4 ms·

In-Flight Catalog SkyMall Files for Bankruptcy

57 points by herbig 12y ago

nerfhammer 12y ago
Non-paywall article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/business/skymall-parent-xhibit-files-for-bankruptcy-protection.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/business/skymall-parent-xh...
mbesto 12y ago
Read this[0] - Xhibit and SkyMall have a very strange/shady past. This is the strangest part from that article: "Xhibit is a cloud based technology development company with its primary historical focus on digital advertising, and a recently expanded focus on online and mobile social media, games and CRM (customer relationship management) solutions." [0] - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/skymall-the-strange-story-of-americas-most-delightfully-weird-catalogue/276807/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/skymall-...
- randomfool 12y ago
  Not surprising at all, from the same article: "The Xhibit Corporation went public via a "reverse takeover" of a shell company in 2012. Earlier, in 2011, the individuals behind the company acquired a shell company called NB Manufacturing for $350K, and voila, Xhibit was able to become a publicly traded company." "How does a company go from $350K valuation to $300MM in under two years? The answer is that if a security is fairly illiquid, the "price" is more or less arbitrary because people aren't really buying or selling many shares." So Xhibit buys a shell company to become publicly traded, drives up their stock price by taking advantage of minimal liquidity, then buys SkyMall with their inflated stock. Just surprising that SkyMall sold to them at all.
  - tosseraccount 12y ago
    $350K ???? Not a bad way to go public. Cheap too. Listing via IPO will cost you a lot more: lawyers, filing, lockups, paper work, brokers skimming. Better the company get full value for their shares. No need to cut some big guys in on the deal. It's just not a requirement. More companies should use this strategy and avoid the Wall Street tax.
fennecfoxen 12y ago
"The increase in the number of airlines providing Internet access “resulted in additional competition from e-commerce retailers and additional competition for the attention of passengers, all of which further negatively impacted SkyMall’s catalog sales,” [acting Chief Executive Scott Wiley] added." The perils of a niche market.
free2rhyme214 12y ago
I knew this would happen! When I was on American Airlines or Southwest in my head I always asked myself, "Who buys from here?"
corbinpage 12y ago
I think the nail in the coffin was when portable devices were allowed during take-off and landing in the US. I used to skim SkyMall when the flight attendants told me to put my phone away and would sometimes even continue reading when devices were allowed. But now that I don't have to put down my device at all, SkyMall gets none of my attention.
ssharp 12y ago
The first few times I flew, SkyMall had awesome comedic value. Some of the items were just incredibly obnoxious. But that loses it's appeal quickly when you fly a lot. I could never believe that people actually ordered stuff from there!
- ghaff 12y ago
  It's worth noting that SkyMall primarily (entirely?) aggregates content from other catalog, a lot of which are pretty silly but not all of them. I've actually occasionally seen things that looked interesting enough for me to take a look at the original source. That said, I don't really disagree with you. SkyMall's focus seemed to be on the weirder contents of the merchants it partnered with.
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  Related: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/26/ http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/26/
- frenchman_in_ny 12y ago
  The comedic value SkyMall had for you led to a parody of it -- SkyMaul. (edited to add different URLs, and saw that someone else got to this as well) http://www.kasperhauser.com/skymaul_site/FlipBook.html http://www.kasperhauser.com/skymaul_site/FlipBook.html http://www.skymaul.com/ http://www.skymaul.com/
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    Wow, these are great!
manishsharan 12y ago
I feel bad for Hammacher Schlemmer also. The only time I ordered their products were when I was totally bored, mildly drunk and browsing SkyMall.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  See also Sharper Image.
stephengoodwin 12y ago
SkyMall was really a pioneer in meme generation, before the Internet took it over.
mikek 12y ago
SkyMall's Stock Price Triples On News of Rise in Web Sales [1998] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB914892097195473500 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB914892097195473500
sciurus 12y ago
I just hope http://www.skymaul.com http://www.skymaul.com keeps operating.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  From the URL alone, the first thing that came to mind was "Instead of office chair, package contained bobcat. Would not buy again." (https://xkcd.com/325/ https://xkcd.com/325/)
- jstoiko 12y ago
  They'll be able to take over Skymall.com domain
jnem 12y ago
Once upon a time, there was nothing to read on an airplane but SkyMall. SkyMall held it's audience captive, and all but the most foresighted of us, whom thought to bring a book or some similar textual vessel, were held hostage by it's mediocrity. But then, one day, the great and powerful Science came. Championed by it's favored son, the Internet, Science set the passenger's free of the evil SkyMall's iron grip on airborne eyes. "But smartphones cause interference with airplanes for some reason!" SkyMall's proponents cried. "No" said Science, "Do gas stations explode when you receive a phone call?" it asked. "Yes" said the SkyMallians, "Of course they do!". "Please die and don't reproduce" said Science. And all was well.
jlmorton 12y ago
It's worth noting that a while back, American Airlines calculated that replacing the 35lbs flight manual in aircraft would an iPad would save $1.2 million annually in fuel expenses. If SkyMall weighs about 1 pound per magazine, and it's in a fleet-wide average of 200 seats backs, that might be >$3 million in fuel costs for airlines to carry the magazine. http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/11/american-airlines-first-get-faa-approval-use-ipads-all-phases-flight-saving-1-2m/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/11/american-airlines-fir...

57 points by herbig 12y ago

Non-paywall article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/business/skymall-parent-xhibit-files-for-bankruptcy-protection.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/business/skymall-parent-xh...

mbesto 12y ago

Read this[0] - Xhibit and SkyMall have a very strange/shady past. This is the strangest part from that article: "Xhibit is a cloud based technology development company with its primary historical focus on digital advertising, and a recently expanded focus on online and mobile social media, games and CRM (customer relationship management) solutions." [0] - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/skymall-the-strange-story-of-americas-most-delightfully-weird-catalogue/276807/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/skymall-...

randomfool 12y ago
Not surprising at all, from the same article: "The Xhibit Corporation went public via a "reverse takeover" of a shell company in 2012. Earlier, in 2011, the individuals behind the company acquired a shell company called NB Manufacturing for $350K, and voila, Xhibit was able to become a publicly traded company." "How does a company go from $350K valuation to $300MM in under two years? The answer is that if a security is fairly illiquid, the "price" is more or less arbitrary because people aren't really buying or selling many shares." So Xhibit buys a shell company to become publicly traded, drives up their stock price by taking advantage of minimal liquidity, then buys SkyMall with their inflated stock. Just surprising that SkyMall sold to them at all.
- tosseraccount 12y ago
  $350K ???? Not a bad way to go public. Cheap too. Listing via IPO will cost you a lot more: lawyers, filing, lockups, paper work, brokers skimming. Better the company get full value for their shares. No need to cut some big guys in on the deal. It's just not a requirement. More companies should use this strategy and avoid the Wall Street tax.

fennecfoxen 12y ago

"The increase in the number of airlines providing Internet access “resulted in additional competition from e-commerce retailers and additional competition for the attention of passengers, all of which further negatively impacted SkyMall’s catalog sales,” [acting Chief Executive Scott Wiley] added." The perils of a niche market.

free2rhyme214 12y ago

I knew this would happen! When I was on American Airlines or Southwest in my head I always asked myself, "Who buys from here?"

corbinpage 12y ago

I think the nail in the coffin was when portable devices were allowed during take-off and landing in the US. I used to skim SkyMall when the flight attendants told me to put my phone away and would sometimes even continue reading when devices were allowed. But now that I don't have to put down my device at all, SkyMall gets none of my attention.

ssharp 12y ago

The first few times I flew, SkyMall had awesome comedic value. Some of the items were just incredibly obnoxious. But that loses it's appeal quickly when you fly a lot. I could never believe that people actually ordered stuff from there!

ghaff 12y ago
It's worth noting that SkyMall primarily (entirely?) aggregates content from other catalog, a lot of which are pretty silly but not all of them. I've actually occasionally seen things that looked interesting enough for me to take a look at the original source. That said, I don't really disagree with you. SkyMall's focus seemed to be on the weirder contents of the merchants it partnered with.
wlesieutre 12y ago
Related: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/26/ http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/26/
frenchman_in_ny 12y ago
The comedic value SkyMall had for you led to a parody of it -- SkyMaul. (edited to add different URLs, and saw that someone else got to this as well) http://www.kasperhauser.com/skymaul_site/FlipBook.html http://www.kasperhauser.com/skymaul_site/FlipBook.html http://www.skymaul.com/ http://www.skymaul.com/
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Wow, these are great!

manishsharan 12y ago

I feel bad for Hammacher Schlemmer also. The only time I ordered their products were when I was totally bored, mildly drunk and browsing SkyMall.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
See also Sharper Image.

stephengoodwin 12y ago

SkyMall was really a pioneer in meme generation, before the Internet took it over.

mikek 12y ago

SkyMall's Stock Price Triples On News of Rise in Web Sales [1998] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB914892097195473500 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB914892097195473500

sciurus 12y ago

I just hope http://www.skymaul.com http://www.skymaul.com keeps operating.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
From the URL alone, the first thing that came to mind was "Instead of office chair, package contained bobcat. Would not buy again." (https://xkcd.com/325/ https://xkcd.com/325/)
jstoiko 12y ago
They'll be able to take over Skymall.com domain

jnem 12y ago

Once upon a time, there was nothing to read on an airplane but SkyMall. SkyMall held it's audience captive, and all but the most foresighted of us, whom thought to bring a book or some similar textual vessel, were held hostage by it's mediocrity. But then, one day, the great and powerful Science came. Championed by it's favored son, the Internet, Science set the passenger's free of the evil SkyMall's iron grip on airborne eyes. "But smartphones cause interference with airplanes for some reason!" SkyMall's proponents cried. "No" said Science, "Do gas stations explode when you receive a phone call?" it asked. "Yes" said the SkyMallians, "Of course they do!". "Please die and don't reproduce" said Science. And all was well.

jlmorton 12y ago

It's worth noting that a while back, American Airlines calculated that replacing the 35lbs flight manual in aircraft would an iPad would save $1.2 million annually in fuel expenses. If SkyMall weighs about 1 pound per magazine, and it's in a fleet-wide average of 200 seats backs, that might be >$3 million in fuel costs for airlines to carry the magazine. http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/11/american-airlines-first-get-faa-approval-use-ipads-all-phases-flight-saving-1-2m/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/11/american-airlines-fir...