Some of them are a little more visible simply because they’ve scaled and developed a moat - logistics, particularly trucking in the UK, and international cargo shipping, stand out here for me. But also social care, floristry and grocery wholesaling, weird sectors in aviation (I worked in that for a while), all sorts.
And then I look at family businesses that shouldn’t be able to exist all the time. In my nearest town centre there is a grocer, a fish shop and a butchers on the high street. Common sense tells us the extra large supermarket built on the outskirts of the town in the 1990s should have obliterated them, but no.
In the UK there is a common assumption that a lot of vape shops, barbers and even some takeaways are fronts for money laundering (and that definitely happens - there is a chicken shop in one Northern town I know that to my knowledge has no ability to actually sell you chicken, nor can the 4 others next door to it). But there are definitely some that are making good money via the legal route.
As a software guy I look for opportunities to sell to them and there’s one theme that stands out across many of them that is also an invisible sector: have you noticed how many small companies make and sell touchscreen tills/cash registers? In the UK it seems to be a thriving cottage industry.
Dry cleaners.[1]
Parking lots.[2]
7 boring businesses.[3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0cASirKyE
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4SAUvmKz4
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebaiF97mCtM&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D...
bsenftner•26m ago