Content area
Full text
Insurance won't prevent obsolescence, but comes in handy in times of need.
About the time of America's Civil War, an uncountable number of companies manufactured buggy whips, Business boomed because horse-drawn vehicles were virtually the only mode of transportation.
By 1914, however, Henry Ford had been mass-producing his Model T automobiles for a couple of years, and the era of the horse-- drawn conveyance received its death sentence. The effect on the buggy whip industry was predictable. One by one, whip manufacturers went out of business until only a handful remained. By the 1950s, the buggy whip went from being a product nearly every household owned to a curio and a specialty item.
Before technology made them obsolete, buggy whip manufacturers made a mint, and so did the financial professionals who provided services for them. Similarly, Ben C. Kaufmann, CLU, ChFC, CFP, CIC, 57, an independent agent in Lexington, Ky., had his own experience as an advisor to a wildly successful product engineer just before the product he invented became obsolete.
"I was involved in a buy/sell agreement among three partners nearly 20 years ago," recalls Kaufmann, who had been in the insurance business for 35 years. "They were IBM engineers at one time, and they had invented some kind of upgrade to the company's electric typewriters. They...