The Future Of Neon
We are living in a constant changing world and this applies also to neon. In the case of Neon i see that it’s turning into a very lucrative business , and the reason i say this is because a lot of neon shops have closed since the economy went sour so the few shops that are left will have to take care of the demand for Neon. This demand could be in the form of repairs,custom neon ,art work(if you are the creative type).
And there are still millions of signs out there in store fronts that are called channel letter signs that are internally illuminated by neon that will eventually need repair.
In other words i see a very bright future for Neon Manufacturers.
In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded by consumers (at current price) will equal the quantity supplied by producers (at current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity.
In other words the price of neon is going up because the lack of supply (A lot of shops closed) .
I used to think that in a bad economy people would not buy , but i came to realize by experience that not everybody is suffering from the bad economy , actually some are making more money , and they are a lot of people.
Neon used to be the only light source used in every channel letter sign (Store front signs) now they use LED lights
Some publications(magazines) that are paid by the big LED companies try to convince the public that LEDs are better than Neon but the reality is that they are not and if you want proof , at least where i live i can see the proof every day . About 4 years ago the city started changing the traffic lights from the traditional light source behind the green amber and red traffic lights (Which i think were conventional light bulbs) to LEDs , you could see that they were LEDs because when new they were very bright, then you could see a honeycomb type of light .About a year later i started to see the lights to go out , one LED at a time , then they replaced the light with a brand new LED light , same thing happened again , now they are back to the traditional bulb lights or something similar ,but they are not LEDs.
The reason they push LEDs even if they are really not better than neon is because they are better not for the consumer but to the manufacturer because they are mass produced and machines make them, low cost to make and they make a larger profit. Not the same with Neon which is hand made 100%.
But neon is not only used for channel letters , it has a lot of other applications window neon signs,window border neon,custom made Neon,neon art, repair of existing neon signs, Vintage Neon sign refurbishing etc.
So i would say that there is a bright future for neon , maybe not in the channel letter store front signs but it will still be used in many other ways.