quote:

Yesterday Gibson Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Known for its famous guitars, the company is in a similar situation to Toys 'R' Us, owing as much as $500 million to creditors including private equity firms like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Silver Point Capital and Melody Capital Partners. It took on significant debt -- which is about to mature -- to finance a series of acquisitions to build up a Gibson Innovations electronics business that it's now in the process of separating from. Other than buying a stake in TEAC, Bloomberg reports it bought Philips line of headphones and speakers, and until recently had close business ties with Onkyo.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/02...ars-bankruptcy/

unfortunately, they're still going to keep making KRK speakers

Growth for the sake of growth. MUST GROW.

I do not get the obsession with growth.

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Trudat.

It's a totally insane cycle where the share price is based on endless growth, and if you miss that growth target, the shares become worth less. How about not anticipating massive growth and keeping a share price to actual tangible metrics like sales, profit and assets?

Gibson also got fucked the same way Toys R Us did though; leveraged buyout and acquisitions with all the debt put on the company balance sheet and VC guys makes tidy management fees regardless if the company dies.

How about we stop fuelling the world with greedy parasitic gambling addicts.

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If you mean in the literal sense (i.e. actual gamblers on cards, GGs, etc) it's always perplexed me. I have a friend over here that's very wealthy and he loses scary amounts of money gambling, at one point it got the level he was going to be in trouble and if it wasn't for his wife cutting off the tap, they could have lost it all. We'd go to restaurants and he's be checking his phone or looking for a TV screen to check anyone of 5 different mediums of betting (NBA, MLB, Horses, Boxing, Football etc).

I usually watch british TV channles while I'm working out and it's amazing how much gambling is advertised on TV.

If you mean in the figurative sense, i.e. shares, then IMO it's all just designed to move money around in complex ways, becuase the more convoluted you make a system, the more ways there are to game it. Keep a system simple and you can't really make money off it unless it produces something tangible. Make it extremely complex and you can make money off functions that have nothing to do with actual value (I still have no idea why shorting stocks is legal - it was banned after the crash and companies actually had to do well to grow and it in large part saved the bulk of the economy trading. Betting on something going down, can make it go down and people with a big enough position can self fulfill their prophecies, regardless of the company health).

I was talking mainly about shares, investors and the resulting demand for growth and dividends. It removes the core nature of a business and turns it into a money making machine, for a few guys that are already wealthy. You may think 'so what', but consider that this is why pharma is pouring billions into boner pills, and fiddy bucks into cancer cures.

It'll take a reputable brand like Gibson, and turn it into a box shifting mega corporation.

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Yeah, totally agree. I think you and I are both business owners, where tangible revenue and profit are finite elements. I have a friend that's just become a tech billionaire and they're terrified because the company, although popular, isn't actually worth close to 10% of that when you ad up the assets etc - it's all speculation and that kicks off the endless growth pressure cycle.

That's really what happened with Gibson. Amazing handmade guitars, then mass produced junk (especially in the last few years), then they started selling monitors, headphones, and even DACs. I don't know why companies have to become these massive conglomerates in areas that they have little expertise. I'm all for vertical integration, but it would make more sense to invest in their products that try to sell you an entire studio (especially when you make monitors as shit as KRK).

It also kills innovation and has introduced us to the painful world of iteration.

Why release a product that could have been, when you can release what it was in a beta phase and make the cvnts pay for upgrades over it's lifespan?

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Oh man, that was literally Pioneer's business model, except paying for upgrades meant buying a whole new Mk2 or mk3 model for even more money, just to get the features that should have been in there from the start, if they'd have waited 6 months to get it right.

I hope other people realize it was a cautionary tale of how to drive your business and reputation in to the ground.