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30 Business Decisions That Ended Up Hurting Companies, As Shared In This Online Group
‘Under new management’ are probably the worst words to see written at the entrance of your favorite souvlaki place, bringing uncertainty as to whether the new owners or people who were appointed to run the place will have maintained an equal level of quality that you, as a dedicated customer, are used to. And it can be any business, really—a change in ownership can be a refreshing thing or else it can totally destroy the spirit of the previous establishment or office.
Users on Reddit are sharing their most relevant stories illustrating how questionable some business decisions might be: from sold ice cream parlors to Target in Canada and Star Wars. And although the previous year has seen some businesses and companies go out of order, not all the new endeavors, as we have learned in the past, are there not to always succeed.
More info: Reddit
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There was an Italian place in my hometown that was well liked for its pizza, among other things. The waitresses made the dough fresh in the kitchen, and the cooks made the sauce as close to being in-house as you can get short of actually steaming and straining tomatoes.
The owners eventually sold it, and the new owners turned it into a bar & grill. They still had the pizza, but it was all frozen dough and bland canned sauce. Meanwhile, a fan and regular of the original restaurant bought an old mechanic garage and fixed it up to be a spiritual successor to the old one -- he even got all the recipes he could from the original owners; surprise of all surprises, his is the one that succeeded while the bar & grill petered out after the novelty rush.
The bar & grill eventually sold to that guy, and now it's a new, different bar & grill, but with all the best food that the old Italian place served still on menu. It's been running strong for over a decade since.
Property management company I used to work for had a number of student properties and high-rises that were always a struggle to fill in the summer months when students went out of town.
Head office came up with an offer that anyone who signed for two years got the four summer months at 50% off. Sounds like a good deal, 50% rent is much better than zero. We signed tons of students.
However the lease templates that head office sent over showed the reduced rent rate on the lease rather than just adding the discount as a separate addendum. I noticed this discrepancy and reported it - and was subsequently ignored.
Which meant the students were signing a legal document that guaranteed them 50% rent for two years.
The company lost hundreds of thousands in revenue.
Depending on the wording of the lease they probably also got the summer month at 50% of the specified rate (so 25% of originally intended normal rate), making it an even bigger loss.
A developer my dad worked with sold off a beautiful piece of land next to a river in a very desirable area, he sold it to another developer. The new developer cut down every tree on the 6 acre site, as he said, "he wanted to see what he had". The land then started to slide into the river, rendering it worthless and ugly.
Ugh, not a fan of developers and it seems they are ruining my city too. Can't buy a house built in the past 15 years that has home mail delivery, a sidewalk in front, or enough space for you to walk between your home and your neighbours. The is tons of land where I live, it's greed, all the lots meant for a single home now get subdivided and have at least two. I would never pay the $500K+ for a home with zero yard, regardless of how modern or beautiful, I want to have room for at least a dog and a bbq and a sidewalk in front to walk said dog on.
I used to work for a company that was bleeding money. In order to try and save money, they decided to stop honoring returns/refunds, but still advertised that they did.
Whenever someone would ask for a refund, you were supposed to tell the person that it would be processed in the next 6-8 weeks, then get them off the phone.
6-8 weeks later, when they ask where their money is, you were supposed to apologize and say their paperwork got put in the wrong stack, and that it would be put in the correct stack and would then be processed in the next 6-8 weeks.
If they complained about the length of time, you were supposed to tell them you can ask your supervisor to expedite it, and they should see it in 4-6 weeks instead.
If they threatened legal action after months and months, you were supposed to tell them to contact the company legal department ( we didn't have a company legal department) and then hang up on them. Then, make a note in their account. No one should field calls from that account further.
More than half the call center quit in a single week in protest of this decision.
Company collapsed in on itself within a few months.
In my hometown there was an independent fast food and homemade ice cream place, long established and run by close friends. It was a goldmine. They decided to sell and retire. New owners immediately changed everything. Painted it a wild color, removed some attractions on the grounds, changed the 60 year old menu and switched to commercially made ice cream. They lasted 8 months.
My late great uncle started a fish and chips restaurant. He had his own unique recipe for the fish and it was very popular. Businessmen had offered him thousands in cash for it over the years, but he always declined. After about 40 or so years, he decided to retire and hand the business over to an ambitious recent college grad. He offered to give her the recipe and even volunteer his services for a bit while she got comfortable in her new role as owner. She declined both and within a year, she was forced to sell the restaurant after coming close to declaring bankruptcy. My great uncle died and took the recipe with him to his grave
Knew this guy who wanted to start his own BBQ and hot sauce line, here was his process:
Get high with buddy and make the decision go into business together.
Argue about who should be financing the business
Get a loan from Grandma
Order a bunch of bottles
Use a sharpie and some blank labels to put on the bottles
Fill the bottles with bulk BBQ sauce.
Try and sell these to Walmart
Get upset that Walmart won't shelve your sketch sauces
Have several hundred bottles of unsealed product that wasn't prepared hygienically.
Try and sell some to your extended family.
Get angry with extended family that they don't believe in your dreams of the last two weeks.
Beg family for money to pay back grandma.
There was a shopping plaza near me with a fairly large gift store. Not a gift shop in the museum sense, basically like a Hallmark store but independent. It wasn’t exactly bustling, but they apparently did solid business and a lot of people in the community really appreciated having it there as a place to buy gifts and wrapping paper and such. The owners of the shopping plaza raise rents to the point that the shop goes out of business. The reason this was stupid is that the store front sat vacant for like 15 entire years. Seriously, this place closed when I was a child and I’m now 27 and the vacancy was only taken over very recently. If their goal in raising the rent was to have a more profitable store move in to that space, they certainly failed and missed out on decades of rent as a result.
Sounds like typical tax avoidance plan. You pay no local taxes on empty buildings and use the (overclaimed) costs as a tax write-off/ tax rebate income line. Ask Donald Trump, he is the master at this...
This one involves my Dad. Back in the '80s he decided he wanted to teach people how to use Lotus 123, Excel, MS Word, etc. So he bought a bunch of computers for a classroom, and he wrote interactive learning programs, and printed out manuals and such. Even without advertising, he had people asking to join his class BUT ... he was never quite ready. This Lotus 123 program could use more work. He wasn't ready for a class, this MS Word tutorial isn't quite done. The perfectionist in him wouldn't let him expose the less than perfect programs/class to people ... just yet. He turned down paying customers for fear that it wasn't just perfect. He had taken a loan out from a friend to finance this, but never made a dime. He paid the loan back by selling our cottage, something he regrets to this day. And why? Because he was afraid to be flawed.
That taught me a lesson though, as the old saying goes "Perfect is the enemy of done". He could easily have made money and taught his classes, refining the programs to student feedback. He could have covered deficiencies by teaching in person. He was afraid it wasn't perfect, so it was never done. We don't talk about it, or the cottage that we built together (we had the foundation and structure built by pros, then the whole family pitched in to build the interior when we were teens).
It saddens me more because it was what he wanted to do, and he went for it ... but not quite.
I worked for a video store during the time Finding Nemo came out on DVD. The video store I worked for got a huge fishtank put inside. It was so big they had to shrink the game rental section. The tank had clown fish in it. The tank was also locked and we couldn't feed the fish or clean it. This was supposed to be done by someone who I never saw come in. So the tank ended up filled with a bunch of dead Nemos in a nasty as f*** tank. Needless to say parents were very unhappy about it. The local paper did a small article about it too which didn't help an already dying store. I have no idea what they thought an expensive as Hell fish tank would do for their business.
If it hadn't been cleaned for a while and it had dead fish in it, it must of stunk out the shop too.
I worked for a design/printing place for years, and the owner went from amazing idea to stupid idea on a regular basis. don't get me wrong - guy is a brilliant designer, totally took advantage of new tech every chance he could and made it work.
But - he was cheap and greedy, so, ruined what would have been lucrative long term business relationships.
So - we did this huge order of promo supplies for a fairly big on-line casino. huge, for him. about a 20k order, with good margins, and the chance at long term work with this company.
While it was being picked up, on the spur of the moment, he decides to pad the bill by about 200 bucks. the guy picking it up was the son of the casino owner, and literally watched the boss do this while I stood at teh till.
The customer looks at me, smiles, and pays the bill. With a huge wad of cash. And says "I know it's not your fault, but - my family is very wealthy. We didn't get that way letting people rip us off. Tell the boss over in the corner he just f***** himself out of a lot of money, because we loved the work." in a voice meant to carry.
Edit to clarify who was paying. And padding means he increased the bill over what he had quoted the job to cost.
Take a help desk that has been consistently rated extremely well by its customers for their first-call-resolve, attitude, and helpfulness; outsource it to a company that's been rated towards the bottom of the list for over a decade because it costs less than the salaries/benefits of your former in house help desk. Then complain when your first-call-resolve drops through the floor and your customer satisfaction is at an all time low.
Yes, and I guess, as always, it was SUCH a suprise. It happened even at one of my former jobs, the company itself a service provider and knowing very well how this works. Still, they fired the cleaning staff (the least payed people in the company who hat been working there for years) and outsourced it to the lowest bidden. And then had to pay a lot for lockers because now externals entered every office, next they realized that externals would only clean things specified in the contract and not just everything that needed cleaning (who would have thought) and last there was a lot of whining that the cleaning staff changed all the time and wasn`t as motivated as the internals. But I`m sure they saved a few hundred bucks every month...
Target's expansion into Canada
collapsed in 2 years and cost them Billions
Kodak refusing to push digital cameras / photography, and instead focusing on film cameras. If I recall correctly, I think Kodak was one of the first companies to create a digital camera, but instead of capitalizing on it, they sat on the technology and focused on film development.
Xerox made a similar mistake. It essentially invented the modern PC computer age in its research lab and the company wanted nothing to do with it. They had the mouse, GUI, the internet, and many other technologies and it just withered on the vine because it didn't involve making copies. Many of the employees left and started the companies that gave us the modern world because Xerox didn't even bother to patent it. The Apple MacIntosh was a direct rip-off of one of the computers they built there after Jobs had a visit.
Xerox had the PARC - Palo Alto Research Center - which was home to the digital printer [killed by management], the personal computer [killed by management], the PDF format [management told the inventor to keep it for himself, which he did and founded Adobe].
Load More Replies...I worked for Kodak for a while. It wasn't just digital camera technology. Kodak had a number of market breaking technologies but the dinosaurs at home office always choked. They had a commercial digital printing process that could print at 1000 feet a minute but took so long to move on it that their competitors were able to make a slightly inferior product and flood them out of the market. This was right before they filed for bankruptcy about 10 years ago. They did not learn their lesson from the digital camera fiasco.
YES! My father worked for them too as an Engineer. He helped developing these new tech from Switzerland. But sadly, saw Kodak in Switzerland closed. He was one of the last swiss employee.
Load More Replies...I studied this while teaching a business class. Kodak believed that people would always want printed photos. They believed that the desire for large, framed family photos and photo albums of special events would always be there. They did not count on smart phones killing the camera business or people preferring to store pictures digitally.
I frankly have preferred my old Kodak-using-film to the digital camera. I can't post online, but I *can* get great pics with copies easily sent to loved ones who aren't online.
They did create the first digital camera, but it wasnt that they sat on the tech to focus on film. one of the components in every digital Camera until the early 2000's used a single part (they had to, to make them work until better tech came along), and the person who owned the pattent offered it to everyone at a very cheap rate (he asked for a few cents of royalty per item, he made millions from this). Kodak wanted to be exclusive, and when he wouldnt they spend years developing their own tech so they wouldnt have to pay him. During that period they pushed better film in hopes of holding off the industry, and they lost the bet
They could have been in the same league as Sony, Canon, Nikon, and Fuji in digital photography right now.
The first digital camera I used was a Kodak DC50 (c. 1996). It was quite featureful for the time and took a decent picture, especially in low light.
You are correct the first one was a 3 megapixel camera lol I had one, I loved it (and hated it) at the same time. I laugh thinking about that, and they never really upgraded. I can't tell you the last time I bought a film camera or film.
I worked at JCP before and after 2011 (I think) when they revamped the whole company. They took away coupons, and they took away a lot of departments people (especially older people) loved, like custom window coverings. They also brought in extremely expensive furniture. Like $8,000 dining tables. Trust me.. no one shopping at JCP is looking to buy an $8,000 table.
They paid the CEO who brought about all these changes a massive amount of money and it failed miserably. People HATED the changes and we went from a busy store almost every weekend, to it being dead almost every weekend. It lasted maybe 2 years and then they brought back a lot of the stuff they got rid of, but the damage was done. The people who had been shopping at JCP for years and years who stopped after the changes, didn't come back.
JCP lost an insane amount of money during this whole thing and never recovered. They filed for bankruptcy last year.
I used to shop at JCP Home. Almost all of my bedding and towels came from there. In my first home, all of my window coverings came from there. The last time I went into a JCP, it was no better than shopping closeouts at TJ Maxx.
Cafe I work for decided it wanted to fire everyone except for the leads and the manager. Then told the manager they weren't paying her salary anymore AND she needed to take on more work. Assumed people would do it because they "love their jobs"
20th Century Fox giving George Lucas the merchandising rights and rights to sequels for Star Wars in exchange for a pay cut on his director's fee (from half a million to $150,000)
Hes made so much in Merchandising and the sequels, something like 5 billion
Circuit City was pretty stupid. When the recession hit, they decided to stop selling appliances and instead focus on DVDs and televisions and such. (Appliances are known as being a recession proof item. People always need refrigerators and microwaves. They don't need DVDs.) They also wanted to cut down on labor costs, so they fired a lot of managers and assistant managers, and just left a lot of entry level employees because they were cheaper to pay. Well, entry level employees don't really know how to fully run a store, so pretty much every Circuit City became dogs***.
There was a Tex-Mex place I loved in Fairbanks, Alaska. The food wasn't GREAT, but it was consistent, and the prices were fair.
Well, a new owner came in, and they decided to revamp it into a fine dining steak house. $30 was pretty much the lowest cost you could get for an item, and this was in a neighborhood that had a substantial crime rate and was right across the street from the bikini barista and the marijuana dispensary.
I stopped going, and they went under shortly thereafter. I walked in once before the place closed down, and it was dreary and empty and they had tried to bring some of the classics back to the menu, but it was far too late by then.
You were too good for this world, Los Amigos.
Two members of the band Steppenwolf wanted to break away from founder John Kay and wanted to tour using the band name. John Kay told them he would allow it....only if they signed over their royalties from the song writing credits they had in the band. These two members were convinced they would be successful on their own so they agreed.
Since Steppenwolf without John Kay would be like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger, that version of the band flopped tremendously.
Also, even a five year old could tell you that giving up your royalties on major hits like "Born to Be Wild" and "Magic Carpet Ride" would be a really stupid thing to do, so these guys ended up having to work regular menial jobs when they could have been getting a nice royalty check in the mail instead.
I worked for a small airline for several years. We did fairly well doing regional flights across the US and Canada.
Our dip s*** CEO decides we should get into the private jet market and lure in a bunch of rich people with more money than they could spend.
This plan hilariously backfired and we went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy for two reasons:
anyone that can afford a private jet wants to BUY one for themselves and hire a pilot to fly for them. They're not interested in buying a ticket AND hiring a pilot.
idiot CEO invested in outdated prop planes. Because nothing appeals to rich people more than fancy planes that scream through the air like a lawn mower cranked to 11.
Second reason yes, first reason no. “Rich” people charter private jets all the time. Operating an executive jet company is competitive, but it’s not a “bad” business - there are plenty of paying customers out there. It's pretty rare for rich people to purchase and own their own jets. That's something more common to the super rich. Who wouldn’t even be target customers for this guy’s business to begin with.
A radio station i used to listen to recently changed their format from 80% music, 20% talk show to 100% talk show. Then they were like “oh you can still listen to the music but it’s only going to be on our app.”
there's a word for people who listen to 100% talk radio: "Rageoholics"
My old company was internationally known in our industry as being one of the ideal places to be. We could hire basically anybody in the world in our space to move and work in our office. It was such a f****** awesome place to work.
The CEO decided to cash out when a larger company barely related to our industry decided to buy us. The new company basically gutted everything that made it great, then rushed to go public. The employee stock options were pennies and they drastically cut benefits. Every time there was a complaint the answer was "maybe you don't understand our vision" or "well we are a public company now." They also got rid of our office which was located in one of the hottest LA neighborhoods that everybody loved.
More than half of the OG senior members have left and a large number of others are rumored to leave. I was forced to start assisting in hiring and it was grueling. People would apply believing it was our old company, then find out what's up and go elsewhere. Oh, and the stock is plummeting.
I hate the fact that what once was is over. Those f**** ruined something great.
I worked at Hollywood Video from 2006 to 2009. At that time Netflix was growing by leaps and bounds and our revenue was dwindling from year to year.
Instead of copying Netflix's model and using their more recognizable brand name to edge them out of business, Hollywood shrugged their shoulders and continued renting single DVDs for $4.99 for 3 days plus late fees.
Where they at now?
The death of the video store was late fees. When Netflix developed a business model that allowed to keep a video as long as you wanted without paying more but couldn't get anymore until you returned it, they stole the market. A busy family wanted 3 movies every Friday night and as long as you remembered to return them by Tuesday, they would be there. If your 3 year old son wanted to do nothing more than watch the Lion King 4x a day., the movie you borrowed became yours after 30 days and your rent slot opened up again. No worries about dropping the movies off between Suzie's soccer game and the neighbor's dad's funeral to avoid paying twice want you rented it for.
Not even sure if it was a conscious decision but Sears passing on being Amazon in the early 90's. Sears was poised and ready to be Amazon, they had most components in place already and the others they had in their arsenal.
First they had name recognition, this was important for the trust factor with the internet exploding like it was. They had the product line, for s**** sake you could buy a house from the Sears catalog. Delivery, it was there, they delivered the house that you bought!
Internet portal, they had it. They owned Prodigy, one of the more recognized internet providers of the time. This was a joint venture with IBM, you know, the most well known hardware provider for computers at the time.
So IBM sells a computer with Prodigy installed with free to stupid low cost internet access. When you sign on it drops you to a home page(that was the way it worked back then with software internet) with a link to the ONLINE SEARS CATALOG! Same great catalog, just on the WORLD WIDE WEB!
Panera Cares opening less than a mile from my college campus.
For those who don't know, Panera Cares basically just let you order food and would list a "suggested donation" based on what you ordered, but ultimately it was honor system. The cashiers would just make change for you so you could put cash in the donation box. If you can't afford a meal it's fine to not pay but you are supposed to volunteer to work for two hours to cover it, but this isn't actually required.
I think generally these things are supposed to be for really affluent neighborhoods where people probably donate even more than is "suggested." But students from the college basically turned it into a real life Tragedy of the Commons experiment. There was almost never bread available because everyone would just take it. The lines were insane and people would donate like $1 if anything. It closed within a year lol.
Company I worked for decided to stay open instead of closing at the start of covid. The state even said they would pay employees and give businesses money if they closed and didn’t lay people off.
Nope they stayed open and all of their customers closed down. Making no money for 5 months they had to lay off 80% of their employees.
Things started picking up last October. Well they were understaffed and couldn’t meet demands. Causing them to lose most of their big contracts. If it wasn’t supplemented by the mother company in Japan they would be done for now.
I worked there for 13yrs. Seeing how far we grew to have one bad decision cost them everything is eye opening.
American Airlines is presently having a similar problem. Self-inflicted. Hope they—-and other companies just like them—-don’t get bailed out this time. Let THEM pull themselves up by THEIR bootstraps, for a change. Or just learn how to code. (In case you’ve been living in a cave and don’t get it: /s.)
In the early days of the personal computer, a fairly prominent developer Osborne went t*** up because they showed off their new model far in advance of when it was actually going to be available. So predictably dealers immediately cancelled all orders for their current computer model in preparation for the new improved version. Inventory stacked up and they were bankrupt before the new model ever came out.....
Its known as the Osborne Effect.
they also built the first 'laptop'. It plugged into a car battery and was huge
Around last year this time of year, I know someone in their early 50's that sold all of their investments (at a significant dip from the highs) and decided to start producing and selling hand sanitizer in little bottles out of their garage. Seeing it as a big opportunity with the virus.
They spent everything on the bottles, labels, plastic drums full of sanitizer (at a huge markup), hiring locals people to fill the bottles and put the labels on, and then a website. By the time they had inventory, they realized that they couldn't compete on price with places like Walmart or other big box stores that had finally caught up to the shortages by mid-summer. They also didn't realize that selling on Amazon was gated for that category so you had no chance of selling through there as a new seller. So now they basically have a garage full of old hand sanitizer, and no savings.
Holy heck my time to shine. Prepare for a number of them.
Used to work at the corporate office of a major water park in my state (if you ever lived in Utah you know which one). The year before I started, they adopted a new 'business' practice of offering a season pass to the waterpark (and numerous other facilities) for a measly $20 per year. Not a typo. Previously they had been $150+ per year. Unbelievable right? It gets worse.
The year I started, they ran a new promotion where you buy a season pass for $25, but then also get a $20 giftcard back in the mail to Walmart or some other store. You can see where this is going.
2 weeks after I started as a fulfillment specialist (dealing with pass issues) they fired the entire call center staff of 30+ people, heaping their phone calls and emails onto my fulfillment team of 8. So in addition to all of our work creating and shipping passes, we had to take all customer service calls and emails.
It gets worse.
For some reason, they thought that it was prudent to wait until we had some large round number (I think either 500 or 1000) passes ready to ship before they would even ORDER the gift cards to send with them (even though there were thousands of passes purchased and pending with this deal). So not only were there MASSIVE delays in people getting their passes, sometimes they just wouldn't even get the gift cards either because the season was starting and they demanded their passes now instead of waiting for the gift cards too.
So double whammy there, customers angry about how long it takes to get the season passes, and not getting the gift cards.
After all this, and firing the call center, they couldn't figure out why they were still losing money. I quit, and the rest of the team quit as well within 2 weeks of me leaving. Somehow they kept afloat for another year or so, but then eventually the waterpark closed for a year or two and changed hands a few times.
It was recently bought again, 'renovated', and this new company is offering season passes for.... $30.
The circle of life, I suppose.
When I was a teenager, there was a water park/amusement park near me that cost $22 a day. The season pass was $40. We thought they were morons for that pricing scheme. Turns out, they were genius. The $22 price was to get as much out the family who only planned on going there once anyway. If you're a parent, one ride on "Its a Small World" is enough for a summer. Theme parks are aimed at the young and thrill junkies. Everybody my age bought the pass and would go there every day either after work or instead of work. We spent half of our tips and paychecks on $4 cokes and $5 funnel cakes. They made $100 a week off me for that $40 pass. The real genius part - they would give a $1 off your food/drink purchase if you brought a coke can or bottle. They got us to buy more pop thinking we were saving while cleaning the park and separating their recyclables.
My friend started a business with his ex wife while his girlfriend (who became his second wife) was also working in that company (15 employees)
I won't get into the hell he went through but to give you a TL;DR He is single again
Game shop in my area had a great business plan. They had regular tournaments and games and a sweet membership plan.
Ten dollars per month and you get a discount on tournaments as well as a ten dollar gift card. Essentially it just incentivized every single person who went there for any sort of event to spend a minimum of $10 per month.
They did great for about 2 years and then decided to change the membership so that you no longer got the $10 gift card and the store started prioritizing D&D groups over competitive gaming groups. This isn't bad, in theory, aside from the fact that D&D players weren't paying for entry and they tended to spend less money. So they essentially chased away the customers who spent the most while removing the incentive for anyone to subscribe. The number of 'customers' they had per day did slightly increase but the amount they were spending, on average, dropped significantly and they went out of business shortly after.
So many game shops went with the "pay to game" here model without understanding that D&D groups traditionally pick a players house for free. CCG gaming/tournaments are though the roof though.
AT&T bought warner media for 80 billions in 2016 just to sell it for 40 billions now
Buy high sell low
Tumblr banning porn was a huge mistake what turned a relevant and highly profiting social platform into a barely known failure.
It was worth more than one billion dollars and got sold for 3 million, it took only a year for its traffic to disappear and the worth of the service to lose 99.9% worth.
I don't understand why tumblr banned porn, if people (and this does include "curious" under 18's) wanted to find porn, they will of course find it elsewhere. Tumblr had tags and ways to hide certain tagged items from your dashboard, so using these and censoring posts for those who can't verify themselves as over 18 (like Youtube is currently doing on flagged videos, and requires id that proves you are over 18) would have been a much more lucrative way to go...
Financially supporting my ex going to law school
When my boss for a small brewery bought a bottling line without doing any research from the first sale men that contacted him. Was a company that did bottled water before, not carbonated beer. Was a huge disaster that almost sunk the business.
Or maybe it was the "hype vehicle" he bought that spent it's whole life in the shop because he knew nothing about buying used cars. Never got health insurance there either. . .
typical small business from eastern europe:
- get grandiose idea
- get loans from the whole family
- even worse: employ your family, usually via emotional manipulation
- get useless equipment, become perfectionist, spend money on useless stuff
- get advice from people who like to give advice, not from the succesfull ones
- no marketing, PR or any proper type of promotion!!!! even 30 years after revolution, advertising is considered evil trap for simple minded people
- try to sell product - it is usually very, very good, or very weak - no inbetween!
- surprise pikachu face that nobody knows your product
- surprise that you lose money
-get loans from bank to save the whole business
- bankrupt, blame everybody, especially family who gave you money and work and time
- start reading hoaxes, drinking or gambling, get divorced.....
Digg version 4. It killed the site. Digg was one of the most popular sites on the internet, and in a few short years it was gone.
There is a place in my hometown that I used to go to in high school, as did many others since it wasn't too far from the school and they made great food. It was run by a Greek guy and his wife. This place made the best souvlaki sandwiches. Just great stuff. Anyway, the old owner finally decided to retire, so he sold the place to a Chinese couple. They didn't really change anything. But it is still a great place to get souvlaki and I still go there, 30 years later to get a souvlaki, they make it the same way, with the same toppings. ... same decor!
This drunk guy owned an island named Fisher Island. He traded the island to another guy for a yacht
The yacht sank and the drunk guy lost the island, along with the yacht
Dominos has at least lost my business, forever. One incident was they were advertising super thick thickshakes. I ordered one, I was handed a watery tasteless crap shake by a smarmy smirky staffer. Never went back to that dominos. Second instance, I ordered the cheesy garlic bread. I heard a commotion in the kitchen and yelling while I waited, thought nothing of it. Same type of dismissive hand over of product as the staff from the other store, ignored that too. Got home and discovered a burnt bread with practically no cheese besides some charred bits clinging to the edge of the bread and it looked dirty with bits of grit on it. They obviously burnt and then dropped it, couldnt be bothered making a fresh batch and handed me the crap instead. Never again now means never at any store of theirs ever again.
A good share of them seem to follow the pattern of "good and cheap business with unique features is bought and turned into some expensive generic store, people stop to go there", and I don't understand how people who've presumably been to business schools can still fall for that
"selling" is the problem. I prefer businesses where the owner is personally invested, and involved in day-to-day operations. They tend to want the business to be successful, and they're good to employees because employees make that happen. When a business is sold to 'investors' all they can see is dollar signs, they are completely blind to anything else. They want to extract as much money as possible from that business because nothing else has any meaning.
Load More Replies...Seen this bad business decision multiple times. Husband decides to buy a small business, sandwich bar, coffee shop etc, for the wife to run without ensuring that she is willing to. Ends up having to employ too many staff and goes broke. Just because somebody makes the sandwiches and coffee at home doesn't mean they are prepared to do it commercially.
I think many people misunderstand the scale of commercial restaurant dining. It's one thing to spend hours making lasagna for a family of four, and quite another to make enough for 60 diners. Add to that prepping/cooking the other 25 items on your menu.
Load More Replies...Some of these are interesting but a lot of them our sour grapes, my favorite restaurant got sold and the new one wasn't as good.
Exactly! The question is, did the owner make money or not? Nobody cares if your hand whipped ice cream is gone now if customers are lining up for the machine made ice cream.
Load More Replies...My brother, a software developer, was approached by a pilot with an idea for a new app. My brother developed it. They called it Paint Shop Pro, which some of you may have heard of. My brother was young and got nothing in writing. Meanwhile, the pilot became a millionaire. My brother got nothing, not even hourly pay. He did get a CD sent to him of the app every time there was a new release. I added his name as the developer on Wikipedia, and someone immediately removed it. I didn't provide a source. But I added it two more times. Last time I checked it was still there after the 3rd edit. My brother died in a lot of debt after spending $400K on his special needs son.
I always thought IMDb getting rid of the forums was a mistake. Perhaps not from a business standpoint as I haven't a clue if it hurt their revenue, but from a traffic standpoint. While I watched TV, I used to spend hours literally every day on their boards and their site, but now I only accidently wind up there if I happen to click on a link that directs me there. I'd assume I wasn't the only one that visited daily so perhaps removing them lessened the traffic but again, have no idea if it actually hurt them financially.
They recently changed their website and it's painful to look at.
Load More Replies...Rather surprised no-one mentioned Commodore, the original king of home computers. Their programming was tightly integrated with their hardware, giving them incredible performance for their times with modest hardware. The Commodore 64 dominated home computers AND drove the big video-game consoles out of business. But the Commodore 128 faced competition with their own hardware upgrades of the 64, and had more trouble getting 3rd-party game developers to make the switch. So they chickened out with the next upgrade, fearing the sort of thing that happened with Wii U. They ditched their own in-house product and bought Amiga, which was impressive but completely incompatible with any of their old software OR hardware. The Amiga bombed and Commodore was history.
Star Wars Galaxies when Sony decided to change the entire game to a "Twitch" model to eventually port to console. It had a HUGE community and that one decision killed it. Almost the entire player base switched to a newer game called World of Warcraft.
ugh, still annoyed about Target!!!!!!!!!! So stupid how they started in Canada! Should have opened a few stores and given it a few yrs, instead of opening monster stores and giving us empty shelves!!!! Also, the products offered did not match what I remember from a US store!
13, Target in Canada. I am Canadian and I remember, it was a joke and became a running gag quickly. Pricier than walmart with the same quality, empty shelves, it felt cold and empty. I think they thought Canadian market was easy and didn't take it as seriously as one should when they are new. Also, walmart did everything to twart them, like buying good empty emplacement bedore them.
Conrail scrapped all of their electric locomotives... In the middle of the 70s oil crisis.
My previous workplace used to be great, with lots of people specialized in their own areas of expertise. Then the new boss came in and decided that everyone should be able to do everything. Within a year, about half of the experienced staff had left and most of the staff that remained was still competent at their original specialization and barely passable at the other areas. I left right at the start of the pandemic (they wanted to push work-from-home as a privilege, and tried to punish people by forcing them back into the office if they didn't over-perform from home; no thanks), and their reviews on Glassdoor have only gotten worse since.
Many of these come down to people not doing their homework. In my neighborhood (in non-pandemic times) the sidewalks were packed so much that locals avoided shopping on those days. People see all those people and think, "I'm going to get rich!" But most of those people are tourists who spend about $50 each (& that includes lunch and a souvenir or two). They open with an idea that may work in other places but has little appeal for travelers. They take 3 year leases with enough capital for 2 years rent but never break even and close.
Storefronts here rent for $10,000-15,000 a month because landlords (frequently speculators with huge mortgages) see those people and assume the same thing. Because they keep jacking the rents they help make the businesses they rent to, fail. And then they are stuck with empty storefronts that sit as a blight for months losing money. The building owners who have been around a while realize that that is a zero-sum game and keep rents reasonable and have tenants that stay for decades. And the few new businesses that have succeeded have done so by talking to the people who work on the street and live nearby and asking them what they want.
Load More Replies...Private technical school I used to work for in the 80's. Had run fine for many years. Founder retired and turned the business over to his son, who was a jerk. He decided he wanted to teach word processing. He bought, not leased, a huge mainframe and terminals for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few years later the mainframe was obsolete and he was stuck with this thing that was no longer relevant, he could not get rid of and he has spend most of the schools savings. Was not long before the school was out of business.
30 years in business software. Saw all kinds. 1. The startup that bought a variety of products for initial stock. Insisted on replacing sold out stock with products they liked that were not selling. 2. The software company salesman that sold a payroll system, at a discount, that was just in the design phase (only menus) with a 6 week deadline. Worst Christmas ever. 3. Software engineers hired at low wages, working long hours 6 days a week in exchange for shares of the company they were going to make famous. Just before product launch, the software and rights were transferred to another company, leaving a worthless shell.
A good share of them seem to follow the pattern of "good and cheap business with unique features is bought and turned into some expensive generic store, people stop to go there", and I don't understand how people who've presumably been to business schools can still fall for that
"selling" is the problem. I prefer businesses where the owner is personally invested, and involved in day-to-day operations. They tend to want the business to be successful, and they're good to employees because employees make that happen. When a business is sold to 'investors' all they can see is dollar signs, they are completely blind to anything else. They want to extract as much money as possible from that business because nothing else has any meaning.
Load More Replies...Seen this bad business decision multiple times. Husband decides to buy a small business, sandwich bar, coffee shop etc, for the wife to run without ensuring that she is willing to. Ends up having to employ too many staff and goes broke. Just because somebody makes the sandwiches and coffee at home doesn't mean they are prepared to do it commercially.
I think many people misunderstand the scale of commercial restaurant dining. It's one thing to spend hours making lasagna for a family of four, and quite another to make enough for 60 diners. Add to that prepping/cooking the other 25 items on your menu.
Load More Replies...Some of these are interesting but a lot of them our sour grapes, my favorite restaurant got sold and the new one wasn't as good.
Exactly! The question is, did the owner make money or not? Nobody cares if your hand whipped ice cream is gone now if customers are lining up for the machine made ice cream.
Load More Replies...My brother, a software developer, was approached by a pilot with an idea for a new app. My brother developed it. They called it Paint Shop Pro, which some of you may have heard of. My brother was young and got nothing in writing. Meanwhile, the pilot became a millionaire. My brother got nothing, not even hourly pay. He did get a CD sent to him of the app every time there was a new release. I added his name as the developer on Wikipedia, and someone immediately removed it. I didn't provide a source. But I added it two more times. Last time I checked it was still there after the 3rd edit. My brother died in a lot of debt after spending $400K on his special needs son.
I always thought IMDb getting rid of the forums was a mistake. Perhaps not from a business standpoint as I haven't a clue if it hurt their revenue, but from a traffic standpoint. While I watched TV, I used to spend hours literally every day on their boards and their site, but now I only accidently wind up there if I happen to click on a link that directs me there. I'd assume I wasn't the only one that visited daily so perhaps removing them lessened the traffic but again, have no idea if it actually hurt them financially.
They recently changed their website and it's painful to look at.
Load More Replies...Rather surprised no-one mentioned Commodore, the original king of home computers. Their programming was tightly integrated with their hardware, giving them incredible performance for their times with modest hardware. The Commodore 64 dominated home computers AND drove the big video-game consoles out of business. But the Commodore 128 faced competition with their own hardware upgrades of the 64, and had more trouble getting 3rd-party game developers to make the switch. So they chickened out with the next upgrade, fearing the sort of thing that happened with Wii U. They ditched their own in-house product and bought Amiga, which was impressive but completely incompatible with any of their old software OR hardware. The Amiga bombed and Commodore was history.
Star Wars Galaxies when Sony decided to change the entire game to a "Twitch" model to eventually port to console. It had a HUGE community and that one decision killed it. Almost the entire player base switched to a newer game called World of Warcraft.
ugh, still annoyed about Target!!!!!!!!!! So stupid how they started in Canada! Should have opened a few stores and given it a few yrs, instead of opening monster stores and giving us empty shelves!!!! Also, the products offered did not match what I remember from a US store!
13, Target in Canada. I am Canadian and I remember, it was a joke and became a running gag quickly. Pricier than walmart with the same quality, empty shelves, it felt cold and empty. I think they thought Canadian market was easy and didn't take it as seriously as one should when they are new. Also, walmart did everything to twart them, like buying good empty emplacement bedore them.
Conrail scrapped all of their electric locomotives... In the middle of the 70s oil crisis.
My previous workplace used to be great, with lots of people specialized in their own areas of expertise. Then the new boss came in and decided that everyone should be able to do everything. Within a year, about half of the experienced staff had left and most of the staff that remained was still competent at their original specialization and barely passable at the other areas. I left right at the start of the pandemic (they wanted to push work-from-home as a privilege, and tried to punish people by forcing them back into the office if they didn't over-perform from home; no thanks), and their reviews on Glassdoor have only gotten worse since.
Many of these come down to people not doing their homework. In my neighborhood (in non-pandemic times) the sidewalks were packed so much that locals avoided shopping on those days. People see all those people and think, "I'm going to get rich!" But most of those people are tourists who spend about $50 each (& that includes lunch and a souvenir or two). They open with an idea that may work in other places but has little appeal for travelers. They take 3 year leases with enough capital for 2 years rent but never break even and close.
Storefronts here rent for $10,000-15,000 a month because landlords (frequently speculators with huge mortgages) see those people and assume the same thing. Because they keep jacking the rents they help make the businesses they rent to, fail. And then they are stuck with empty storefronts that sit as a blight for months losing money. The building owners who have been around a while realize that that is a zero-sum game and keep rents reasonable and have tenants that stay for decades. And the few new businesses that have succeeded have done so by talking to the people who work on the street and live nearby and asking them what they want.
Load More Replies...Private technical school I used to work for in the 80's. Had run fine for many years. Founder retired and turned the business over to his son, who was a jerk. He decided he wanted to teach word processing. He bought, not leased, a huge mainframe and terminals for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few years later the mainframe was obsolete and he was stuck with this thing that was no longer relevant, he could not get rid of and he has spend most of the schools savings. Was not long before the school was out of business.
30 years in business software. Saw all kinds. 1. The startup that bought a variety of products for initial stock. Insisted on replacing sold out stock with products they liked that were not selling. 2. The software company salesman that sold a payroll system, at a discount, that was just in the design phase (only menus) with a 6 week deadline. Worst Christmas ever. 3. Software engineers hired at low wages, working long hours 6 days a week in exchange for shares of the company they were going to make famous. Just before product launch, the software and rights were transferred to another company, leaving a worthless shell.