3 ms·

The best response to this is probably Larry the Liquidator's speech to shareholders of New England Wire & Cable, Inc., a fictional company in the movie "Other P

by cs702 13y ago

The best response to this is probably Larry the Liquidator's speech to shareholders of New England Wire & Cable, Inc., a fictional company in the movie "Other People's Money"[1]: Amen, and amen, and amen. You'll have to forgive me, I'm not familiar with the local custom. Where I come from, you always say 'Amen' after you hear a prayer. Because that's what you just heard - a prayer. Where I come from, that particular prayer is called 'The Prayer for the Dead.' You just heard The Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn't say, 'Amen.' This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here. It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead! You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead, alright. We're just not broke. And do you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow, but sure. You know, at one time, there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best god-damn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future. 'Ah, but we can't,' goes the prayer. 'We can't because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community. What will happen to them?' I got two words for that - 'Who cares?' Care about them? Why? They didn't care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years, this company bled your money. Did this community ever say, 'We know times are tough. We'll lower taxes, reduce water and sewer.' Check it out: You're paying twice what you did ten years ago. And our devoted employees, who have taken no increases for the past three years, are still making twice what they made ten years ago. And our stock - one-sixth of what it was ten years ago. 'Who cares?' I'll tell ya -- Me. I'm not your best friend. I'm your only friend. I don't make anything. I'm makin' you money. And lest we forget, that's the only reason any of you became stockholders in the first place. You wanna make money! You don't care if they manufacture wire and cable, fried chicken, or grow tangerines! You wanna make money! I'm the only friend you've got. I'm makin' you money. Take the money. Invest it somewhere else. Maybe, maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be used productively. And if it is, you'll create new jobs and provide a service for the economy and, God forbid, even make a few bucks for yourselves. And if anybody asks, tell 'em ya gave at the plant. And by the way, it pleases me that I'm called 'Larry the Liquidator.' You know why, fellow stockholders? Because at my funeral, you'll leave with a smile on your face and a few bucks in your pocket. Now that's a funeral worth having! -- [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102609/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102609/ -- a clip of the speech is currently available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q

stevoski 13y ago
Buggy whips, sure. Or record shops, to use something closer to current times.
VLM 13y ago
B+N is an even worse scenario, in that a buggy whip company can pivot into the lucrative adult toy market with little change other than inside the marketing dept. "Expensive used paper retail" aka bookstore has no pivot options not already supersaturated. Coffee shop? Music/Video physical media store? Toy store? "Educational kids stuff" store? Generic department stores? Gift shop? Used book stores? All full marketplaces, or in decline, or both. B+N has been pretty good at picking trendy overdone and declining sectors to expand into. I think they need a in-house residential real estate office and a cupcake shop. Their only hope seems to be outlandish. So they've got big mall stores... I know, give up on all this "book" stuff and become Tesla Automotive Dealers. Keep the coffee bar, I guess. My local B+N is architecturally beautiful compared to local car dealerships; it could work out well. Larry's speech is pretty much the opposite of modern crony capitalism's "too big to fail". Its possible the only move left for B+N would be into govt bailout/jobs programs.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  I disagree. Some of the ideas in TFA are fairly novel. Hiring people who are actually knowledgable? What a concept! Imagine walking into a Barnes and Noble and getting suggestions on a boom to read? Or there being a real actual community of readers congregating in B&Ns? These are huge holes in the market, where people are willing to pay more for an "experience".
  - VLM 13y ago
    I would respectfully point out, being somewhat older, that we had local bookstores (and we had more of them...) before B+N arrived, and long after B+N closes we'll still have local bookstores. They're not doing that great financially, and the suggestions for B+N vaguely correspond to what local bookstores have already tried. I think I've pretty much seen it all WRT bookstores. The problem with "experience" is it takes up space where books used to be sold. So you end up with a coffee shop, and wifi, with live music, and D+D/Pathfinder RPG get togethers, and author signing visits, an internet cafe, wedding receptions, and dvd sales, and ... where's the books? Had to take them out to make space for the candle shop and onsite child care center... Not much of a bookstore anymore if walmart has a better quantity and selection. One good rule of thumb is to look up and down small town main street. If you're going to try 50/50 pirate shop and bookstore, you're not going to do better than the actual pirate shop store, and you already know 50% of the model (bookstore) doesn't work. Ditto candles, antique stores, herbal soaps, or chocolate candies... simply listing an inventory of small town shops is mostly going to result in lack of focus on multiple business models. None of which are doing all that well anyway. On a macro level, since I was a kid, total retail CRE square footage per citizen has roughly doubled, but median consumption patterns haven't kept up making aggregate brick and mortar retail per citizen drop, and the long term trend isn't looking good for retail. There's a lot of stores to close before we get back to long term trend for retail store CRE. It may very well be that nationwide big box booksellers simply don't "work" in a real economy. In a contracting market, aiming at shrinking holes is like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

by cs702 13y ago

stevoski 13y ago

Buggy whips, sure. Or record shops, to use something closer to current times.

VLM 13y ago

B+N is an even worse scenario, in that a buggy whip company can pivot into the lucrative adult toy market with little change other than inside the marketing dept. "Expensive used paper retail" aka bookstore has no pivot options not already supersaturated. Coffee shop? Music/Video physical media store? Toy store? "Educational kids stuff" store? Generic department stores? Gift shop? Used book stores? All full marketplaces, or in decline, or both. B+N has been pretty good at picking trendy overdone and declining sectors to expand into. I think they need a in-house residential real estate office and a cupcake shop. Their only hope seems to be outlandish. So they've got big mall stores... I know, give up on all this "book" stuff and become Tesla Automotive Dealers. Keep the coffee bar, I guess. My local B+N is architecturally beautiful compared to local car dealerships; it could work out well. Larry's speech is pretty much the opposite of modern crony capitalism's "too big to fail". Its possible the only move left for B+N would be into govt bailout/jobs programs.

dclowd9901 13y ago
I disagree. Some of the ideas in TFA are fairly novel. Hiring people who are actually knowledgable? What a concept! Imagine walking into a Barnes and Noble and getting suggestions on a boom to read? Or there being a real actual community of readers congregating in B&Ns? These are huge holes in the market, where people are willing to pay more for an "experience".
- VLM 13y ago
  I would respectfully point out, being somewhat older, that we had local bookstores (and we had more of them...) before B+N arrived, and long after B+N closes we'll still have local bookstores. They're not doing that great financially, and the suggestions for B+N vaguely correspond to what local bookstores have already tried. I think I've pretty much seen it all WRT bookstores. The problem with "experience" is it takes up space where books used to be sold. So you end up with a coffee shop, and wifi, with live music, and D+D/Pathfinder RPG get togethers, and author signing visits, an internet cafe, wedding receptions, and dvd sales, and ... where's the books? Had to take them out to make space for the candle shop and onsite child care center... Not much of a bookstore anymore if walmart has a better quantity and selection. One good rule of thumb is to look up and down small town main street. If you're going to try 50/50 pirate shop and bookstore, you're not going to do better than the actual pirate shop store, and you already know 50% of the model (bookstore) doesn't work. Ditto candles, antique stores, herbal soaps, or chocolate candies... simply listing an inventory of small town shops is mostly going to result in lack of focus on multiple business models. None of which are doing all that well anyway. On a macro level, since I was a kid, total retail CRE square footage per citizen has roughly doubled, but median consumption patterns haven't kept up making aggregate brick and mortar retail per citizen drop, and the long term trend isn't looking good for retail. There's a lot of stores to close before we get back to long term trend for retail store CRE. It may very well be that nationwide big box booksellers simply don't "work" in a real economy. In a contracting market, aiming at shrinking holes is like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.