In 2023, Avaya, the one-time networking and unified communications industry stalwart, filed for bankruptcy a second time and was delisted by the NYSE. At a time when both the collaboration and contact center markets were been red-hot, Avaya’s $3.4 billion massive debt obligations prevented it from executing in these areas.
In 1995, Starbucks launched a cold, lightly carbonated coffee drink called Mazagran in partnership with Pepsi. It was cold, when people expected coffee beverages to be hot. A lot of customers were willing to give it a try because of the Starbucks brand name, but Mazagran didn’t get the repeat business they hoped for.
Zenefits, which made money by acting as a health-insurance brokerage firm for its customers, raised $500 million at a $4 billion valuation only two years after founding. Zenefits employees cheating on the state’s online broker license course led to the CEO’s departure.
Zenefits was a company consumed by impossible growth expectations to grow into its high valuation. Zenefits began hiring people who had little experience with software sales in a highly regulated industry. To increase revenue, the company moved beyond small businesses to customers with hundreds of employees — and the software struggled to keep up. Instead of pausing to fix bugs, Zenefits simply hired more employees to fill in where the software failed, including repurposing product managers for manual data entry.
There was a laxity about rules and decorum. Zenefits offered beer kegs in its offices, and people freely imbibed during the workday.
In 2016, Microsoft killed its fitness tracker, Microsoft Band, after only two years. Microsoft touted it as the most advanced fitness tracker on the market, but it was criticized for being awkward and uncomfortable.
Excessive greed infected the parent company Ty, who tried to manipulate the market. The company’s efforts eventually contributed to the implosion of the 1990s’ fad. At the peak, more than 60% of American households owned at least one of these babies.
Ty created a sense of exclusivity around Beanie Babies by regularly retiring popular versions and releasing limited editions. Then Ty upped production of newer Beanies in 1999 and in turn tarnished their rarity and value. Demand from collectors fell and Beanie Baby sales plummeted.
In 2008, Nike viewed hockey as a sport that doesn’t fit into its strategy of developing multi-billion-dollar global properties. It had already written off a sizable chunk of its hockey investment before putting the subsidiary on the market.
In 2005, Procter & Gamble shut down Reflect.com after launching this customized cosmetics business in 1999. To find the right point of customer interaction was one of the largest struggles for Reflect. The company experimented with many different web site layouts, but also with various own store formats. It realized that for a product like cosmetics a pure online version was not enough. Here, an existing retail network may provide a huge advantage.
The Sacramento Monarchs were one of the WNBA’s eight original franchises and remain the only professional sports teams to win a championship in Sacramento. During their time in Sacramento, the Monarchs were one of the league’s most successful WNBA franchises, making the playoffs every year from 1999 to 2008.
The Monarchs’ last season was in 2009 and their complete dissolution occurred after the Maloof Family, who also owned the Kings at the time, decided to no longer operate the franchise.
The league attempted to relocate the Monarchs to the Bay Area, but a new ownership group wasn’t found and the team ceased operations.
Hollywood Entertainment was one of the first brick-and-mortar firms to partner up with a dotcom, purchasing Reel for $100 million in July 1998. Amazon became the leader in video sales in a market which was nearly winner-take-all. This led Hollywood Entertainment to shut down Reel.com in 2000 and focus on its core video rental business.
At its height, Nortel accounted for more than a third of the total valuation of all companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), employing 94,500 people worldwide. Nortel was declared bankrupt in 2009 after almost a decade of financial mismanagement by its executive team. In 2008, three former top executives had been charged with fraud for misrepresenting Nortel’s financial results between 2000 and 2004
Nortel believed the internet to be just a fad and even began developing their own alternative to it. After they failed to begin developing their own internet-based technology, Nortel purchased several other internet-based tech companies who’s stock price drastically declined. This led to their own stock price plummeting. On top of this, many of the smaller tech companies they had sold their equipment to also went bust meaning they were left out of pocket on those contracts. This cemented a spiral of financial trouble, they couldn’t get out of.
