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by short_sells_poo 2456 days ago
Personal anecdote time (please correct me if I got it wrong): go to almost any backwater German village and there'll be small/mid sized industry on the outskirts. From semi-high tech (e.g. manufacturing precision instruments) to "simpler" stuff like carpentry shops or metalworkers. In Germany, the small-mid sized business that actually builds stuff (as opposed to just services) is still pretty big. Sure, most of it is invisible on the international scale, but it's there and underpins an economy of specialists.

Driving through similar places in France the difference was striking. There didn't seem to be any of this decentralized economy. Again, I don't mean to draw conclusions, just stating my very limited observation.
1 comments
Zeitgeschehen 2456 days ago
>Sure, most of it is invisible on the international scale, but it's there and underpins an economy of specialists.

Actually a not insignificant part of these backwater businesses are so called Hidden Champions[1]. Basically, small companies who are still leader in the world market for their very specialised product.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Champion

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bakuninsbart 2456 days ago
Yep, stuff like Nordischer Maschinenbau Rud. Baader. In the 1920s they were the first to produce a machine to automatically decapitate and debone fish, and they've been the world leader on this and related tech ever since,
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petra 2456 days ago
What does "small companies" mean in this context ?

Do they do engineering or manufacturing?

And how could they maintain an advantage over so many others and of course over large companies ? Where's the r&d budget coming from ? And what about marketing ?

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notfromhere 2456 days ago
They're businesses that hyper-specialize in one area and have done so over the long-term. The markets are too small for some giant conglomerate to come in and dominate, so it gives an opening for smaller firms to dominate the global market for said good - while it won't have your next unicorn, the markets are great enough to create prosperity for the owners and the local region. Germany has this spread over the country fairly uniformly, so it creates a wide platform for economic prosperity even in rural areas.

The companies themselves are usually under 50M Euro and have under 500 employees, and export-oriented. They've been a big target for Chinese acquisition, usually for companies that don't have any family to inherit the enterprise.

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