The Golden Rule
If you aren’t sure where to take your business next, don’t copy JC Penney. On 8 January this year I wrote about the sad case of the US retailer Sears CLICK…
The articles below illustrate the importance of risk management. Businesses often end up taking much bigger risks than they intended and you should learn something from that and not do what they do. The future is always uncertain; take small steps forward so you can at least survive if things go wrong.
Named Aptly
Whatever Happened to Billabong? I guess not many of us know what a billabong is. Yes, we all know it’s from Down Under and it has something to do with…
The Elastic Brand
Will Dr Dre ever run a railway? I advise all of my clients to stay focussed. That’s just common sense, right? Well, you might be surprised just how hard businesses…
Time Travellers
Watch out, if more and more of your customers are living in the past. I recently moved to the country. Well, I do at least spend more time there, though…
Chinese CAT
The financial and reputational costs of diversification can be too high. Half of the global demand for construction equipment now comes from China, so it might not be that surprising…
The Survival Instinct
When cornered, businesses will overpay for assets they really want. Last November Hewlett-Packard wrote down the value of Autonomy by a staggering $8.8Bn, after buying it for $11Bn just over…
Herbalife
A great example of how investors’ beliefs, about other investors’ future behaviour, drive stock valuations. I was born in 1956, the same year as Mark Hughes, the founder of Herbalife,…
Garden Centre Shopping
Specialist retailers are a dying breed. Oops, there goes another one! We are only a week or so into a new year and another well known retailer has fallen off…
The Innocents Abroad
Tesco is cutting its losses in the United States. Tesco, the third largest retailer in the world measured by revenues, and second largest by profits, is giving up in the…
FAB
Is being the poster child for “social commerce” enough? I hadn’t heard of Fab.com until I read about it in the Wall Street Journal. It was described as an online…