Today I learned: two businesses I’ve enjoyed for years are going out of business.
First I heard that Kitsbow is shutting its doors. That hurts because it’s my favorite bike clothing brand by far. I have several of their pieces. The quality’s always been top-notch, and they’ve been really innovative in how they produce their clothes in North Carolina. I’m really sad to see them go.
Then, venerable digital photography site DPReview.com is also shutting down. It turns out that I had young kids right at the peak of the digital photography boom, so I spent a lot of time on that site dreaming of my next piece of gear. It’s obvious in hindsight: How can a site dedicated to camera gear survive the transition to the cell phone age? However, I never really thought about it, and I just assumed that dpreview would stay around forever.
This feels personal because biking and photography were such big parts of my identity at one point. (Biking still is, but photos have waned as the kids got older.)
I feel terrible for the people who are losing their jobs.