30 Of The Stupidest Decisions Made By Companies That Made Them Regret It Later

A bakery that sold cupcakes and cookies (no full-sized cakes) across the street from a liberal arts high school. The school is known for not only being VERY arts-centric but also for being very LGBT-friendly. If I had to guess, I'd say that a full 33% of the kids there are LGBT of some type. EVERY student is supportive of LGBT rights and has had protests in support (often, with the school's staff being supportive and helping to organize and have a safe area for them to protest in). The neighborhood is VERY artsy and LGBT-Friendly.

The kids would come in every morning before school, pop across the street at lunch, and stop by before heading home after school. The Bakery made BANK on these kids. The parents would buy from there for birthday parties and events all the time (like 6 doz. cupcakes for the birthday). So they were doing well.

Suddenly, "baker's rights" became a thing and refusing to make a gay wedding cake was all over Fox News. The owners of the shop were Fox News watchers and thought to themselves, "Yeah, why should we bake a gay cake?" They proceeded to put a sign in their window announcing to the world that they were Christians and wouldn't bake a gay wedding cake.

REMINDER: THEY DIDN'T DO WEDDING CAKES AT ALL!!! Furthermore, nobody had asked them to do one.

Strangely, they went under in just over four months. It's almost like advertising your prejudices against the people you depend on for your income isn't a good idea. Not only did the kids stop going, but they told their parents and their other friends' parents not to go there anymore because they're prejudiced. So their ENTIRE customer base stopped going. The houses on that street are, no joke, 50% owned by well-to-do LGBT couples. So they even lost their foot-traffic business.

By the time they figured out their mistake, it was too late. It was burned in the community's mind that this was NOT where you wanted to shop.

Of course, they screamed and ranted about how they were being persecuted by people not spending their money at their shop, how they were being "attacked" for their beliefs by the kids going to McDonald's instead of their shop.

IDIOTS! They had it made. But they had to open their traps and spew hate on their own customer base. They could have been in business for another 40 years! That school expanded a couple of years later to add another full building and a further 500 kids, merging with the city's public school system, which FURTHER would have increased their customer-base.

SMH.

JCPenney tried to stop bullsh**ting customers and it backfired. They said no more sales, they’re just going to price everything low, because pretty much all sales at department stores are lies anyway. You’re not really getting 70% off, the retail price was deliberately set stupid high to convince you it was a great deal. But the discount price is the actual value of it.
So yeah JCPenney’s heart was in the right place but ultimately it failed because customers are really that dumb and would rather be lied to.

Sears ended their catalog/mail order business in 1993. For over 100 years they had sold everything from hubcaps to houses via mail order and shipped them all over the country.

Amazon was founded in 1994.

An A&W burger company tried to outsell McDonald's 1/4pounder with a 1/3pounder but Americans thought 1/3 was less than 1/4 so it failed really fast.

My hometowns shopping mall and movie theater made a rule that no one under 18 could enter after 3pm without a parent present. This included the week and weekend.

You know how malls survive without teenagers with disposable income? They don't.

in my hometown, a group of coffee shops and other small businesses didnt like the loud noise and smoke from busses coming and going all day because the bus terminal was right around the corner from them. they complained about it, they moved the terminal somewhere else. not long after, they realized (too late) that most of their business came from people waiting for the bus or just stepping out the bus. the place is a wasteland now

One time Red Lobster offered an unlimited king crab leg deal, cause they brought the servings out slowly and were like 'nobody is gonna sit there for 6 hours and just eat king crab legs'.

Actually, lots of people did. So many they lost millions.

In 1998 Yahoo refused to buy Google for $1 million.

In 2002 Yahoo offered to buy Google for $3 billion, but Google wanted $5 billion. Yahoo refused the offer.

In 2006 Yahoo was to buy Facebook for $1.1 billion, but Yahoo's Ceo lowered it to $800 million and Facebook backed out.

In 2008 Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, but Yahoo refused.

In 2016 Verizon bought Yahoo for $4.6 billion.

Circuit City. Major retail chain in the 1980s that collapsed under mismanagement. It’s arguably biggest blunder was firing all of their experienced, better paid workers for cheaper inexperienced ones. Apparently selling merchandise and keeping customers happy is important in the retail business. Who knew?

There was a donut shop by my high school. Opened at 6am and closed at 5pm so students would be there every day before school started at 7:30 and after school ended at 2:15. They changed their hours to 8am-3pm and couldn’t make anymore money. They shut down a few months after the change.

Steve Ballmer nearly killed Microsoft. He thought smart phones were stupid. Thought the cloud was dumb. And did a few more things that were just egregiously stupid and took on a lot of debt. Their new CEO is doing a great job though.

I don’t know if they’re gone but SKYPE sh*t their pants during the race they had market lead and ten years of practice in.

Then covid hit and everyone was stuck in doors but wanted to still talk face to face zoom popped up while Skype was cleaning up in the bathroom.

They didn't bankrupt themselves but they made a major competitor...

Sony built a disk drive console prototype for Nintendo... But nintendo didn't see the point in having disc media.. So sony created playstation, since they already invented the technology.

My Pillow's CEO is quickly running his company into the ground as we speak...

I got a fun one. You know how on shark tank they always introduce Kevin O'Leary as having made his fortune selling a educational games company?

He single handedly killed the learning games industry (those Carmen san Diego type games that were real popular in the early 00's) by forcing the devs to churn them out faster and cheaper at the cost of quality, slowly killing the market, and he also nearly bankrupted Mattel when they acquired his company.

Quiznos.

Corporate office decided to buy the vendors, and then contract all of the franchises to only buy materials from Corporate with a price hike.

The margins got way too high and all of the stores went out of business. They shot themselves straight in the foot.

Nokia. Never made the transition to smartphone, now it's as good as dead.

Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion and sold it for $3 million 6 years later

Barnes and Noble. They just kept making bigger stores with less and less books.

Toys R Us. Toys R Us was actually doing fine. It was venture capitalists going in and loading TRU with debt to make it look like it was losing money. Victim of the game.