11. Dude, you’re getting a Dell from somewhere else.
“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 dogshit.” –Stevie-Avail
12. How good could the movie be?
“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).” –the5thbeagle
13. Talking is the real music.
“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.’” –El_Voador
14. Should have made more masks.
“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.” –HandyDrunkard
15. Why adapt?
“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.” –PhillipLlerenas
16. Switch it up.
“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.” –TypewriterKey
17. Flip it.
“AT&T bought warner media for 80 billions in 2016 just to sell it for 40 billions now
Buy high sell low.” –BussySlayer69
18. The beat goes on.
“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.” –YESCRIMSON
19. A Kodak moment.
“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.” –Swiss__Cheese
20. Swing and a miss.
“Financially supporting my ex going to law school.” –ThadisJones
21. The Bengals
“Cincinnati’s deal with The Bengals.
It has cost over $1B since 2000. It has some of the most ridiculous requires for the city and is widely considered the worst business deal in the history of sports deals.
The city hasn’t remade anywhere close to $1B by having the team. Arguably, they’ve gained nothing.
This is all while the Bengals are perennial stinkers. They’ve made being terrible a lucrative business model.” –Zezu
h/t Reddit: r/AskReddit