Lemons from Lemonade

We all hear the bad news from the recession: unemployment, no job growth, a unsteady market, and general mayhem and madness.  But few ever mention the businesses that do well, or perhaps even benefit, from the global recession.  Despite the flagging economic institutions around us, some companies and industries continue to grow.  So what, in our staggering economy, manages to thrive?

Gas prices have, historically, been known to fall during times of global recession, and this recent one is no exception.  According to the index of gas prices for the last several years, the price per gallon dropped dramatically after the recession hit and has yet to return to pre-recession prices.  Consumers benefit from this, but so do the car companies.  In fact, General Motors reported an 18% sales increase from just August of last year.

Another market to see an increase in value during a recession is gold, which reached the astronomical price of $1,900 per ounce.  In turn, pawn shops and brokers in gold have seen record levels of people selling back their old gold.

But people seem to be taking desperate measures to gain some extra cash, with the sales of lottery tickets skyrocketing in recent months.  In fact, 17 states reported record annual ticket sales.

Either from selling their gold, or winning it big in the lottery, consumers have taken their financial boon and put it back into the market.  The biggest recipient of this is most definitely Apple, who had their best quarter to date in June of 2011 with a record $28.57 billion revenue.  So much so, that for a brief Tuesday in August, Apple overtook Exxon as the world’s most valuable company.

With all those new iPhones out there, digital music sales increased by 12.4% this year, accounting for half the music sold.  And despite physical album sales, falling last year overall, the sale of vinyl records increased 14% to 2.8 million units.  That’s the largest number seen since 1991, right before the invention of the CD.  It seems that unless it’s a unique product, like a vinyl record, people prefer their music digitally.

A form, it seems, that people now prefer their movies as well.  With the decline of DVD sales, people now belong to online streaming and home rental services such as Netflix.   Even with the sales increase they announced last month, a study by The Diffusion Group found that only 12-15% of members would cancel their subscriptions – a negligible amount for the company with the price increase.

The only thing people seem to still be buying in its physical form, and not a streamed or downloadable version, are video game consoles.  Called a recession-proof industry, the major consoles continue to sell, with Xbox having the best year to date in 2011 then it’s has during the six years it’s been on the market.

And while we consumers waste our time at home, watching movies, listening to music, and spending our nights playing video games, how are we ourselves awake for all this activities?  With coffee, of course.

Big chains such as Costa Coffee recently saw their 38th consecutive quarter of growth, and Starbucks just announced a massive expansion throughout Asia with 1,500 shops opening up in China and 700 in South Korea within the next five years.

So all in all, it wasn’t such a bad year for some people  Let’s hope we can all do just as well next year so we don’t have to keep hocking our necklaces to afford our Netflix subscriptions.