Forbes.com reported bankrupt Chucky Cheese is spending $2.3 million dollars to destroy 7 billion prize tickets, which would fill 65 cargo-shipping containers. Why? Because it’s about 25% of the $9 million cost if they were redeemed for prizes.
We all deal with sunk costs. Buy a new car, decide you don’t like it, you’re out the 20% they say is the immediate market discount. Invest in a new machine, it’s not what you really need, you’re out.
Things like above always remind me of a past client who bought a (what turned out to be) great business for next to nothing (and this is not a pitch like the books and courses on how to buy a good business with little to no money – which doesn’t happen).
How did this happen? The company expanded from Seattle into Portland, it wasn’t going well, and they got stubborn, as in, “We’ll sell our way out of this.” They didn’t. And, at a peak of the real estate market they bought a building. The buyer got the Seattle operation by paying off the State Department of Revenue, the phone company, and the top supplier. He later told me, “I knew it was a good business, I just didn’t know it would be this lucrative.”
About 8-10 years ago I came up with what I thought was a compelling idea for a line of service to potential clients. It wasn’t as compelling to them as it was to me, so I dropped it. The costs (mostly time and energy) were sunk, gone, and that was okay. I learned a lesson, picked up one client (five projects, none for this idea), a few good marketing tactics.
I mention these things because in the buy-sell world I see all the time owners (and their intermediaries) trying to convince buyers the failed advertising campaign is really profit because it didn’t work. Or, the ops manager who wasn’t as good as he or she claimed is really profit because it was a bad hire.
No. That’s business. That’s life. If you don’t try things you won’t learn what doesn’t work. Not every decision is a good decision (meaning didn’t live up to its potential). The good businesses often just have made more good decisions than not-so-good ones.
“It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.” Dave Barry
