5 ms·
> Chalk is on it's way out. It's a rapidly shrinking market. I am a math professor. Most of us prefer chalk, and have no desire to go to whiteboards, smart boa
by impendia 11y ago
> Chalk is on it's way out. It's a rapidly shrinking market.
I am a math professor. Most of us prefer chalk, and have no desire to go to whiteboards, smart boards, Powerpoints, what have you. I think that there is a fairly durable market for chalk.
Moreover, over the last five years I think that awareness of Hagoromo (and more generally, of high-end chalk) has been growing. You see it for the first time when visiting some other university and think "Wow, what is this? I must have some!" This led me to buy several boxes of it at $35 a pop. My out-of-town guests, who give lectures in the research seminar I help to run, get treated to the good stuff.
- my-bullshit-job 11y agoAs a student, I preferred chalkboards to whiteboards because they were easier to read. It seems that most of the time, unless the professor had an exceptionally well working dry-erase marker, the lines were too thin and light for me to read them, no matter the color. I remember thinking that the whiteboards were an improvement at first, but that quickly changed when I realized I couldn't read what was written on them anymore.
- mcguire 11y agoAnd the dry-erase boards are never cleaned properly, leaving them coated with a weirdly-colored scrunge.
- Mvandenbergh 11y agoUnfortunately there simply aren't very many math professors. An average American school district has 200 teachers, all of whom would have used chalk until recently, that's a lot more than there are professors in a university math department and there are many more school districts than universities. I agree that there is a durable market for chalk, but not at this kind of volume.
- fweespeech 11y agoIt'd qualify as a lifestyle business if you were just looking to make $50-60k USD/year.