Which industries have most people have never heard of?

Question

What are examples of industries and companies that do exist, and that most people have never heard of?One example is to open one's wallet and look at the back of the cards. Odds are, at least one of them will say "Gemalto," which is the largest SIM card manufacturer and has about 50% of the world market for banking cards. Most people don't know that this is a several billion dollar industry.What are other examples?Idea for this thread came from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23534319

lucas_membrane · Accepted Answer

That's a great question; I suspect that there are quite a few pretty big $ software firms doing vertical market software enterprise apps for specific types of enterprises/entities with unusual requirements who are happy that few know how successful they may be. Are there dominant software providers for any of the following (bigger than mom-and-pop businesses, with many organizations in the industry): 1. Large construction projects 2. Paper mills 3. Motion picture production 4. Oil and gas drilling 5. Cattle ranches 6. Local property tax assessment and collection 7. Traffic ticket and traffic court management 8. Water works and/or Sewer plant management 9. Prison management 10. Automobile junkyards 11. Parking lots and parking structures 12. Independent bookstores 13. Rental property management 14. Exercise clubs 15. School districts 16. Churches ???Somebody spill the beans, please.

gt565k · Answer

Overhead cranes.They move everything in the supply chain. From raw material and resource extraction, to ports, to manufacturing facilities and paper plants, and even standing up rockets for NASA and SpaceX.Every time I tell people I work for a crane company, they think cranes that build buildings, which are totally not our industry.

vulkd · Answer

Possibly not what you're after, but I recently found out about Ambergris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambergris)and gather there's a fair few other substances prized and explicitly collected by fragrance companies.

joezydeco · Answer

Molex.They make connectors, interconnects, cabling, and switches for everything from cars to aircraft to computers to smartphones.

brtkdotse · Answer

There's an unassuming building down the road from me that looks almost deserted. Little do people know a big chunk of the worlds physical currency is printed there.https://www.cranecurrency.com/contact/

spydum · Answer

Ykk for zippers, though they got noticed a few years ago but the interwebs.

danieka · Answer

Patio11&rsquo;s Law: The software economy is bigger than you think, even when you take into account Patio11&rsquo;s Law.

9nGQluzmnq3M · Answer

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest semiconductor company in the world. Apple, AMD, Intel, Nvidia etc are all its customers.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC

9nGQluzmnq3M · Answer

From the original discussion, steel is a great example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23534663

ivan1783 · Answer

Electromagnetic compatibility - every company that manufactures any kind of electronics has to deal with it but the circle of people who do it is comparatively very small.

qppo · Answer

It's probably not a billion dollar business, but inMusic has a strangehold on cheap/budget MIDI gear (Alesis, Akai, M-Audio, Numark).

giantg2 · Answer

I think ASML makes the chips for companies that design them (like NVDA).

Which industries have most people have never heard of?

Possibly not what you're after, but I recently found out about Ambergris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambergris)and gather there's a fair few other substances prized and explicitly collected by fragrance companies.

Molex.
They make connectors, interconnects, cabling, and switches for everything from cars to aircraft to computers to smartphones.

There's an unassuming building down the road from me that looks almost deserted. Little do people know a big chunk of the worlds physical currency is printed there.
https://www.cranecurrency.com/contact/

Ykk for zippers, though they got noticed a few years ago but the interwebs.

Patio11’s Law: The software economy is bigger than you think, even when you take into account Patio11’s Law.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest semiconductor company in the world. Apple, AMD, Intel, Nvidia etc are all its customers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC

From the original discussion, steel is a great example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23534663

Electromagnetic compatibility - every company that manufactures any kind of electronics has to deal with it but the circle of people who do it is comparatively very small.

It's probably not a billion dollar business, but inMusic has a strangehold on cheap/budget MIDI gear (Alesis, Akai, M-Audio, Numark).

I think ASML makes the chips for companies that design them (like NVDA).