What Almost Destroyed Your Company? (r/AskReddit)

Fresh AskReddit Stories: What has been the best corporate Darwin Award? A decision made by a company that basically killed the business. --- LIKE AND I WILL UPLOAD MORE REDDIT STORIES!

#reddit #baddecision #stries

Music: Kevin MacLeod

[HowlingWolf]

Rule 1: Don't get greedy. Long-term gains are often better than short-term ones.
Rule 2: "Unnecessary" and "necessary" costs might not be. Know _where_ your money is going and _why._
Rule 3: Spare no expense. Cutting corners may increase profit now, but could haunt you later.
Rule 4: Well-motivated employees are more productive. Demoralized workers are less productive. Stiffing your workers demoralizes them.
Rule 5: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Know who and what made you successful - it's why your customers like you.
Rule 6: If it _is_ broke (or will be), _do_ fix it. Always be ready to adapt to a changing world.
Rule 7: Anybody who fails to understand Rules 1 through 6 *should NOT be promoted to upper management.*

[adriankeirle]

Old freight company sent an email out to all customers. "If you don't spend over £x we will no longer need your custom". They lost all of their small customers, leaving only the whales, then they lost one of their big customers because the customer didn't like being told how much they had to spend. Company almost died over night.

[ireneparkin]

A few years ago during one winter, the power to the entire town went out. So this shady DIY store owner started selling flashlights. Now, this store owner was a greedy mothertrucker and forced people to buy batteries at a higher price. Luckily, there was another DIY store and the owner let people buy flashlights and threw a pack of batteries in for free. When the weather picked up, nobody went to the greedy mothertruckers store and his business folded within a month.

[drunkenrobot]

Blockbuster is a prime example of this. When streaming services started coming around, they tossed the idea around of jumping on the bandwagon. However, the executives decided to keep the old methods because they could charge late fees for unreturned movies and stuff, and it gave them a massive bundle of cash each year. They had just assumed this big bundle would continue to pad out their paychecks, and that streaming would never overtake them because of how well-known Blockbuster was. Apparently, none of them considered that streaming doesn't give out late fees and offers the same products, so more and more people left Blockbuster to join streaming services, and the whole business went under.


At least, this is what my parents told me about the whole thing.

[TheCrazymonkey]

Malden Mills really made me sad. When being a hard ass business man and destroying the lives of thousands would've been beneficial to the company over having a heart and sticking with your workers like family. sucks man

[kiemer]

A developer working for RCA invented the flat panel tv. RCA refused to bring it to market.

[miltonaliff]

Putting the same people back in charge after filing bankruptcy

[nemo]

"What's your minimum order?" people used to ask me back when I had a business. My minimum was always "one" but I explained how the unit price decreased the more they bought. It was a manufacturing business (technically) but sometimes I would discourage larger orders in case they decided to make changes in a couple of months. There was no sense for them to carry a bunch of out-dated items. People seemed to like doing business with us. I closed the business and retired in 2001 but a handfull of customers continued to call me with orders 19 years later and I found ways to get what they needed. I'm 81 so I'll probably help them find other vendors in the next year or two.

[Scarletraven]

The hardware shop is a classical error. Hardware shops rely on what is unsold.

[cjxgraphics]

A friend of mine managed a Hollywood Video store. Before he took over, it was failing badly, but within a year of him running it, it was one of the best performing stores in the region.
They sent someone from corporate to see what he was doing. Well, he wasn't doing everything by the book, "the Hollywood way!"
Corporate took over the store and booted him out.
The store was closed in 3 months.

[teencomment]

My first-ever retail job was a hardware store that people would come to whenever the other two big hardware stores in town (Lowes or Home Depot) didn't have what they needed, which was a LOT. The vast majority of our customers were people who either did that, or were the repeat customers who came to us FIRST.
Thankfully it's still open and still doing well.

[TAPriceCTR]

Disney Star Wars. Buy an intellectual property, , decanonize hundreds of books. Butcher established characters and replace them with poorly written new ones. Then insult the fans who kept the franchise alive for decades

[starblade]

Pretty sure the latest Darwin award goes to Pacific Gas and Electric. It's still unfolding at this time of the comment, but they didn't learn the lesson that happened to one of their competitors when their equipment set some fires back in '08. Their competitors then spent the next decade spending around 1.5 billion dollars on fire safety, while PG&E didn't. Now it's their power lines setting fires, leaving around 2.5 million people in the dark, costing them millions as well as having lawsuits put against them.

[submarineinthesky]

The maiden mills one is pretty sad... at least they went out with honor.

[Puddingskin]

As a former Radioshack employee who was around when they were transitioning into the "Lets become a cell store" phase, I felt that comment at 9:38 You knew things were not looking good when million dollar stores were turning into financial black holes.

[robertjohnson]

My organic chemistry professor (so this was a while ago) told me that back in the day, you could build your own NMR machine from parts bought at Radio Shack.

[carlfromtheoc]

Sears - failed to parlay their catalog business to the internet. They could have been Amazon before Amazon. Toys-r-Us - bought out by a company that did it by floating massive debt, so there was no money to combat companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon, and they were also unable to upgrade/improve their stores. Both Sears/K_Mart and Toys-r-Us were victims of hedge funds and hedge fund manager who were only interested extracting as much money as possible for themselves. Harley-Davidson could have huge issues going forward as their big motorcycles are expensive and boomers are not buying them (aging out) and young riders want crotch-rockets.

[zolli]

When Blockbuster was still around they made the "smart" move by cutting late fees. Now late fee accounted for over 50% of thier revenue. That and the refusal to purchase Netflix and you can see why they went down so fast.

[jblyon]

Regarding the hardware store. There's a rundown auto electric place near where I grew up. Most of the lights are burnt out, the rest are dim or flickering, but if you walk in and need starter contacts for a 1977 Oldsmobile the owner walks over to the shelf and gets them. If you need the alternator from that car rebuilt better than it came from the factory he'll do that too.

[robertgray]

Before I left for boot camp I worked at a super popular local bar and grill. The bar spanned almost the entire width of the building (which was pretty wide) and drew in probably ninety percent of our business. In addition, every Monday night was late night karaoke and brought massive crowds that stayed packed in until we basically kicked them out at 2am. After boot camp I went by to visit with old friends and found it closed for renovations. When they reopened I stopped in and found that they had ripped out the bar and replaced it with a much smaller bar off to the side of the building. Apparently corporate had decided they wanted to make it a more "family friendly environment" (despite the fact that families ate there all the time) and a huge bar just didn't fit that aesthetic. The doors were permanently shuttered 3 months later. It was so bad that an adjacent restaurant also shut down because they basically survived off of our overflow when we were so packed no one could get seated, which was often. Dumbest corporate decision I've ever witnessed. I like to think the "genius" behind that call was run out of town on a rail.