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The_Franz posted:Yep, that's what happened to the one in my hometown. Sam's opened in the early 90s and basically had a monopoly on the wholesale market in the area. As the years wore on that store started to feel more and more dilapidated though, and when a BJ's opened not too far away around Y2K it was like a breath of fresh air: some of the merchandise seemed to be of better quality, the store felt less depressing, etc... Evidently they lost a lot of business to BJ's and when you combined that with the strip mall in which they were located being in the early stages of becoming a dead mall they ended up closing in 2005 or thereabouts. I got a basically free Sams Club membership off Groupon and bought a set of trash cans there, the kind that open with your foot. The mechanism broke on one of them within 3 months and i took them back, aksing if I could swap one, or if they were out, to return the set and buy a new matching set. They refused and told me to contact the manufacturer and the manufacturer wanted me to ship a $40 trashcan back to Thailand so i threw them both in the trash and bought a new set from Costco the next week.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:01
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BrandorKP posted:It also illustrates how loving wrong they are! All the investment class knows is "I want more right now." All that matters is this quarter's profits and this quarter's dividends. Playing the long game has become utterly meaningless in the face of MBA graduates that can squeeze the numbers, cut the benefits, and make the profit margin bigger this quarter. In the long run it does horrible things but who cares? By then I can pass the blame onto the employees! We cut benefits 25% and made a lot of profit, that's awesome! Oh, the employees are now less productive and our best people quit? It isn't my fault; I'm not doing their job. It's their fault for being a bunch of lazy ingrates that don't kiss my feet enough. I'm eliminating the budget for raises this year, that'll lead to more profit this quarter.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:31
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PJOmega posted:The ones that took the money and paid themselves with it? They're gone without exception. Increasingly the trend is: Buy out a profitable business. Take the money (by having the business borrow against itself) pay yourself. Sit for a year or two. Sell to a bigger fool who plans to do the same thing. This is all done to "extract value" for the shareholders.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:35
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Because The Market must Go Up. Seriously, much of our economy is run by people whose entire business acumen consists of 'one simple trick' to make the profit numbers go up so they and the other execs can cash out a d move on to the next business they can infest like the parasites they are.
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Jan 13, 2018 03:26
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Liquid Communism posted:Because The Market must Go Up. A family member gone trumpian as of late once disagreed with me when I said the purpose of a business is to provide a good or service. He was adamant that a business' purpose was to make money and everything else was secondary, including providing a good or service. In the strictest sense he's partially right, but that's the mentality you're talking about here. Money is the only thing that matters, even over actually doing something that generates revenue.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:17
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The one wrinkle in the Costco doing everything so much better theory is that BJ's isn't really anything special and they're still outcompeting Sam's Club in their territory for whatever reason.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:38
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ryonguy posted:A family member gone trumpian as of late once disagreed with me when I said the purpose of a business is to provide a good or service. He was adamant that a business' purpose was to make money and everything else was secondary, including providing a good or service. In the strictest sense he's partially right, but that's the mentality you're talking about here. Money is the only thing that matters, even over actually doing something that generates revenue. Reminds me of all those articles whining about how entitled millennials are denying restaurateurs and businessmen the revenue they're entitled to earn.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:56
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ryonguy posted:A family member gone trumpian as of late once disagreed with me when I said the purpose of a business is to provide a good or service. He was adamant that a business' purpose was to make money and everything else was secondary, including providing a good or service. In the strictest sense he's partially right, but that's the mentality you're talking about here. Money is the only thing that matters, even over actually doing something that generates revenue. Is it any surprise that a family member whose gone Trumpian would view a scam as a legitimate business? Because that's what they're defining. A business needs to make money to survive. But that isn't its purpose. If a business can only make money by intentionally screwing over customers or employees it shouldn't be in business.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:58
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ryonguy posted:A family member gone trumpian as of late once disagreed with me when I said the purpose of a business is to provide a good or service. He was adamant that a business' purpose was to make money and everything else was secondary, including providing a good or service. In the strictest sense he's partially right, but that's the mentality you're talking about here. Money is the only thing that matters, even over actually doing something that generates revenue. Your family member is correct. The purpose of a business is to make money. This objective is achieved through providing goods and or services. This is not a mentality, but a literal understanding of what a business is and why it exists. Developing and maintaining a happy workforce and client base are both important components of a successful business, where success is measured as being profitable and sustainable. Ignoring WHY businesses exist does not help win the argument that you are trying to make.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:58
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"The purpose of a human being is to eat. Contact with other humans is irrelevant unless in service of eating."
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Jan 13, 2018 05:21
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OneEightHundred posted:The one wrinkle in the Costco doing everything so much better theory is that BJ's isn't really anything special and they're still outcompeting Sam's Club in their territory for whatever reason. Costco is a great company. BJs is an average company Sams Club/Walmart is a terrible company.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:43
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What is BJs?
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Jan 13, 2018 05:46
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Baronjutter posted:What is BJs? It's blow jobs, my man. No wonder it's popular.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:49
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Baronjutter posted:What is BJs?
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Jan 13, 2018 06:04
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eyebeem posted:Your family member is correct. The purpose of a business is to make money. This objective is achieved through providing goods and or services. This is not a mentality, but a literal understanding of what a business is and why it exists. no
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Jan 13, 2018 07:24
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A corporation’s legal obligations are to its shareholders. If the company is privately held or closely held, they can do whatever the gently caress they want. If the company is publicly traded, eventually someone is going to start complaining that the returns aren’t good enough. The moral of the story is, never go public.
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Jan 13, 2018 13:49
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Neon Noodle posted:A corporation’s legal obligations are to its shareholders. If the company is privately held or closely held, they can do whatever the gently caress they want. If the company is publicly traded, eventually someone is going to start complaining that the returns aren’t good enough. A lot of publicly traded corporations are incorporated/organized in Delaware and so litigation against executives and the Board would therefore go through the Delaware Court of Chancery, which historically takes a very protective (to said executives and Board) view of the business judgment rule. In addition, in most publicly traded corporations, ownership isn't concentrated well enough often enough to seriously threaten voting out directors (and, ultimately, firing executives) or, alternatively, there are super voting shares owned by the founders/executives that prevent them from getting thrown out (amongst other things).
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Jan 13, 2018 14:49
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Horseshoe theory posted:A lot of publicly traded corporations are incorporated/organized in Delaware and so litigation against executives and the Board would therefore go through the Delaware Court of Chancery, which historically takes a very protective (to said executives and Board) view of the business judgment rule. In addition, in most publicly traded corporations, ownership isn't concentrated well enough often enough to seriously threaten voting out directors (and, ultimately, firing executives) or, alternatively, there are super voting shares owned by the founders/executives that prevent them from getting thrown out (amongst other things). This is true, but plenty of pressure can still be applied by activist investors, and other troublemakers that can really drag a decent company down quickly. You dont need a lawsuit to get a bevy of dumb Wall Street articles written about how x company is doomed to failure because it treats its employees like humans.
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Jan 13, 2018 15:06
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SpaceCadetBob posted:This is true, but plenty of pressure can still be applied by activist investors, and other troublemakers that can really drag a decent company down quickly. You dont need a lawsuit to get a bevy of dumb Wall Street articles written about how x company is doomed to failure because it treats its employees like humans. My thought on that is that it isn't really Peltz, Ackman, etc., it's the Board and C-suite that use said Peltz, Ackman, etc. being shitheads as a justification/deflector of blame of their own shitheadedness. It's very rare that Peltz, Ackman, etc. can win a completely hostile battle against these companies given the structuring, so the acquiescence by the Board and management seems, to me, being their hidden agreement with the shitheaded policies coming to the surface using the outsiders as the deflection for any resulting backlash.
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Jan 13, 2018 15:15
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Yeah, I can agree that probably happens a lot too. It’s to bad that I’m pretty sure a Capitalism thread in D&D would be the biggest trash fire in history. There really is lots of fun stuff to unpack between big and small businesses and how some companies do manage to succeed without being total hellholes.
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Jan 13, 2018 15:21
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SpaceCadetBob posted:Yeah, I can agree that probably happens a lot too. A thread about a trash fire would be a trash fire? You don't say...
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Jan 13, 2018 15:50
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eyebeem posted:Your family member is correct. The purpose of a business is to make money. This objective is achieved through providing goods and or services. This is not a mentality, but a literal understanding of what a business is and why it exists. "I want to do something that makes money" is a fundamentally different attitude from "I want to make money, period". One is doing something ostensibly productive, the other is a pyramid scheme waiting to happen, and results in all the problems in this thread. You have a break-down in your understanding of how the world works if you don't understand the difference.
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Jan 13, 2018 16:12
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Only thing worse than your company going public is private equity buying it. If that happens, flee no matter what poo poo they shovel you.
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Jan 13, 2018 16:40
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Cheesus posted:
You may be thinking of an analyst in the last few years griping about American Airlines being overly generous to labor at the expense of shareholders after contract renegotiations or somesuch.
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Jan 13, 2018 19:07
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eyebeem posted:Your family member is correct. The purpose of a business is to make money. This objective is achieved through providing goods and or services. This is not a mentality, but a literal understanding of what a business is and why it exists. Maybe in an abstract sense, but by that logic a mugger is a small business owner. If we're going down that road, money is meaningless if there isn't some form of economy by which goods and services are reliably exchanged for money, so we might as well just say the goal of a business is to oppress the working class into providing the most goods and services to the head of the business at the least relative effort to said head.
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Jan 14, 2018 01:06
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skooma512 posted:Speaking as a tall person it pretty much already is like that. I cannot find 36x34 pants in most department stores. They stock pretty much every other size but that. last I checked my local mall had 3 sunglasses huts
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Jan 14, 2018 02:57
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BrandorKP posted:Increasingly the trend is: Buy out a profitable business. Take the money (by having the business borrow against itself) pay yourself. Sit for a year or two. Sell to a bigger fool who plans to do the same thing. This is something that's only going to work once. Either the new companies that come in to replace the lovely public one will stay private or the new public one won't be able to compete enough to stay relevant.
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Jan 14, 2018 03:02
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Hand Row posted:Only thing worse than your company going public is private equity buying it. If that happens, flee no matter what poo poo they shovel you. Eh I guess true as a general rule, but my company got bought by a PE group about a year ago and what few changes they’ve made have mostly been positive.
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Jan 14, 2018 03:16
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Magius1337est posted:This is something that's only going to work once. Unfortunately not. The place I grew up, went through four bigger fools, the last fool was a publicly owned national chain. Took about a decade. Some regional grocery chains the process has been going on since like the 70s, interspersed with bankruptcies.
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Jan 14, 2018 03:42
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Magius1337est posted:This is something that's only going to work once. Hahahah. Oh, I wish that were the case. Check out what happened to Hostess for an illustration. It's going to happen again in a few years, because they sold the trademarks and recipes to a new holding company that's primed for the same routine as soon as labor gets uppity again.
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Jan 14, 2018 03:54
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Magius1337est posted:This is something that's only going to work once. See also: How people consistently lose their shirts investing in the latest bubble. You'd think they'd have learned after tulip mania, but nope.
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Jan 14, 2018 04:12
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Noctone posted:Eh I guess true as a general rule, but my company got bought by a PE group about a year ago and what few changes they’ve made have mostly been positive. You wouldn't notice it in that way except possibly restructuring. The issue is they aren't in it for the long haul and will want to recoup their investment, profit and sell it to another PE in a short timeframe. So they are quietly taking away money that could be used to the benefit of the business/company, and they always get first dibs. So even if you are growing 20%, if they had you down at 25%, they will get their 25%. Hopefully it's general expenses and not layoffs. And if you hit the 25% the first year, they will just set even more aggressive goals. It's been really weird to be part of very successful companies and have quarterly layoffs or go into replace expensive employees with college grad cycles. Even if you are dealing with a decent one, they will then sell you to another PE and eventually you are going to get one that sucks poo poo.
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Jan 14, 2018 05:23
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When private equity acquires a firm with a 5-8 year sell-window they're going to start changing the organization in which aren't sustainable in the long-term. The goal is to get an inflated profit margin or radically increased growth so that they can find a sucker to buy the firm at an overinflated price-point at the end of the sell-window. The easiest way to do this is over-leveraging, down-sizing and/or nickel-diming the product/service. You ever feel that a company at some point just got very poo poo and for no obvious reason? Odds are that one of their previous owners was private equity.
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Jan 14, 2018 06:59
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MiddleOne posted:When private equity acquires a firm with a 5-8 year sell-window they're going to start changing the organization in which aren't sustainable in the long-term. Yeah, we’re not doing that any more because I plan on selling out in 36 months, so what the gently caress do I care? If it’s not going to pay off in that time (or at least be promising enough that I can leverage it in the sale), it doesn’t help me, so we might as well pocket that money now.
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Jan 14, 2018 13:35
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Cross posting this from the unicorns thread.Commissar Kayla posted:Off the top of my head, the coverage that made me go WTF the most was Directors and Officers coverage. I have two thoughts: 1. Private equity and corporate bros gonna private equity and coporate bro. So these firms flipping retail chains, etc , are gonna carry this type of insurance too.There might even be overlap with the corporate raider flippers. I bet retail has boring stories with low premiums. 2. I need to sit on this one, maybe tommorow.
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Jan 15, 2018 03:03
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Hand Row posted:You wouldn't notice it in that way except possibly restructuring. The issue is they aren't in it for the long haul and will want to recoup their investment, profit and sell it to another PE in a short timeframe. So they are quietly taking away money that could be used to the benefit of the business/company, and they always get first dibs. Yeah fair enough. I suppose my perspective is colored by the fact that I do highly specialized service work in a niche division of the company, so I'm mostly insulated from the typical trappings of PE ownership. My coworkers and I essentially are the product (and a product in high demand), so there's very little in the way of cost-cutting measures they could get away with. And if our eventual sale is into a lovely situation it'll basically be "ok whatever" since virtually everybody in my office can get a new high-paying job in less than two weeks.
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Jan 15, 2018 06:03
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MagusofStars posted:This is the issue right here. Private Equity is never in it for the long haul, so they skimp on longer term items. You know that new product your company launched after a five-year R&D investment that’s now really profitable? Remember when we accepted that short term loss in order to build a market? Between private equity getting more aggressive and M&A increasing in prevalence as anti-trust laws become more and more of a fictional concept the average life-time of the fortune 500 company is rapidly deteriorating in the US. No one is in it for the long-haul because only founder-run companies see companies as anything more than a means to an end. For passive funds (which are growing in market-share every day) it's all the same because a loss in one company is a gain in their competitors which the passive fund also own. Whomever it was before that stated that companies exist to provide goods and/or services for profit really needs to go back to college and study some basic finance because that's not the name of the game anymore.
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Jan 15, 2018 10:03
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I've been working at Amazon in the Marketplace division as a QA Engineer for over 3 years now and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them and I'll do my best to answer them. I've got a decent amount of insight and a lot of insider knowledge so it might be interesting if anyone cares 
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Jan 15, 2018 10:19
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HonorableTB posted:I've been working at Amazon in the Marketplace division as a QA Engineer for over 3 years now and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them and I'll do my best to answer them. I've got a decent amount of insight and a lot of insider knowledge so it might be interesting if anyone cares do you know if they're hiring for the division that goes around and pisses on the ashes of small businesses and empty big box stores? and if so do they offer benefits?
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Jan 15, 2018 10:24
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DC Murderverse posted:do you know if they're hiring for the division that goes around and pisses on the ashes of small businesses and empty big box stores? and if so do they offer benefits? If you have to ask, then they don't have openings nor do they provide benefits.
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Jan 15, 2018 10:27
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