Loot Crate - Failure Museum

Loot Crate

Founded in 2012, Loot Crate was the most popular subscription box service in the world offering mystery boxes. The features of the boxes, or ‘the loot’, ranged from t-shirts and action figures, to snacks and badges. At the beginning of 2016, Loot Crate made it to the cover page of Inc. Magazine as the fastest-growing private company in the US, with more than 650,000 subscribers. In order to combat competition, Loot Crate offered 27 specific niche crates, such as WWE, Harry Potter, and Star Trek. Although customers loved the new crates, the company was forced to order a wide variety of items in small amounts, instead of doing bulk orders on a few items, reducing the profit margin. After a layoff to improve the profit margin, Loot Crate faced backlash over late box deliveries, bad quality products, and boxes not getting to their destinations at all. In 2019, the company filed for bankruptcy after amassing millions of dollars in debt to companies such as Marvel, Facebook, and Trend Setters.

BetaMax - Failure Museum

Betamax

Introduced in 1975, Sony hoped that the video cassette tape industry and all other manufacturers would adopt the Beta Tape as the standard industry format. Unfortunately JVC, a Japanese-owned rival brand, decided to create their own format, VHS, in 1977. Betamax had a marginally better recording quality and a slightly better sound compared to the VHS, putting it at a higher price tag. However, these differences weren’t all that noticeable to the average consumer, meaning they leaned toward VHS almost every time. Sony also believed that it would be fine to cap Beta Tapes at one hour, but that didn’t work for consumers who recorded sporting events, feature films, or primetime television blocks.

Blackberry World Edition - Failure Museum

Blackberry World Edition

Released in 2007, the World Edition was designed for those who frequently travel overseas. It provides voice coverage in 157 countries and e-mail coverage in 62 countries.

Divx - Failure Museum

Divx

Short for Digital Video Express, Divx was released in 1998 and failed only 53 weeks later after losing $330 million. Looking and functioning much like a DVD, the thing that set the DIVX apart was its ability to block viewers from watching the film after a designated period of time which was often 48 hours. DIVX required a special DIVX-capable player in order to function. People absolutely hated DIVX with a fierce, burning passion. DIVX discs wouldn’t play in regular DVD players. Consumers had just begun to embrace DVD, and now there was another format they needed to shell out for.

Cardinal Stritch University - Failure Museum

Cardinal Stritch

In 2023 after 86 years, Cardinal Stritch University couldn’t outrun a combination of factors, including plummeting enrollment, constant turnover in leadership, the drying up of its limited resources and the COVID-19 pandemic, which seemingly dealt the fatal blow.  

FyreFestival - Failure Museum

Fyre Festival

In 2017, Billy McFarland’s Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival scheduled to take place on the Bahamian Island of Great Exuma. It was created with the intent of promoting the company’s Fyre app for booking music talent. During the Fyre Festival’s inaugural weekend, the event experienced problems related to security, food, accommodation, medical services and artist relations, resulting in the festival being indefinitely postponed and eventually cancelled. Instead of the gourmet meals and luxury villas for which festival attendees had paid hundreds of dollars, they received packaged sandwiches and were lodged in poorly furnished tents. At least eight lawsuits were initiated against the organizers for defrauding ticket buyers, several seeking class action status, and one seeking more than $100 million in damages. Billy McFarland was sentenced to six years in federal prison and agreed to a lifetime ban on serving as a corporate officer or director.

Galileo - Failure Museum

Galileo by Motrr

In 2015, Galileo was an iOS-controlled, robotic motion platform for iPhones and iPod Touches. It allowed someone to mount an iphone to the device and remotely rotate it horizontally and vertically for filming. It was invented by the folks that invented the GorillaPod, a very popular and flexible mini-tripod for cameras. The product didn’t sell well and was shut down after a few years. If they partnered with Apple it might have seen more success.

Private-i - Failure Museum

Private-i

In 2009, soon after the first iPhone was launched, Private-i was released as a shadow box with a tripod. It attached to an iPhone allowing for hands-free movie watching with built-in shading/privacy. Since the idea was conceived on a plane, Skymall became the key distributor. Unfortunately they charged too much for the device, the case was too bulky and over engineered, and if someone had another case already on the iphone it wouldn’t fit in the Private-i.

Jai Alai - Failure Museum

Jai Alai

Jai Alai is a sport involving bouncing a ball off a walled-in space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held wicker cesta. The sport is dangerous as the ball is hard and travels at high velocities (often over 100 mph). 4 people have died playing Jai Alai.

EF Hutton - Failure Museum

EF Hutton

In 1980, several Hutton branches wrote checks which were greater than the cash they had on hand at the bank, then making a deposit in another bank equal to the amount it wrote at the first bank. This strategy, known as “chaining”, is a form of check fraud. “Chaining” gave Hutton use of money in both accounts until the checks cleared. In effect, Hutton was giving itself a free loan that didn’t carry any interest. Hutton pleaded guilty to 2000 counts of mail and wire fraud. This led to customers pulling their accounts with Hutton, and many of the star performers left for other firms.