were it not for the export markets, many materials, including post‐consumer paper and electronics would probably not be recycled at all simply because there is no demand for them in the United States. By opening up new markets, the nation’s recycled materials producers create demand for materials that might otherwise end up in landfills.
In the case of electronic products, for example, there simply is not enough demand in the United States for the more expensive post-consumer materials including gold and titanium that may be smelted out of circuit boards, capacitors and other electronic parts. On the other hand, countries like India, where demand for gold is particularly high, see value in these materials. The scrap industry is the first link in the global supply chain for the growing demand of all manner of commodities ranging from iron and steel to paper; nonferrous metals such as aluminum, copper, and zinc; plastics; electronics; rubber; and more. The result is economic and environmental sustainability for the U.S. and theworld through the supply of high quality, environmentally friendly and energy saving raw materials to the global marketplace.
In 2010, the industry exported nearly $30 billion in commodity grade scrap products to more than 155 countries, significantly helping the U.S. balance of trade.

Week-end in Business

Here are some interesting, thought-provoking business items I ran across this week:
We all know that the job market is looking better with 200,000 jobs added last month. This good news is added to growing consumer confidence, factories stepping up production and small businesses showing signs of life, but did you know that for the first time in many years, manufacturing is a bright spot in the American economy? The Institute for Supply Management reported that its employment index for December was 55.1, the highest reading since June. Any number above 50 indicates that more companies say they are hiring than say they are reducing employment. The United States is particularly strong in machinery, chemicals and transportation equipment, which together make up nearly half of the exports. Exports of computers and electronic products are growing, but are well below their pre-crisis levels. Production of cheaper computers and parts shifted to Asia long ago. Check out the article here.

If you've ever watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, here’s another take-- It’s Always Sunny in Silicon Valley. In Silicon Valley, Occupy Wall Street isn’t really an issue, since, according to Google Chairman Erin Schmidt, “Their issues are not our daily reality.” In Silicon Valley, restaurants are booked, freeways are packed, and companies are flush with cash. According to this week's Bloomberg Businessweek, Silicon Valley gets 40 percent of the country’s venture capital, up from 31 percent a decade ago, the area’s job market jumped jumping 3.2 percent, triple the national rate, and real estate, a cesspool of despair in the rest of the country, is humming along. The closest Silicon Valley got to “Occupy…” was “Occupy: Cupertino” the line outside Apple stores in October for the iPhone 4S.

Retail news: I’m sure you’ve heard that Barnes and Noble is considering breaking off their profitable Nook business, but did you know that Hansen Natural Corp is changing its name to Monster Beverage Corp? Hansen Natural Corp makes a line of namesake juices as well as Admiral Iced Tea, Blue Sky energy drinks and Junior Juice. Its website features pastoral images of rolling hills and butterflies. Not good enough. Hansen’s also makes the gritty Monster Energy drinks, with its neon-green triple-slash logo. Stockholders agreed Thursday that the company needed to toughen up its image with the new name. Monster Beverage Corp. shares will begin trading under the ticker symbol MNST on Monday.


Since my daughter lives in Scotland, I’ve come to read the business section of The Guardian. In addition to all the articles on American politics, Eurozone unemployment, Australian sports, David Bowie turning 65, and might The Hobbit get a new ending? I found an interesting article on the London Summer Olympics—they’ll be fun, but don’t count on them to fix the British economy. Michael Saunders, of Citigroup, examined the data from ten Olympics held between 1964 and 2008. Growth tends to rise in the run-up to the Olympics, but the effect starts to fall away even before the games begin, and afterwards, growth tends to be weaker. This is to be expected since the jobs created are primarily from construction, which ends long before the opening ceremony. What is worrisome is the less productive workers huddled around television sets, and travel disruption as hundreds of thousands of supporters flock to London.
The London Olympics team claim that tourism would benefit "right across the UK, not just during the games, but for years before and afterwards as well"; but what about the visitors who might have come to the UK anyway, and will just switch the timing of their visit. Australia saw a 16% rise in short-term visitors in September 2000 when the Sydney games were held; but visits then declined for three years afterwards – presumably lots of people who'd always fancied going Down Under chose to time their visit to coincide with the Olympics.
David Cameron cites the "feelgood factor", which he claims will lift the mood of the nation as the sporting jamboree unfolds, it won't necessarily result in a sudden boost to consumer spending. In fact, it's just as likely to depress demand while everyone is glued to their televisions.
Research has consistently shown that unless you've a beautiful-but-neglected city you want to put on the tourist map (Barcelona), or plenty of world-class sporting venues already (Los Angeles), the impact of holding the Games is ambiguous at best.
As Saunders puts it, "In our view, the Olympics are likely to be very entertaining. But the games are not an economic policy."


Have a great weekend...

Richard Cantillon, Irish Political Economist

Since we’re about to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Richard Cantillon, the 18th century Irish political economist, and author of Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General (Essay on the Nature of Trade in General), comes to mind. Like other Irish authors I’ve run across, Cantillon is an unknown responsible for many very well known things—in this case, modern political economic theory.

Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General is generally considered to be the origin of modern political economic thought. His Essai was completed and distributed as a pamphlet sometime between 1730 and 1734, but was not published until 1755, long after Cantillon’s death. The book was recently reprinted by the Ludwig van Mises Institute .

Besides founding most modern political economic thought, Richard Cantillon had a very interesting life. He was born in County Kerry, Ireland, sometime during the 1680s, to a family long loyal to the Stuart Catholic cause. Because there were Cantillons who fought for the Stuarts, his family held titles and influential positions in banking, especially in Paris. Cantillon moved to Paris in 1714. By 1716 he was a banker to the Stuart court and to other Irish émigrés in Paris. Around this time, Cantillon became involved with British mercantilist and banker to the French government, John Law. The French government granted Law and his bank a virtual monopoly over the right to develop French territories in North America through his Mississippi Company. Law began a financial speculative bubble by selling shares of the company, using his bank’s control on the issue of bank notes to finance investors. Working with Law, Richard Cantillon bought Mississippi Company shares early and sold them at inflated prices, amassing a huge fortune for himself. Their relationship eventually broke down, causing John Law to threaten Cantillon with imprisonment if he did not leave Paris within “twenty-four hours.” His exact words were, “I can send you to the Bastille tonight if you do not give me your word to quit the kingdom in four and twenty hours!” (see Anthony Brewer, Richard Cantillon: Pioneer of Economic Theory, 1992). Instead of leaving Paris, the intrepid Cantillon promised Law he, and only he, could make his (Law’s) system succeed. Soon after, the “Mississippi bubble” collapsed, and Cantillon came out on top, having collected on debt that had accrued at very high interest rates. Most of his debtors suffered huge financial losses in the bubble. They hounded Cantillon with countless lawsuits, murder plots and criminal accusations for the rest of his life, and into his suspicious death.

In 1722, Cantillon had married Mary Mahony, daughter of Count Daniel O’Mahony—a wealthy merchant and former Irish general. By 1729, their permanent residence became London. In May 1734, Cantillon’s London residence was burned to the ground, with Cantillon inside. The fire was believed to have been set by his servant to cover up the murder of Cantillon—the murder having been committed either by the servant because of unpaid wages, or by the servant on behalf of one or a group of Cantillon’s debtors. Lately, however, the theory that Cantillon staged his own death to escape the endless harassment of his debtors has been floated; Cantillon later appeared in Suriname under the name Chevalier de Louvigny (Antoin Murphy, Richard Cantillon: Entreprenuer and Economist, 1987).

So what were the modern theories of political economy developed by this Irishman? His manuscript, published in 1755 in Paris, was pretty much neglected until the end of the 19th century, when it was “rediscovered” by William Stanley Jevons, who considered it the “cradle of political economy,” though it had been one of the few works referenced by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations. Essai was translated into English in 1932 by Henry Higgs.

In a nutshell, Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General was the first dedicated treatise of economics as an analysis of the entire economic system . His theories on wealth, inflation, uncertainty, entrepreneurship and value are just some of the original contributions to political economic theory. Other contributions in Essai include his theory of interest, the creation of a spatial theory of economics (economic geography), exchange rate and international monetary relations theory, and the introduction of the notion of economic self-regulation and the “invisible hand.”

In Essai, Cantillon distinguishes between wealth and money, considering wealth in itself “nothing but food, conveniences, and pleasures of life.” Cantillon advocated a theory of value based on the cost of production (input of land and labor). He held that market prices are not immediately decided by this “intrinsic value.” Market prices are derived from supply and demand, by comparing the quantity of a particular good in a particular market (supply) with the quantity of money brought to be exchanged (demand). He was one of the first to consider demand subjective, varying with human fancies, such as styles of living.

One of Cantillon’s most positive contributions to economics is his introduction of the concept of the entrepreneur into economics, though Jean-Baptiste Say is credited with coining the word. Cantillon saw the entrepreneur as a risk-taker. An entrepreneur balances supply and demand in a market while bearing the risk of uncertainty, due to the speculative nature of pandering to an unknown demand for his product. The “hired man,” on the other hand, earned a contractual income, bearing no uncertainty. Cantillon divided society into these two principal classes—fixed income wage-earners (hired men) and non-fixed income earners (entrepreneurs).

You can read more about Richard Cantillon here, and here and, of course, here. Or check your library's eResource, Business Source Premier, for more on theories of political economy.

Have a great St. Patrick’s Day.

LaidOffCamp

I attended my first LaidOffCamp here in Fort Collins this morning. I participated both to learn how a LaidOffCamp functions, and to get my brain around how a concept such as an Unconference can actually accomplish anything.

I could tell pretty fast that an "Unconference" concept was a paradigm shift for many in the room (including me)—you mean we don’t just sit here and be lectured to? You, you up front, you mean you don’t instruct me on my next step in life, job, home, etc., expecting me to treat you like a guru. I suppose many (most) of the attendees were over 45, and we’ve spent our lives being lectured to. LaidOffCamp doesn’t lecture.

This is how LaidOffCamp works:

LaidOffCamp is considered an Unconference. It’s about the participants, about the community. If you decide to attend, you become a participant, not an attendee. You come prepared to share what you know, to list what you want to know, to facilitate what others want to learn.

1. The first half-hour is spent learning what an Unconference is.
2. Participants walk up to the white boards and write down what they want to learn and/or what they can offer as a session.
3. Lead participants take 15 minutes to organize the sessions based on what the participants want to learn, name a facilitator for each session, and time the sessions.
4. Sessions take place--usually 30 minutes each--either in the session room(s), or a discussion between 2 participants can take place in the hallway.

Participating is as simple as asking a question, taking notes and sharing them, or sharing a specialty. Everyone in that room this morning had something to share—an expertise, a specialty, an experience, a career-changing tidbit. The responsibility for sharing this or learning from another participant is up to each person. For example, I suggested a session on researching new opportunities. My session was about career and job change, and business start-up resources available at the local library.

During the morning, I ran into two women (separately) who both happened to have worked in theater. I wanted to get them together, talk local theater—both had experience in costuming and theater design (what's the chance of that in such a gathering?). There's a void in Northern Colorado for a costume/theater prop rental business. Unfortunately, the atmosphere was not conducive to this sort of networking, or in the end, was it conducive to sharing such experiences. For the next LaidOffCamp, I'll suggest (write down) a session where everyone just talks about what they’ve done as jobs and what they’ve done as a passion, then facilitate connections for freelance business opportunities.

LaidOffCamp started in San Francisco when 400 “creatively employed” or unemployed people came together for an open Unconference to share their experience, expertise, and stories, with the goal of helping each other through the tough times. Kevin Beucher and Nick Armstrong, two local entrepreneurs, brought LaidOffCamp to Fort Collins a year ago. The sessions take place in the Larimer County building and are sponsored by the Larimer County Workforce Center, and various local businesses.

If you want (need) to connect with creative, friendly and helpful people; if you’re seeking employment or are recently laid off; if you’re looking for creative ways to supplement your income or change your career; if you’re running your own business, a freelancer, solo entrepreneur or startup company, LaidOffCamp will be a welcome respite for you.

I’ll be oarticipating in as many LaidOffCamps I can in the next year. I found the experience/concept interesting, new, different--refreshing, a breath of fresh air. In fact, it will be very difficult to sit through my five regular-style conferences this year—two writers conferences, two Irish Studies conferences and one Library conference. Lots of daydreaming and brain-writing ahead.