10 brands that were supposed to disappear in 2014

[REWahoo]

Let me get this out of the way up front: yes, I have too much time on my hands...

In May of 2013 I read and saved a link to the following article: Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2014

The article named 10 brands that would not be around by the end of 2014 using the following critera:

1. Declining sales and losses;
2. Disclosures by the parent of the brand that it might go out of business;
3. Rising costs that are unlikely to be recouped through higher prices;
4. Companies that are sold;
5. Companies that go into bankruptcy;
6. Companies that have lost the great majority of their customers; and
7. Operations with withering market share.

Each brand on the list suffers from one or more of these problems. Each of the 10 will be gone, based on our definitions, within 18 months.

The ten brands were:

1. JC Penney
2. Nook
3. Martha Stewart Living Magazine
4. Living Social
5. Volvo
6. Olympus
7. The WNBA
8. Leap Wireless
9. Mitsubishi Motors
10. Road & Track

Nearing the end of 2014, the author of the article must be hoping no one remembers he wrote it. Only one of the above brands is gone - Leap Wireless was purchased by AT&T in 2013.

Yep - predicting the future is easy. Doing it accurately is where it gets tough...

 

[aja8888]

Is it time for you to e-mail the author and ask him "how his prediction went"?

 

[W2R]

Hey, 2014 isn't over yet! Maybe in the next 36 days the other 9 brands will crater.

Yes, yes, I'm Little Mary Sunshine this afternoon...

 

[MBAustin]

Interesting!

Nook is probably pretty close to being a goner.

Of the car magazines I suspect Car and Driver will outlast Road and Track (they are both owned by Hearst now so not too difficult to consolidate). My dad got both from as far back as I can remember until he died. That just isn't the norm anymore.

I don't see Volvo fading for many moons.


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[aja8888]

Interesting!

I don't see Volvo fading for many moons.


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Volvo was sold to the Chinese a while back.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/28/news/international/volvo_china.cnnw/

 

[REWahoo]

Volvo was sold to the Chinese a while back.

Volvo sold by Ford to Chinese automaker for $1.8 billion - Mar. 28, 2010

Yep - a couple of years prior to the date the article was written...

 

[MBAustin]

I suspect the Chinese will value the Volvo brand more than the Swedes did. Interestingly, a part of the company is still Swedish owned and the two companies share the brand and logo. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo


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[RunningBum]

Interesting!

Nook is probably pretty close to being a goner.

B&N just released a Samsung version of the Nook.

 

[VaCollector]

Seems to me he has very little work to do before submitting his list for 2015

 

[aja8888]

Seems to me he has very little work to do before submitting his list for 2015

Bingo....we have a winner!

 

[Totoro]

And then some brands do the Jesus thing: die and get resurrected:
Maybach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Twinkie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And of course the VW Beetle, the mini.

Nice article:
Schumpeter: Hidden gems | The Economist

 

[Midpack]

Wouldn't have surprised me if any/several of them had gone under. But with the economy still plugging along, 'rising tide...' When the next recession hits (if not before), that's when we'll really know which brands can't hang on.

 

[imoldernu]

JC Penney... Interesting to me, as Montgomery Ward was my company, and shutting down is not done with an on/off switch.
Remember KMart, and the takeover by Sears? The background of closing a company this large, is very complex. Between leases, real estate obligations w/ownership, company pensions, taxes and thousands of other very, very complex monetary and legal obligations, not to mention inventories, fixtures and equipment etc. ... takeovers are often the interim step.

My part in the closing of MW, involved just the catalog division, with 2400 stores, telephone centers, and franchise dealerships. This project took more than four years and closed in 1986. Retail operations followed with bankruptcy in 1997, and after a leveraged buyout and several attempts to reconstruct, followed by a GE capital takeover... and final closing in 2000.

Closing an operation with tens of thousands of employees and thousands of locations, makes for not only a financial loss, but a social loss. In these cases, anchor stores in major malls throughout the nation. The trickle down losses go to cities, towns, states, and people... far beyond the dollar value of the stock.

Businesses that left the US have also left huge disruptions in the lives and fortunes of the businesses that also left... with no meaningful transfer of skills for the employees, and no physical replacement for the buildings and structures that housed the businesses.
Think Textiles in New England, Steel Mills in Illinois and Indiana, and Automobiles in Detroit. Empty buildings and economic stress.

What next?

 

[Walt34]

Businesses that left the US have also left huge disruptions in the lives and fortunes of the businesses that also left... with no meaningful transfer of skills for the employees, and no physical replacement for the buildings and structures that housed the businesses.
Think Textiles in New England, Steel Mills in Illinois and Indiana, and Automobiles in Detroit. Empty buildings and economic stress.

What next?

Just locally we have seen it when Sears closed an anchor store in the mall here. The mall eventfully razed the structure and says they're going to build a strip mall in that space. I'm not sure how that is going to work.

But I sure see Sears going downhill. Lousy service, screwed up orders, poor quality products, are all indicators of a company in trouble. I saw that with Hechinger's, a local chain of hardware stores before the big box stores of Home Depot and Lowes came into the area. Hechinger's put themselves out of business - the last time I was in one of those stores I walked in, looked at the long lines at the checkout registers, and left, never to return.

 

[samclem]

Remember KMart, and the takeover by Sears?

It still amazes me. Sears certainly has troubles, but being bought by KMart? It would be like Chrysler being bought out by Fiat. Oh, wait . . .

It was a real surprise to me when our local Montgomery Wards stores closed. It seemed like they'd always been there. A sign of things to come. Schumpeter's "creative destruction" . . . sometimes it's hard to tell from just regular 'ol destruction.

 

[imoldernu]

The Sears-Kmart merger in 2004/2005 would be a great story line for a movie. Eddie Lampert worked a minor miracle, salvaging a dying company with a gutsy play... He went to the owners and landlords of the many stores that carried the Kart label, and monetized the real estate value to leverage the merger that literally saved both companies... maybe not forever, but long enough to fight another day.
Leases and store ownership in my own (then employer) company were one of the most important factors in timing the eventual shutdown. With extended lease obligations of 20+ years in hundreds of stores the implied debt levels were enormous. That was 20 years ago, when malls were still vibrant, and leases by their nature were considered an asset rather than a liability.
The growth of the internet and the movement of the population from the suburbs to the cities is putting pressure on the retail industry... not just for the sales, but for the irreducible costs of long term contracts. Closing the doors, often costs more than keeping them open.

 

[braumeister]

I know nothing about the complexities of these things.

But from the viewpoint of an ordinary consumer, this is what I saw:

K-mart was a good store for low priced items, and I liked to shop there occasionally.

Sears was a good store for tools and appliances, and I shopped there exclusively for those items.

Land's End was a good store for clothing, and I shopped there (online or mail catalog) a lot for those items.

But the amalgamation of all three into one entity was a disaster.

 

[MBAustin]

I know nothing about the complexities of these things.

But from the viewpoint of an ordinary consumer, this is what I saw:

K-mart was a good store for low priced items, and I liked to shop there occasionally.

Sears was a good store for tools and appliances, and I shopped there exclusively for those items.

Land's End was a good store for clothing, and I shopped there (online or mail catalog) a lot for those items.

But the amalgamation of all three into one entity was a disaster.

+1

I no longer set foot in K-mart or Sears stores if I can help it, and I am hopeful that Lands End will recover their quality now that they are free again.


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