RadioShack, JCPenney and 31 other companies that went (almost) bankrupt because of stupid decisions – BuzzFeed
Famous companies that went bankrupt due to stupid decisions
Have you ever thought about the great companies of years ago that seemed to make terrible business decisions and went into decline? Well, inspired by OnlyFans’ lifting of the ban on sexual content, u/WolfgangCaesar asked people to list companies that have gone (almost) bankrupt through ill-considered or unnecessary decisions. They didn’t hold back and I decided to take a closer look at each one to find out what actually happened. Honestly, their choices are just amazing, so here are 33 of them below:
1. Let’s start with the company that inspired the question, Only Fans, which “[took] backed its ban on sexual content within days of the announcement.
2. “RadioShack. These guys just couldn’t nail their niche and never tried to move on.”
3. “Red Lobster once offered an unlimited supply [snow] Crab Leg Deal. They slowly rolled out the portions and said, “Nobody’s going to sit there for six hours just eating crab legs.” In fact, a lot of people have done it — so many that they’ve lost millions.”
4. “Friendster shot itself in the foot with a bunch of bad decisions that resulted in long login times for basically no reason. It’s odd to imagine that Friendster was big and hip enough for a short time that I actually had it on one of my business cards around 2000.
5. “MySpace. All it had to do was not change for people to fall back on after visiting Facebook. Instead, they removed everything that people liked about the site and didn’t make any beneficial changes. When people turned up looking for a Facebook alternative, they found a weird, new, music-focused version.”
6. “Can we get an honorable mention for Staples and its numerous attempts to merge with Office Depot, even though both are on track to die within the decade?”
7. “Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix, but they were extremely stupid and turned them down. Now they’re gone and just a nice reminder of the 90’s. They were on the way out before Netflix with services like Red Box and Game Fly, who sent you movies in the mail. man, they were stupid. The writing was on the wall for years.
8. “Netflix almost went bankrupt when they switched from DVDs. There was a time when subscriber count was dangerously low.”
9. “Quiznos. Corporate headquarters decided to buy the suppliers and then mandate all franchise companies to only purchase materials from companies at a price increase. Margins got way too high and all stores went out of business. They shot themselves right in the foot.”
10. “JCPenney tried to stop customer stupidity and it backfired. They said no more sales. They just wanted to price everything low because pretty much all department store sales are lies anyway. You don’t really get a 70% discount.” – The retail price is intentionally silly high to convince you this is a great deal, but the discounted price is actual value. JCPenney’s heart was in the right place, but it ultimately failed because the customers really are that stupid and would rather be lied to.
11. “The UK free Hoover plane ticket disaster. The vacuum company developed a plan to offer free round-trip airline tickets when customers bought at least £100 worth of Hoover products. They underestimated how much people would focus on getting free stuff — so they then made it as difficult as possible to actually claim the tickets. People bought the cheapest product they could get to qualify, submitted all the forms perfectly, and then tried to take legal action when the free flights didn’t happen.”
12. “WeWork was doing great up to the IPO prospectus and everyone realized that CEO Adam Neumann was a crazy person. Neumann himself managed to walk away with $1 billion personally in return for initiating tens of billions of dollars in investments.” Truly epic.
13. “Xerox. They had a research lab – the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) – which invented the personal computer and a working prototype in 1973. This was a time before the concept of a personal computer existed; all existed mainframes. They also invented laser printers, graphical computer interfaces, the WYSIWYG text editor (a precursor to Word, etc.), Ethernet (which runs much of the Internet), and much more. Steve Jobs got a tour of PARC in 1979”
14. “Teledesic. Their goal was to create a global network of low-Earth orbit satellites that would bring broadband access to nearly everyone on the planet. They were funded by wireless tech titans, and it all seemed like a…” Great idea. The only problem was that the technology wasn’t there yet. They went bankrupt in 2002. The Teledesic case study is taught at Harvard Business School and other MBA programs as a cautionary tale.”
15. “Photobucket changed their terms of service back in 2017. An annual fee was then charged for any images you previously posted on it for free.”
16. “British jeweler Ratners almost went under because of a vile speech by its CEO in 1991.”
17. “In 1998, Yahoo refused to buy Google for $1 million. In 2002, Yahoo bought [was in talks] to buy Google, but Google wanted more money. Yahoo declined the offer. In 2006, Yahoo wanted to buy Facebook for $1 billion, but Facebook backed down. In 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, but Yahoo turned it down. In 2016, Verizon bought Yahoo for $4.8 billion.”
18. “On paper, Sears had what it took to become the e-commerce retailer that dominated the world. In 1984, the company partnered with IBM to create “Prodigy,” one of the first proto-ISPs to offer all manner of online services (except buying stuff from Sears) years before the World Wide Web existed. In 1985, Sears offered its own credit card, Discover, to compete with MasterCard and Visa. It even had its own insurance company in Allstate. In theory, Sears should e “Commerce was a thing in the late ’80s and took over the world in the ’90s without giving outsiders like Amazon — who had to build their products from the ground up — a chance to catch on.”
To continue the Sears story, “Sears ended their catalog/mail order business in 1993. For over 100 years they had sold everything from hubcaps to houses by mail order and shipped across the country. Amazon was founded in 1994.”
19. “Kodak went under completely when they decided not to adopt digital photography. Some years later, they kind of came back.”
20. “A&W invented the third-pounder. It was priced the same as McDonald’s Quarter-Pounder but was massively bombed. When they tried to figure out why, it turned out that because three is a smaller number than four, Americans thought they were being scammed. When A&W realized they couldn’t explain elementary school crackups to full-grown adults without coming off as condescending assholes, A&W quietly removed the burger from the menu.”
21. “In 2012, after a three-year hiatus from the sport, the Lotus F1 team signed driver Kimi Raikkonen. His contract included a clause that said Raikkonen would earn €50,000 for every point he scored over the two seasons of his contract. Raikkonen finished third in the 2012 championship and fifth in the 2013 season – which was extraordinarily impressive for Lotus. He scored 390 points in two seasons and earned 19.5 million euros with this bonus alone. This almost led to Lotus filing for bankruptcy.
22. “Blackberry. The most popular smartphone in the world – back then they had less than 1% of the market share and their stock value plummeted. A few years ago they announced they would focus more on software and practically gave up manufacturing Many BlackBerry execs took advantage of their market share and figured a flat touchscreen phone wasn’t going to catch on. How the mighty have fallen.”
23. “Circuit City. It was a major retail chain in the 1980s that collapsed due to mismanagement. Perhaps their biggest mistake was to sack all experienced, better-paid workers in exchange for cheaper, inexperienced ones. Apparently this is important for selling goods and customer satisfaction in retail. Who would have thought?”
24. “Borders Books. A talk ensued between Amazon and giant Borders Books. This internet thing seemed to hurt retail sales, so Borders agreed to sell books online through Amazon. In 2007, Borders ended its marketing alliance with Amazonas.”
25. “Quibi — when it was decided that 10-minute clips viewed in portrait mode on a commuter train were the future of home entertainment.”
26. “Ayd’s Diet Candy. They didn’t change their name after the AIDS virus emerged.”
27. “Yik Yak. First, it was a completely anonymous messaging app. Then they started making it less anonymous by introducing usernames, which while still can be throwaway usernames, certainly caused people to lose favor with the app. They eventually shut down.
28. “Vine. It seemed like the best at the time.”
29. “Slit. It was one of America’s biggest national beers in the ’60s. In 1974, Schlitz president and chairman Robert Uihlein Jr. believed that beer drinkers would not be able to tell their favorite beer from other brands. He oversaw the introduction of a leaner brewing process, replacing barley with corn syrup and using silica gel as a preservative during the brewing process, which was then filtered out (so it didn’t have to be listed as an ingredient). Instead, the beer spoiled faster and became cloudy on racks, produced no froth when poured, and was tasteless. This resulted in a recall of 100 million bottles. Also, Schlitz was unaware that pale ale was on the rise, so it had Bud and Miller clean its watch. Then it launched an ad campaign featuring a belligerent-sounding guy who threatened to kill a man offscreen if he took his slit away. In the ’80s he went back to his original brewing process, but the damage was done.”
30. “Digg was bigger than Reddit until they decided to force changes on the site. The changes were immensely unpopular — to the point where users started posting Reddit links to rebel. Digg stuck to his new ways and collapsed.”
31. “Schwinn. Executives at America’s most venerable bicycle manufacturer couldn’t be convinced that mountain bikes were more than a fad. They built one, called it the Klunker (yes, really), and then hired an Asian company to design a mountain bike for them. Today, Schwinn is just a brand name owned by someone else.”
32. “MoviePass was weird. Your model was too good to be true. They lost money for every subscriber who watched more than two movies a month – which was most of their subscribers.”
33. And finally, “My high school had a donut shop. It opened at 6am and closed at 5pm so students were there every day before school started at 7:30am and after school at 7:30am. 2:15pm But then they changed their hours to 8am to 3pm o’clock and couldn’t earn any more money. A few months later they shut down.”
Did you remember all of these companies and know this is exactly what happened to them? What other companies would you add? Let me know below in the comments!
