Shoemakers, trade schools, bankruptcy lawyers… Outfits that procure provisions to the economically beleaguered are doing nicely

By Greg T. Spielberg

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The exemplar for “Recession? Not as being These Businesses” came from BusinessWeek reader Bryan Capooth. Originally from Memphis, he is a first-year student at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Left unemployed by the recession, sisters Hollie Pearson, Julie Johnson, Aimie Earle (from left) returned to school at Western Career College in Citrus Heights, Calif., to become certified as dental assistants.

Roger Payne, an auto mechanic near San Antonio, took the recession in stride and decided to move his business closer to home. As in, to his backyard. Payne, who quit his old repair job eight months ago to strike confused on his own, runs Painless Automotive from his silver tin garage.

"I’m just slammed here. I’ve got three engine swaps, an axle to do, an airbag system, and a firing box," Payne said upon Jan. 16. Even without a Web locality, Painless draws cash-conscious customers from the north parts of San Antonio, who don’t soul the tow to his shop on Route 181, just outer the city’s southeastern limit. "Before the recession, [business] was all becoming," Payne says, but now his backyard is parked 12 deep by cars. The mechanic has no full-time employees, enlisted friends to build a sign, and his wife handles marketing. With Payne’s competitive rates, divisible by two used-car dealers bring him be in action.

While the U.S. recession is largely a story of the money-lender’s failures, job losses, and consumer penny-pinching, the downturn is also stimulating sections of the economy that run counter to in the same state economic cycles. People look to repair, not replace. Workers switch industries, seeking recession havens where possible such as freedom from disease care and education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health-care application rose by 372,000 workers in 2008 during the time that the unemployment rate hit 7.2%, or 11.1 million people. Discount constraint such as Dollar Tree (DLTR) and Family Dollar Stores (FDO) now attract customers from up-market retailers. The same goes for travel: North American hostel bookings rose by 25% last year, says Aisling White, a prolocutor for Web Reservations International, a Dublin-based online reservation firm.

For those who service the oldest affection of transport, walking, clients have become plentiful, eschewing new footwear since fixes to the old. Troy Horner, who with his father owns Peabody Shoe Repair in Nashville, has the same problem in the same manner with Payne: He’session completely booked. Winter is always eminently season for worn soles as Americans stash sandals beneficial to closed-toe shoes and boots. But at Dawson’s in Columbia, Mo., Bob Wood has noticed added customers seeking new heels at the same time that advantageous, and a fine shine. He says he can tell the recession is boosting business by the world and amount of what turns up. Last Monday, he says, a woman brought in "a desolation full of shoes" for revival.

Shoe repairs are likewise in high demand at the heart of America’s economic problems—on Wall Street. Across from the headquarters of troubled insurer American International Group (AIG) in lower Manhattan, Minas Polychronakis runs Minas Shoe Repair. The 2008 hibernate temper provided him through a 20% increase in business upper 2007, despite a sizeable exodus of the district’s workforce. "If there were more people here, I’olio sure the percentage would subsist higher," Polychronakis says wistfully.

Another booming domain is law. "Our work is brisk," says Gus A. Paloian, a partner in the bankruptcy, workouts, and business reorganization division at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago. "We don’t like to brag about it but the [filing] rate is astronomical." Three years ago, Seyfarth started hiring attorneys from other firms, and fresh out of law school, in arrange to cope with an influx of real social standing cases. Since then, the expanding toothed of clients includes lending agencies, retail companies, biofuel producers, manufacturers, auto-parts suppliers, and the casino industry. "We’re seeing problems in virtually all segments of the economy," says Paloian, who doesn’t foresee a dry fit for some time.