There have been a number of recent articles pointing out that despite having to compete with several giant beer companies, the craft brewing industry has dramatically expanded over the past decade.
Examples include The Atlantic's Craft Beer Is the Strangest, Happiest Economic Story in America, Bloomberg's Craft Brewing as a Model for Helping the Middle Class, and the Economist's Crafting a Life.
All three also make the point that craft brewing may be a model that spreads to other industries, creating new artisan businesses and middle class jobs.
That artisan businesses can be job creators is certainly true in the case of craft brewing. As the chart below from The Atlantic shows, brewing jobs have taken off with the craft brewing boom.
These jobs also pay decent wages, have consistent schedules and generally come with benefits. In other words, these are good jobs.
We've long used craft brewing as an example of the rise of niche businesses. We even featured the industry in a 2008 research report, The New Artisan Economy, which we did with Intuit.
So we certainly agree that niche, artisan businesses will continue to become more numerous.
We also continue to see three broad trends we laid out in the New Artisan Economy driving the growth of these niche artisan businesses:
1. Growing numbers of customers are looking for unique, unusual, personalized or locally produced products.
2. The Internet and online marketing has made it much easier to find or be found by people interested in buying niche products.
3. Technology is lowering the costs of serving niche markets and making artisans able to compete with even the largest of firms.
And we still like this summary paragraph from The New Artisan Economy report:
The new generation of artisans will be amplified versions of their medieval counterparts. They'll be equipped with advanced technology, able to access global and local business partners and customers, and be capable of competing in any industry. Their firms will agile, flexible and often partner with larger firms to accomplish their business goals.
Most will be knowledge artisans, relying on human capital to solve complex problems and develop new ideas, products, services and business models. These artisan firms will attract and retain highly skilled and creative talent by offering freedom and flexibility and, in many cases, high competitive compensation.
It's important to note that craft brewing is not the only artisan sector that is doing well.
For example, The U.S. National League of Cities has called artisan makers the future of small manufacturing and have urged cities to create programs to support them due to their positive economic impact.
And there are many other successful artisan business sectors, including crafts, fashion, distilling, food of various kinds, etc.
Having said all this, the jury is still out as to how big and impactful the New Artisan will become.
But in the case of craft brewing, the New York Times article How Craft Breweries Are Helping to Revive Local Economies reports the impact can be quite significant.