Bad business examples

Lately I have come across couple of bad business examples. In one case, the boss is a moron. In another cases, good business opportunities are just not used.

Case 1
I live in a country with the whole two months of summer every year, rest of the time it's pretty much bad winter weather. I might be exaggerating now, but stay with me. During those two months, it's pretty warm in here. Yet, shops don't seem to understand it, they don't seem to know what they need to have available during these months. Couple of weeks back we wanted to go and play some volleyball but our last volley net had gone missing. So we decided to get another one. We asked two sports shops and couple of other potential places where they *could* sell the nets, but nothing. The lady from one sports shop said that the volley stuff will arrive in the end of July. Pretty much the time when the weather is starting to go to hell. Where's the logic? They could make some good additional money if they did have the nets for sale. And that's just one example.

Case 2
Travel medicine. In the end of June I wanted to get a second shot for Hepatitis (no, I don't have it, but the second shot just to prevent from ever having it) and when I called them, they answered the first possible times are available sometimes in August. I might understand it if the health insurance would cover these costs as well. But no, these shots cost money, and in these days the doctors, the state, should grab on to everything they can. Add people to travel medicine offices if required, lose the ques. Make money. Everyone will be happy. But I guess that's too high math for some.

Case 3
A friend of mine had a summer job from where he was just fired. He was paid cash, the very minimum cash one would even be ready to accept. They had a deal with the boss that they'd be paid in the end of each week. Plus they'd also get a % of the sales. They worked in a beach selling beach balls and other equipment alike. As most of the clients were tourists, they didn't always have a place to store their big beach balloons or whatever else, so the workers tried to be helpful and were ready to keep the client's stuff overnight sometimes. As a result, the boss was pissed - "Who are you supposed to listen? To me? Or the customer." The right answer in the bosses mind was of course - HE, the almighty. After another similar case, they were fired. And the next morning he wanted to talk to his other employees as well, my friend included. After a short conversation, the employees yet not fired asked why the other employees were fired. The answer came as "why the fuck should you care...you know what, you two get lost as well."

I haven't really heard about a boss worse than that. And what's more...the prices in his shop were very high anyway, which is understandable considering the location is beach and the time is summer. But his prices, well, they were even higher than you might expect from this type of thing. Plus he didn't have much of what people would have wanted to buy, he did have a lot of useless stuff. When the VAT was increased in in here by 2% in the beginning of July, he thought - oh well, the VAT is bigger now, let's add 20-30% to our prices. Make your own conclusions.
--

By the end of the day, you can see the absurdity of it all. But another thing you should see is that there are endless business opportunities for me, for you to think about and take advantage of. And if you already are or are thinking of becoming a boss for someone - don't be an ass. It doesn't pay off. Don't be a moron either, even though experience shows that moronic asses with enough energy and will power may sometimes succeed. Unfortunately.

Innovative ideas at Digital Signage Expo 2012: The annual Digital Signage Expo will be taking place at Las Vegas Convention Center from March 6 to 9, 2012. If you haven't heard about it before, it'..

Time to Perform - new brand campaign for Bridgestone: Introducing your brand as well as keeping your brand name known throughout the years is important for any major brand. Especially if your brand is all..

How to Create a Business Plan for a Small Startup Business: If you are thinking about starting a small startup business, then you are headed in the right direction given that employment opportunities are limited nowadays.

Innovation at its best: The campaign is set to last for 12 months and meant to celebrate innovation.

Rich media content increases views: It's time to capture and archive your communications messages through video and audio production, media tours and webcasts.

What to Research when You Want to Sell Your Products onto a Foreign Market: Exporting your items to a different country often seems like a great solution to gaining more money by enhancing your customer palette. Things are how..

What to Research when You Want to Open a Manufacturing Plant in another Country: More and more entrepreneurs try to capitalize on the opportunities presented by globalization. They for instance transcend boundaries to gain an enhanced access to natural resources, to hire the best skilled staff members, to get access to a greater marke

What Kind of Leader Should I Be?: Across the years I have stumbled upon numerous sources identifying and indicating specific types of leadership styles. While the academia has been rapid in developing these styles, practitioners find it more difficult to become integrated within the lines

What to Pay attention to when Switching Jobs: We get jobs so that we can maintain a certain life style, through the paychecks we get. But what if an employer makes us an offer for an even bigger paycheck? Isn’t it only natural that we get the job that pays more? Well, there’s actually more to it than

How to Retain the Best Staff Members: In the contemporaneous business climate, economic agents no longer compete just for customers, but also for the most skilled staff members. This featu..

Getting the Support of Communities: The modern day organization is no longer solely focused on the registration of income. While increased financial results remain the central objective ..

Marketing to Children – Should I Do It?: First rule in business is that the main goal should be maximizing profits. Then, you wonder how far you can go with that. Well, should a business advertise to children?!

HRM in the 21st century – make it or break it (II) - Selection: As in the case of online recruitment, the main objective of your process should be to obtain a maximum of results (a.k.a. the best employees for the position you have advertised) at the lowest cost. Because of the Internet, that is now a much simpler proc

HRM in the 21st century – make it or break it (I) - Recruitment: The Internet makes everything easier, including the human resources management. Or at least that would be the general idea. We have grown with the idea that the Internet helps by decreasing costs related to the recruitment and selection processes, by maki

The logics of success: Self-help industry is there to make money. Nobody wants to pay for something way too obvious.

What keeps you from success? Fear, greed and lack of discipline: There are two types of fear when doing business. One is the general fear of trying to do something new. And no, it's not bs.

Planning is nice but insufficient: We are living in an age where there are more business planners than "business doers"

Keep trying - and one day you'll succeed: Don't quit

PR lessons by the industry professionals: If you are looking for ideas on how not to answer emails, here are sample real-life samples.

Why would you need a short url service?: I never understood the reason to have a short url for some of my already existing not too long urls. Then came twitter....

The type of service I want: What is good service to you might not be as good to someone else, but there are some things we canb agree on.

Forget multitasking, stick to one main thing: We all like to work on different things at the same time, but is it really such a good idea?

Bad business examples

Subscribe to Business Thoughts

About Business Thoughts