Carson, from the US, but now in Asia. CD manufacturer.

[glassmaster]

hi guys,

I'm Becca, I've been running a small cd mini factory for the past 13 years. Basically rode the crest of this dying technology from the a relative peak in demand for this product to the present where it's all but dying out, giving way to downloads and file sharing. Used to produce about 50 million compact discs a year, now down to less than a million discs per month. Mostly for local record and movie studios here in Asia, and some bit work for small studios in the US and Canada.

My question is... is there anything left to produce on CD? In my opinion I've done well with my manufacturing line, I'm 35 now... been doing this since my early 20's after scraping up a family loan to purchase the stamping equipment. It broke even in it's 2nd year and has allowed me to establish a fairly solid business foundation for ventures into other enterprises, some successes, plenty of failures.

Any discussion and ideas welcome. Not looking for customers, just ideas and any angles I might have missed before I sell my equipment for scrap and take up deep sea fishing.

best wishes,
Bec

[lmadam]

Hello glassmaster, Welcome to the forums, hope you enjoy your stay!

Regards,
Adam

[glassmaster]

thanks!

Bec Carson

[jonn655]

Hello Becca, I hope that you are successful in what you are doing, although it is sad to see that your business has been going down. So has the recession affected you? And have you been following information on what are the latest technical improvements in your field?

[daneb]

Sorry to hear about your CD biz. I've been developing web sites & multimedia CDs since the 90's. CD-ROMs was 40% of my revenue for several years, but now I'm 100% web design.

Welcome to the forum.

[jonn655]

Perhaps it will be good if you can use social networking sites like Twitter and Linkedin to get business opportunities.

[glassmaster]

thanks for the suggestions. And yes, I do feel like I've kept up with the tech. side production wise, the issue IMO is the fading demand for my product. It was a good run while it lasted and I accomplished most of my goals... and at the very least, I'm happy to have made it through now debt free and liquid. Looks like early retirement or perhaps a career change.

[Mark Atkinson]

Well, you could always go into producing Vuvuzelas!

I'm from South Africa, and I believe that vuvuzelas are a worldwide craze at the moment, what with this world cup and all! Who would have thought that a simple noise-making piece of plastic would be the next big thing!

Anyway, sorry to hear about your CD business. But hey, that's business these days, as times change, you have to change! Good luck with whatever you do decide to do!

[glassmaster]

thanks Mark. *thinking heavily about it*... as to what to do next. Be content or keep the fire burning....

Hmmm....

[Parvaze]

If you are seriously interested in the next big thing in medicine there is very little doubt that it is regenerative medicine in general and stem cell therapy in particular. There are already clinics in China as well as other parts of Asia as well as South and Central America (some good, many not so good)

Europe has only one or two clinics (both in Germany I believe) and we will be the first in the US to start delivering these treatments directly to patients within the next 90 - 120 days in a non academic/research setting. Its an exciting field because the medicine works and the business side has the same look and feel that the Internet did 15 years ago.

[ucavik]

I have been hearing a lot about step cell therapy, i believe it has succeeded in even curing the cancer.Its a nice step.

[glassmaster]

Sounds interesting but in the end I'll probably play it safe and stick to my rental income and fixed foreign currency accounts in Singapore and HK. I'm not so young any more, too bad they didn't have more of these types of forums 15 years ago when I was 20.

:-)