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30 Companies That Were Successful Until A Single Bad Decision Wrecked Them Completely
Sometimes, one bad decision is all it takes to turn things completely upside down. While that is true in one’s personal life, too, it’s often the case with businesses, where one bad call can bring all processes to a halt.
Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community have discussed such terrible decisions, after one netizen asked about what made successful businesses take a big hit or even go under. Netizens covered a bunch of different examples, pointing out exactly what led to the fall of the enterprises, so if you’re curious to learn more about the whys and hows, scroll down to find their stories on the list below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
MTV stopped playing music.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
THIS ONE HURTS! The shift from music to "reality" TV was so gradual none of us noticed until it was too late. And now old MTV is gone forever.
RELATED:
#2
Look at every single decision the Boeing executives have made over the past 5 years lol.
Gavin Johnson 7 months ago
As a Brit I looked at Boeing with envious eyes. I have mates who work at Airbus and at British Aerospace and they always seemed to be a step behind Boeing when it came to medium and long haul aircraft. Yep we’ve had Rolls Royce providing great engines but 737, 747, 757, 777, 767 through decades of air travel kinda overshadowed that. Then it all went Pete Tong. I’m now pleased to see Airbus products filling up the gaps left by Boeing.
#3
Sears discontinuing their catalog in the early 90s but not entering online sales until much later and long after Amazon took over what they gave up.
#4
Blockbuster’s decision not to pursue streaming services.
Tobias Reaper 7 months ago
Netflix offered to sell themselves to Blockbuster for $50 million but they were laughed out of the room my how the turntables have turned
#5
Haven’t seen it yet but GE making Jack Welch CEO. GE was one of the gold star companies of the US, EVERYBODY wanted to work at GE because you’d be set for life. They took care of their employees, made a ton of money, made good products, what more could you ask for? Then Jack Welch came in and started firing people left and right, eliminating product lines, getting into finance, worrying about the stock growth.
Fast forward to today where GE is now three separate companies: Healthcare, Energy, and Aviation. Jack Welch pretty much single handedly broke down a company that was started by Edison and made some of the greatest technological advancements in the last century. That man is the worst.
#6
BlackBerry for letting their arrogance think that Apple or Google couldn't challenge their majority in the smartphone market. Also, ignoring creating a smartphone without a physical keypad until it was way too late.
Rika 7 months ago
I miss my BlackBerry. I have essential tremors, writing a simple text with touch screen is a pain because I always accidentally hit the wrong letter and I have to stop and correct the spelling every second. I used to spend hours texting or chatting, but now I avoid it because of that. Physical keypads need to make a comeback.
#7
Two obvious cases come to mind:
1) Kodak (remember the film brand?) invented the digital camera in 1979 but did not pursue that line because they thought it would hurt film sales.
2) Blockbuster Video had an opportunity to merge with Netflix to manage online streaming content, but declined. Blockbuster was sure that video rental would never end.
#8
My Pillow dude comes to mind, mixing extreme politics with business.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
Mike Lindell is going to end up back where he started. Now if we could just deport Elon Musk back to South Africa after Tesla implodes and craters.
#9
I still laugh about tumblr's decision to ban all adult content on their website...which was like 95% of their active user base.
#10
"Our office is returning to in office 5 days a week to scare off talented introverts and attract psychopaths" -lots of companies with job posts today.
#11
Delivering ‘shareholder value’. Boeing, Intel, Blizzard and Ubisoft to name a few. Companies need to deliver value for their customers instead, the shares and dividends will follow.
DC 7 months ago
And their employees! Any and every company has the task, given to it by the society that created and provided the environment they can thrive in, to spread wealth, not spread bare survival. The lowest-earning ones need to be taken most care of, and shielded from more ups and downs than the top earners, who shouldn't even feel pressured, but internally obligated to ... make their company spread wealth within their employees. Shareholder value being the only, or main, target metric simply isn't sustainable, ignores the needs and realities of the world in which companies exist. And yet, a looters' mindset is the dominant shared quality of CEOs everywhere, regardless of any else. Fück that!
#12
Gerald Ratner, CEO of The Ratner Group, operated a popular and successful jewelry business in the UK in the 1980s. He managed to sink his entire business enterprise in under ten seconds when he made a public TV appearance and joked that his company's products were "total c**p".
The value of his business dropped by about *half a billion pounds* in the immediate aftermath and almost went completely out of business.
John Monteith 7 months ago
He was at a conference. And said. People ask me how we can sell crystal decanters and glasses for £5; it’s because they’re c**p. And people ask what the difference between a prawn sandwich for £3.99 and our earrings at the same price. I say the earrings will last longer. However a couple of journalists were there And next day headlines in the papers Rather says his stuff is c**p
#13
TVs in a quiet restaurant.
I can understand TVs in a sports bar, but for the love of spaghetti, leave them OUT of the restaurants!
I used to carry a [TV B Gone](https://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php) until people started getting wise and disabled the remote input.
At one restaurant, on a date, there was music and conversation, and the TV in the corner droned along as everyone tried to ignore it. Then one guy got up and unplugged it, and the whole restaurant clapped!
Gavin Johnson 7 months ago
We’ve got several pubs to choose from in our marketplace. Pubs for football, pubs for live music, pubs that are a bit ‘lively’, pubs for food & family time but my personal favourite has no TVs, no jukebox or piped music, no pool table, mobiles must be on silent and if you wish to take a call you got out to the back of the pub. It’s just got the sound of folk chatting and drinking. Oh yeah, no Wi-Fi either 😀 🍺
#14
Changing the recipe of Schlitz Beer to cheaper ingredients. In 1970 it was the #2 Beer in the country and by 2000 it was extinct.
#15
Radio Shack trying to compete with Best Buy in bigger ticket consumer electronics rather than sticking to what they did best.
#16
Nokia embarking with Windows for their smartphones
Microsoft ruining everything they touched in order to get cool: Skype, Skype for Business, Hotmail, IE6, OneDrive, aQuantive, Danger Inc., Band, Bing, Bob, Groove Music, Cortana Speakers, Zune and so many others.
#17
1) Sears saying they wouldn’t take Visa or Mastercard, only Discover. Never shopped there again.
#18
Susan G Komen hired Karen Handel after her failed bid for GA gov on an anti abortion platform. Karen convinced the founder that defunding Planned Parenthood mammograms would increase donations from the right.
They didn’t realize how many of their donors were not conservatives. Massive PR debacle and wave of donors asking for refunds.
So Komen said ‘oops, that was a bad move so we’re NOT defunding Planned Parenthood mammograms.
Conservatives then asked for donation refunds and non conservatives stayed away.
The nonprofit went from the most trusted name in charities to shuttering most of its local offices and reducing its revenue close to -60%.
BrunoVI 7 months ago
Nothing in this even resembles reality. What killed SKG was the realization on all sides that it was a scam: only 13% of money raised went to treatments, screenings or research. Most of the rest went to self-promoting "education" like making pro athletes wear their particular shade of pink. Planned Parenthood doesn't even do screenings; they only make referrals. Given Planned Parenthood's militant promotion and defense of birth-control medicines that are no longer available because they caused nine-fold increases in breast-cancer rates, why use a birth-control/abortion clinic operation for referrals for breast cancer? (And THAT'S even in the 13%!) All this is why SGK fell much more in subsequent years.
#19
Enron commiting fraud on a massive scale. Granted, it's also the only thing that made the company in the first place.
#20
Yahoo had an opportunity to acquire Google for around $1M but decided not to. Since then, Yahoo, which was once a tech giant, saw a significant decline over the years and was acquired by Verizon in 2017 for about $4B. Fast forward to today, Google is now a powerhouse worth around $2T.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
There were search engines all over the place back then. Nobody knew which one was going to be the true chosen one. Webcrawler, Lycos, Altavista, Excite, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There were dozens more. Google just nailed it.
#21
Osborne Computer began showing off its next-generation computer when it wasn't ready yet. Everyone canceled orders for the in-market model in anticipation of the new one, which tanked the company.
BrunoVI 7 months ago
Funny that Osborne's screw-up seems to be more famous than Commodore's. In the 1980s, Commodore had a death grip on home computers that made Apple look like chumps. They abandoned the computer their own developers had come up with and instead decided to simply mass-produce a computer designed by a Spanish company, Amiga. Amiga was a cool computer, and very powerful for its day, but it wasn't backwards compatible nor compatible with Commodore's own hardware, and Commodore buyers had bought what in today's money would be thousands of dollars worth of peripherals. Angry Commodore owners refused to invest in Amigas and went for Apples and Windows instead, and the greatest computer company that ever was became a smoldering trashheap.
#22
Target opening stores but not infrastructure in Canada and also doing no research on why Canadians shop at Target in the US.
#23
MySpace limited you to 10 photos that you had to rotate out after the limit.
Facebook let you upload unlimited photos in April 2005.
Immediately everyone I knew tried to get their college email address credentials so that they could sign up for the Facebook and post/see pictures after every party.
And then in October Facebook, to add insult to injury, let you tag people and that was the end of MySpace. Now not only was Facebook where photos from the party were posted but you would also be tagged so that created a viral incentive to connect to people and sign them up for the Facebook website which amplified the social network effect exponentially. (You don't want people tagging you in photos that you don't know about do you?! Better sign up and review those tags.)
MySpace was already beyond irritating by letting everybody play a different song in the Background causing you to want to rip your ears out of your head from 19 different Limp Biskit songs playing simultaneously but I think they could have survived long enough to disable auto-play music if they had simply not put a limit on photo count.
#24
Maybe not *worst* decision but generally bad business is to give the consumer too many options. Like a sandwich place with 100 sandwiches on the menu. In reality, most of them are similar with one thing subbed for another. It's confusing for consumers, servers and the kitchen, annoying for everyone, and it slows turnaround down driving down revenues.
Charles McChristy 7 months ago
At a low point in my life I worked at a Greek/Italian restaurant that also had bbq ribs and southwest eggrolls, among other things not anywhere near Greece or Italy.
#25
Blizzard deciding to make every game just a c***py platform for micro transactions without focusing on making a fun game.
They haven't felt the full effect yet but after Diablo 4 and overwatch 2, I know a lot of people (including myself) who will never buy another Blizzard title. They rode on the coat tails of their early 2000s staff for as long as they could. (I know it's Activision now).
#26
Atari delayed the release of the 7800 by half a year as it tried to renegotiate royalty rates paid to cartridge developers.
In the meantime NES launched and took the market.
The 7800 had comparable tech and could also play all of the old 2600 games too.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
Yeah, no. The NES was a better console. And it comes down to one thing nobody talks about. The controllers. Have you ever handled a 7800 controller? They were still using JOYSTICKS! And they were spongier than the OG 2600 joysticks. The NES control pad was absolute perfection at the time. There are millions of them out there to this day that are pushing 40yo and they still keep going.
#27
I always think of TWA Airlines.
TWA was a legacy airline from the earliest days of airlines. However, after deregulation in the 70's, they were struggling to compete. Desperate for cash, they allowed corporate raider Carl Icahn to purchase majority ownership of the airline, which provided some much needed cash.
Included in the takeover agreement was a small clause that required TWA to sell tickets to any of Icahn's companies at-cost, meaning zero profit. It sounded like maybe TWA would give a few seats to some corporate travelers.
Nope. One of Icahn's companies was a travel agency, and they sold huge numbers of tickets to the general public below market value and for zero profit to the airline. Flights would be 100% full and make no money. Hamstrung by the inability to adjust fares to make a profit, the airline was forced to cut costs, cut or eliminate popular services and benefits, and cease flying on some routes altogether.
Eventually TWA could not survive and it was bought by American Airlines in 2000.
#28
No one listed Xerox? Sticking with copiers and not those computer thingies?
DeShotz 7 months ago
For a very simplified background… In the early 70’s, Xerox PARC invented so many things that are integral to modern computing. Graphical User Interface, Ethernet, laser printing, postscript, WYSIWYG text editing/word processing, etc. They could have been THE player in the personal computing market. Xerox leadership decided that they were just a document company and did not do anything with what they invented. Cue a demo to Steve Jobs, which gave birth to Lisa and then the Mac, which in turn inspired Microsoft to copy and create Windows.
#29
Small scale. Our local pizza place did a slice meal ( big slice, fries, a dip and a drink) for 5 euro. A simple 1 euro increase absolutely k**led them. This was when cash was far more common and the psychology of just handing over a fiver was the ticket.
Gavin Johnson 7 months ago
Showing my age here. Our local Bank’s pub used to have a 98p pint (see I told you I’m old) and you could buy 5 pints and sling the 10p in the fruit machine. When it went up they’d held it at 98p for so long it jumped to £1.04. The outrage! Now you needed £5.20 and that’s just not cricket.
#30
Intel's decision to forego purchasing ASML's EUV lithography machines until their competitors purchased all of ASML's production putting Intel years behind. To their credit Intel took delivery of one of ASML's machines about six months ago. These machines are so advanced that it will be another 18 months until Intel can manufacturer chips using these machines.
Bartlet for world domination 7 months ago (edited)
Trump wants everything manufactured at home, Intel is one of I think only two American chip manufacturers, Taiwanese mega chip producer TSMC is helping them - if it doesn't work out within the next two years, it's hopeless.
#31
When Amazon was taking off, brick and mortar book stores were loosing business. Barnes and Noble made the sensible choice to downsize and closed many stores while developing an online platform. Borders, on the other hand, decided the best thing to do was build as many new stores as possible. When this didn't increase sales, they decided it was finally time to try online shopping. However, they decided to partner with Amazon and have them handle all of Border's online business, effectively handing all the extra revenue directly to their biggest competitor. Guess which store is still in business?
#32
When Circuit City lowered the pay cap and fired everyone making over the pay cap. No, wait that wasn't a single decision, they actually did it twice.
#33
Being ridiculously stingy about coupons! I once worked at a cafe and they had a buy one get one free ice cream advertisement in the local paper (which you can pick up for free anywhere around town). People were coming in all day with it and the place was packed. One girl couldn't find it in her wallet and was getting really upset so I told her it was fine and gave her the deal anyway. Later on I got screamed at for that. I can't imagine that the alternative-- refusing to give her the free ice cream-- would have been good customer service. I would have felt so awkward and horrible about doing that.
Another time my mom and I went to a wrap place, each with our own buy one get one free coupon. They refused to give us each a free wrap because "we clearly came in together" even though we were paying separately and each had our own coupon. Never went back there again.
#34
Artesian Builds. Company CEO, Noah Katz, gets on their normal PC building live stream where they are going to give away a PC to one of their affiliates. Name gets drawn. Katz looks up the affiliate, reads out the metadata for the affiliate, decides this person isn't important enough, and rescinds the offer. All proudly live on stream.
This happened on March 1, 2022. The company announced they were shutting down eight days later.
#35
THQ, once a respected game publisher, banked it's entire company on a drawing tablet accessory for consoles
Didn't work out too well.
#36
Gary Kildall deciding to not accept IBM licensing terms for the OS for their next computer. Later launched as IBM PC. A small company accepted IBMs conditions and put together a small OS they bought from another company.
The small company was Microsoft, and the rest is history. As areDigital Research and CP/M.
#37
GM abandoning the EV-1 instead of continuing to develop it.
Tim Douglass 7 months ago
That's a painful oversimplification. GM created the EV-1 strictly as a development and test platform. Once it had served that purpose it was shut off and they used what they learned to develop market-driven cars. It was never going to be developed farther and it wasn't practical to do so. Large-scale manufacturing is very different from a limited run of semi-custom vehicles.
#38
Kmart not owning the buildings they operated in. Yeah there was a lot of other factors for why Kmart is gone, but one of them was because they practically never owned a building they operated in.
#39
A friend of my husband's owns a sports bar. A few months ago he offered $1 beers. The place QUICKLY became overloaded with homeless people and the regulars didn't like it and stopped going. Special didn't last long.
#40
The company that makes the game Ark spent all their money on a failed electric car company.
#41
Any time a popular local restaurant changes their hours every other week, people don't know even you are open and they just stop coming.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
Or when a spot starts cutting hours suddenly. I kid you not, I saw a sign on a place once: "We apologise to our regular customers but will no longer be open Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday." So how are you going to pay your lease when you are only open 3 out of 7 days a week?
#42
So this didn’t wreck the company completely per se, but did do a lot of damage - Merck rushed Vioxx to market because it was a first-in-class/blockbuster medicine, which is the Holy Grail of Big Pharma. If you have the one and only type of medicine on the market and it works, that’s basically a money-printing machine, and they got that with Vioxx. They chose to ignore FDA regulations and marketed it for something that it was not intended to be used for when applying for a license (Rheumatoid Arthritis) and the d**g reps were lying about safety data for cardiac risks. It ended up costing the company ~$5 billion in criminal and civil trials and FDA fines.
I started working there at the end of the Vioxx payouts and the cuts to MANY benefits was staggering lol. Every time something else would go (including jobs) people would blame Vioxx.
#43
Aroma Cafe in LA charges a mandatory 15% "management fee" to every single bill. This is not gratuity for large parties, etc. 15% not including tax and tip! So shady and despicable.
Regina Holt 7 months ago
The price of goods and services should be the price they list on the menu. You don't pay extra for management, every company has management.
#44
Microsoft focusing on television and sports instead of games when unveiling the Xbox One. The Xbox brand hasn’t recovered since.
RamiRudolph 7 months ago
Say what you will, but personally I'll take Xbox over PlayStation any day
#45
The original Bed, Bath, and Beyond focusing on in-person brick-and-mortar store sales instead of an easy-to-use website for online sales.
#46
There was a mongolian bbq chain in my town that offered $1 beer every evening starting at 5pm. The idea was you would come in, have a couple beers and then buy dinner. Nope. We sat there and just threw back beers for a few hours. That promo didn't last long and now the business is closed.
#47
A local delivery company where I live. They had amazing wages and benefits. Every driver was clamoring to get a job there. The crew so big the only reason there were other delivery companies was so they didn't run foul of anti monopoly.
Then they decided to review their payment structure and reduced the amount you got paid per haul across the board.
Another big delivery company looking to get established in the area then offered the exact same wages they had previously offered. They lost 80% of their employees in the first month and even though they went back on the pay reduction they slowly died out over the next year.
#48
American car companies declaring they will go all electric by a set date. Now I realize they have all pivoted, but they did this without vetting what the consumer truly wanted vs. being pretty much forced to go that route because of the government.
They have all pivoted, as have all companies globally, except Toyota) to offer more hybrids (what it appears the consumer wants) with some ice and electric offerings. It is very interesting how all along Toyota kept saying hybrids were the answer for today.
#49
THQ was one of the bigger publishers in video games. They held Darksiders, Saints Row, Destroy All Humans, and had deals with Disney, Dreamworks, Nickelodeon and the WWE.
They developed the uDraw Game Tablet. A $70 drawing tablet accessory for the Wii, PS3 and 360. This tablet was a sales diester and single handedly killed THQ.
The company went bankrupt and Nordic Games purchased big swaths of their IP. Today they make games under the name THQ Nordic, but original THQ died at the hands of the tablets.
What is funny is obviously Nintendo went on to make the Wii U, another sales flub but obviously they must have taken some inspo from the uDraw.
Cammy Mack 7 months ago
Nintendo, out of everyone, has dddeeeeeeppp pockets. So deep, it should have been them to buy Star Wars, not that stupid mouse company.
#50
Bayer acquiring Monsanto, completely underestimating the USA's willingness and ability to completely legally annihilate the same company they were protecting once it turned from US-owned to non-US-owned.
#51
Hiring Ron Johnson at JCPenny. He first decided to never have sales or coupons that fair pricing with no makeups just to make them down, didn’t work. People never got coupons or sales flyers so they never went in. It made sense logically but shoppers like to think they are getting discounts. He also thought he would make it cool place. It’s JCPenny. In a mall. It’s not going to be cool in the 2010s.
He did great with Apple Stores but Apple customers, especially Apple Store customers aren’t JCPenny customers.
#52
Company called Sandvine recently decided they would take their network traffic inspection and prioritization software and repurpose it to allow foreign governments to spy on their citizens.
Got themselves sanctioned by the US government, they were then unable to buy the hardware their software was custom tailored for. They therefore couldn't sell their product anymore and torpedoed their revenue source.
Laid everyone off and the C-Suite that pushed the decision got golden parachutes.
Yay capitalism.
#53
Sonos rushing an app release for a pair of s****y headphones. While not completely ‘wrecked,’ the damage has been impressive for such a short timeframe.
#54
This new trend of NFL teams going all in on someone and it's pretty much never worked out. First it was the Raiders for Gruden, then the Browns for Watson, and very likely the Jets for Rodgers.
Granted, these places weren't exactly "successful" before, but none of them have even remotely moved the needle and they'll all take years to recover from.
#55
Bud Light for putting someone's picture on a can of beer.
#56
When Rainforest Cafe got rid of the live parrots. That was the only interesting thing about it.
What do you think ?
Lara Verne 7 months ago
Dráčik is Slovak toy store chain. It's CEO is homophobic and transphobic and didn't have any better idea than to write his "opinions" on the official website. As a result, some companies that supplied toys for his stores terminated the contract. Serves him right.
Hippopotamuses 7 months ago
With the exception of Philips, it appears that non-USA companies do a much better job. As evidenced by their lack of inclusion on this list.
Michael P. 7 months ago (edited)
The Hudson's Bay Company, a company that started off as a fur trading company over 300 years ago that became one of Canada's most iconic department stores. It used to be Canadian until it got brought out by an American investment firm in 2008. The Bay is now in the process in liquidation as they prepare to close all but six of its stores. They are still looking for a buyer for its six remaining stores. Most of its stores are in rough shape, their escalators and elevators are out of service and haven't been fixed in a while, as they don't have the money to repair them. And they owe their vendors and wholesalers thousands of dollars on top of the out of service escalators and elevators.
Elbert Jones 7 months ago
Selling Banana Republic to the Gap Corp. B.P.'s founders had a great Idea: sell durable clothing that you'd wear while going on two day hike with you closest friends. Not selling clothing that people want to appear to be "cool" wearing.
Lara Verne 7 months ago
Dráčik is Slovak toy store chain. It's CEO is homophobic and transphobic and didn't have any better idea than to write his "opinions" on the official website. As a result, some companies that supplied toys for his stores terminated the contract. Serves him right.
Hippopotamuses 7 months ago
With the exception of Philips, it appears that non-USA companies do a much better job. As evidenced by their lack of inclusion on this list.
Michael P. 7 months ago (edited)
The Hudson's Bay Company, a company that started off as a fur trading company over 300 years ago that became one of Canada's most iconic department stores. It used to be Canadian until it got brought out by an American investment firm in 2008. The Bay is now in the process in liquidation as they prepare to close all but six of its stores. They are still looking for a buyer for its six remaining stores. Most of its stores are in rough shape, their escalators and elevators are out of service and haven't been fixed in a while, as they don't have the money to repair them. And they owe their vendors and wholesalers thousands of dollars on top of the out of service escalators and elevators.
Elbert Jones 7 months ago
Selling Banana Republic to the Gap Corp. B.P.'s founders had a great Idea: sell durable clothing that you'd wear while going on two day hike with you closest friends. Not selling clothing that people want to appear to be "cool" wearing.
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