Is The Recession Spawning A Do-it-yourself Generation Or Have We Always Been This Way?

By Author: Norm Yerke
Total Articles: 2
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Is the Recession Spawning a Do-it-Yourself Generation or Have we Always Been This Way?
In reading a recent Wall Street Journal article regarding home haircuts ("Per Capita Savings: Home Barbering Grows in Recession, with Hairy Results", Wall Street Journal August 31st, 2009), and reading the ensuing comments on the web, it seemed that, even in these recessionary times, many people still balk at the idea of doing things like cutting your own hair at home. But why? Haven't you ever changed your own oil, painted your own living room, hung your own drywall, or watched your own kids? These are all things that some people pay other people to do as a service, but we choose to do them ourselves. The point is that there is always going to be a large part of the populous that either watches a TV show, internet video, or some other form of do-it-yourself medium and says "I can do that" and then proceeds to do whatever "it" is. Hard times may force some into this mode, but for most people it's simply instinctive to tackle a project themselves. But now you're saying "but some things I just know I will not do well, so for those I call ...
... in a professional." Ahh, exactly. This leads me back to home haircutting.

In the beginning, there was vacuum haircutting, and it was good. But the inherent challenge seemed to be that you had to hook it up to a vacuum cleaner, making it inconvenient and, to many folks, comical. Movies like Wayne's World (Paramount, 1992) lampooned the idea; however the product continued to sell to a large audience and gain popularity. The 21st century has seen a huge improvement in the portability of these devices with handheld, no-vacuum-cleaner inventions like the AirCut (http://www.aircut.com) that are more portable and have far less margin for error. Newer incarnations like this should have do-it-yourselfers celebrating the rebirth of the home haircut for themselves and for their kids and saving money, not fearful of messing it up. After all, your hair grows back. The same can't be said for drywall or wallpaper :).
About Norm... Started managing companies when I was 26 years old, shortly after I served in the United States Army for three years. With an investment banker, purchased a small division from multi billion $ company in 1985, I and my managers grew this company from $8 million in sales to $100 million in sales in less than 8 years (a mature industry); since then I have started/purchased/sold 15 different companies.