Quote:
Originally Posted by MattTuck
I disagree a bit with this. There may well have been mistakes made with regard to management, strategy or positioning, but that doesn't mean it was mismanaged. And that might depend on our respective definitions of 'mismanage'. The industry changed around them, it bifurcated and they were left trying to make a bespoke product with the overhead of a line manufacturer.
Looked at another way, a struggling company is not a symptom of mismanagement anymore than a successful company is a sign of good management. Sometimes luck, good or bad, or market dynamics outside of your control play a part in the success of a business...
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You say potato, I say potato (OK, it makes more sense orally than it does on the written page but you get the point.)
My point is this: Ben Serotta was apparently intimately involved with a series of decisions that turned out catastrophically. Did the market change? Absolutely. But Serotta reacted in exactly the wrong ways to those changes. That's why Moots, Seven, Parlee etc, have faced exactly the same "bad luck" and survived while Serotta has not.
A company that struggles repeatedly (which seems to have been the case with Serotta) and/or struggles over long periods of time is not failing due to bad luck because, over time, luck evens out. It's poor management.