The Dying-Industry Digest

By Richard Martin, 7-16-07

Plenty of news from the business world today, so I will forego the longer piece of analysis that usually leads off this weekly feature for some more bite-sized business briefs. Happy snacking!

-- Local micro-brewers are seldom considered polluters on the scale of, say, multinational petroleum companies, but New Belgium Brewing Co., of Fort Collins, had sufficient raised the ire of Eric Sutherland, an environmentalist and former employee, that Sutherland had resorted to what a judge considered harassment and stalking. A critic of New Belgium’s use of non-returnable bottles for its product, Sutherland has been barred from coming within 15 feet of New Belgium’s facilities or its personnel.

-- Hoping to find that special bottle of MD 20-20, Night Train, or Steel Reserve for your next dinner party? Good luck. According to Jared Jacang Maher, writing in Westword skid-row liquor stores that purvey high-alcohol, low-quality booze for hard-core boozehounds are rapidly drying up thanks to gentrification in Denver.

-- Also dying off are traditional drug stores, where kindly pharmacists dispense medicine to familiar customers. “Area pharmacy owners say they’re feeling the squeeze of increased insurance company demands, lower reimbursements rates and the rise of mail-order pharmacies,” writes Briana Hovendick of MileHighNews.com.

-- Newspapers are often included in the ranks of dying industries as well, largely because traditional daily broadsheets rely heavily on local print advertising that is fleeing quickly online. Not so the ads for American Furniture Warehouse, owned by Jake Jabs, one of Denver’s most familiar pitchmen and, oddly, one of the loudest local businessmen to protest the joint-operating agreement that merged the Post and the Rocky.

-- So popular is the image of Boulder as a paradise in the imaginations of the national press that it’s news when the People’s Republic is not included in a Top 10 “Best Places to Live” ranking. That’s the case with CNN Money’s new Best Places feature – but, oh wait, Louisville (eight miles away, and still in Boulder County) is on the list.

-- “For every two existing homes sold in the metro area during the first half of the year, another went into foreclosure.” That’s the grim conclusion of the latest housing-slump report in the Post, which reports that in several counties in the Denver-Boulder region, foreclosure rates are rising at 30 to 50 percent over the record numbers in 2006.

-- Also setting records, but in the opposite direction, is the index of Colorado stocks tracked by Bloomberg News. Led by Liberty Media Corp. and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., the index rose for the third straight week, briefly hitting a record level on Friday.

-- No Colorado company has done better on the stock market than Crocs, of course, but the maker of trendy footwear may see its remarkable Wall Street run end soon. “In June, 50 percent of Croc’s shares were sold short by short-seller investors who think that the company’s stock will plummet soon,” reports Crocs-hater and Slate literary editor Meghan O’Rourke. Countering the insatiable public demand for the squishy clogs, O’Rourke quotes a variety of shoe-store employees and fashionistas, all of whom think, as one puts it rhymingly, “Crocs are a pox.”