Worst decisions done by companies...

Toughnoodle · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:16

Mike Ashley trying to sell Newcastle Utd, twice. The second time he fails and released: "Mike Ashley is totally committed to the future success of Newcastle United and will be focused on gaining promotion back to the Premier League. Mike will put a further £20m into the club this week." Then he goes and changes the name of the stadium.

Gilly · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:22

mame said:
Gerald Ratner.

Winner.

imb4tman · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:25

Ford shipping employees out to the jungle to grow rubber plants so they could make their own tires and cut out the rich rubber barons. Only problem was that they sent out engineers and the whole thing flopped after a few years without producing any rubber.

sammo62 · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:25

Liverpool FC selling to Hicks and Gillett.

PapaLazaru · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:26

Nestle stopping making the Kit Kat Chunky Peanut Butter. :mad:

doodah · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:27

Gilly said:
Winner.

We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap"

He compounded this by going on to remark that some of the earrings were "cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long". After the speech, the value of the Ratners' group plummeted by around £500 million, which very nearly resulted in the firm's collapse

. Never heard of this......what a tool!

Jono8 · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:28

Rotty said:
Ratners is the obvious one, how to kill en established high st company in 3 seconds

What did they do?

Captain_Slick · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:29

PapaLazaru said:
Nestle stopping making the Kit Kat Chunky Peanut Butter.

This. This.

Even worse than the Enron mess.

cm1179 · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:29

whoever it is messing around with coco pops needs to stop!

Vanilla · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:29

LizardKing said:
Friends Reunited charging for there services

Or the company that bought Friends Reunited for millions......right before the facebook revolution.

Now no one uses FR!

cm1179 · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:30

oh and the bloke who had the chance to sign the beatles but didn't

Vonhelmet · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:32

cm1179 said:
oh and the bloke who had the chance to sign the beatles but didn't

Who reportedly said guitar groups were going out of style... Well done there.

Nexus · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:33

Amp34 said:
+1

-1

It was a marketing campaign, free advertising in lots of papers and it may even have drawn more people into the restaurants to try their pasta. They were never going to rename all of them. Actually a very good decision.

Don't be -1ing me!

I know full well it was a marketing campaign and they never intended to permanently rename the stores. Fact is, it remains poorly thought out because as I pointed out before, nobody goes to Pizza Hut for Pasta. People go to Pizza Hut for Pizza... end of.

Greenlizard0 · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:35

LizardKing said:
Friends Reunited charging for there services

To be fair they started off charging for their services with Facebook/Myspace etc. weren't around. They cashed in. I think they only realised they'd have to change when MySpace etc. started up a few years later.

alex_tank · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:37

Anyone here had a pasta from Pasta Hut before? What are they like?

doodah · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:37

Speaking of which, ITV buying FU for £175m (and then selling it for £25m four years later).

Nexus · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:37

Aod said:
in the states it's filtered properly as you'd expect of a premium water, whereas here in the UK it was just bilgewater pumped up from the Thames with the twigs and the bodies removed

The process is no different.
The Dasani they sold here was still water from a usual public drinking source which had been filtered.

It's still the number one selling bottled water in North America though. I think largely down to Coca-Cola being behind it. When I was living over there, I'd always take a proper mineral water over Dasani if possible, even though they tended to be priced the same.

Basher · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:40

Nexus said:
I know full well it was a marketing campaign and they never intended to permanently rename the stores. Fact is, it remains poorly thought out because as I pointed out before, nobody goes to Pizza Hut for Pasta. People go to Pizza Hut for Pizza... end of.

Exactly, which is what they were trying to address.

LizardKing · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:42

Greenlizard0 said:
To be fair they started off charging for their services with Facebook/Myspace etc. weren't around. They cashed in. I think they only realised they'd have to change when MySpace etc. started up a few years later.

True and the price wasn't to bad ~£5 in the time were value added services were seen as the norm, but then they tripled the price just as the Google revolution started. And everyone jumped ship.
FR could have been where Facebook are now if they hadn't have charged IMO

Faceparty was another who fell foul of cashing in on its user base.

iv-tecman · 6 Sep 2010 at 11:48

Gerald Ratner, how to ruin a successful high street presence with one sentence.

Nissan Primera, how to totally ruin sales of a popular family car

Commodore , how to milk technology such as the Amiga until its no longer capable of competing

Sony Ericson, taking a successful brand and moving into a new android market and just totally failing at it

3Dfx, ruin their market lead by trying to be bigger then they were and to become a card manufacturer instead of a chip supplier

Nintendo, slipping up and letting Sony take the idea for a CD based Nintendo system and turning this into the Sony Playstation

Sony, Minidisc… Erm well that really was a bad idea

Sony, again with UMD movies. Totally wrong

Honda F1, pulling out when the team had designed a winner in 2009