Recession Watch: Demand for Repairers

In the dawning age of the new frugality, making more of what you already have gains fresh currency.

Over the last decade repair shops have more or less disappeared from numerous high streets and shopping malls.

The great out-sourcing of manufacturing cheap household goods from the East has meant that it is cost-effective to replace a kettle or a mis-firing iron with a quick trip to Tesco rather than lump it all the way to a repair shop and wait a couple of days for the much loved appliance to return home.

And basic own-label clothing is so cheap, it probably costs more to wash, dry and iron a tee-shirt or pair of school socks than it does to replace them.

But this report from the Scotsman suggests that repair shops are enjoying a renewed lease of life as the credit crunch bites ever deeper. It looks at other beneficiaries of the recession.