In the live production world, there was a product called “spider pod”. It is a riser for a camera tripod to get the camera up higher. It came with a step for the camera operator. A metal worker who used to work in television made it, patented it, and ran the entire business out of his shed. It became a staple in the television industry. After his last kid graduated college, he retired. You can now only get them used and nothing has replaced them on the market.

Long time ago, I got to visit a bingo blotter factory. They're kind of like markers made especially to mark bingo cards.

Decades ago, I worked for a laser animation company. We built lasers and created animated programs for planetarium laser shows and live events. It was a fun experience, but hella niche.

Every mattress store ever.

Repairing old antique/vintage record players/phonographs

You know those plastic ball pits that they have for kids to play in at places like fast food restaurants (moreso pre-COVID)? My understanding from working in the industry is that there is a machine that can quickly clean and sterilize those plastic balls. It’s a machine made by one old man, and it’s the only practical way to clean those plastic balls. So any place across the entire planet that wants to not let those ball pits get gross has to buy one of these machines from this one guy.

(And yes, I know I’m inviting people to think I’m making this up because “ball-washing lol”… but I’m 100% serious).

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_22oCIurbs

Got a buddy who has a sewing table custom aftermarket business and one of the side operations is a little wire doodle making machine that cranks out commemorative plate holders....like for a display...and that got me to go 'huh....guess someone does have to make those'... But a very specific use in a niche market indeed.

https://www.timet.com/

Titanium Metals Corporation

Guess what they make.

The person making these railroad crossing sirens: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nXdVG45wveo (Technology Connections)

https://magicproducts.com/

Not especially niche (there are lots of people who fish) but a strange product/company optics disconnect. I’ve seen their products all over the place and my friends who fish swear by them. We drove past their corporate office once - it’s in a tiny town with a population of 300 and it looks like an abandoned auto repair shop.

There's a lot of people in the world. If they offer international shipping, I'm sure whatever company you're thinking of has a sufficient customer base.

There was this small store that sold barbecue accessories. That by itself is not so unusual, if it wasn't for its location. It was way too far into a tiny town, meaning nobody other than the locals would ever stumble upon it. It's potential pool of customers was like a thousand people at most.

Eventually they started selling rotisserie chicken on weekends and I became a regular.

Techtronix. they were the primary oscilloscope maker in late 1900s, that was until oscilloscopes could be designed and manufactured in China for a few hundred bucks.

nowadays they seem to still pursue high end oscilloscopes, where they focus on increasing the sampling rate from 500 MHz (with cheaper oscillioscopes) to 200 GHz.

I still don't know how they're still in business. The entire model seems unsustainable to me given that one of those oscilloscopes go on upwards $200,000.