Business Nightmares With Evan Davis

I must say the Hoover free flights disaster proved to be of great benefit to us. We needed a wet and dry vacuum cleaner anyway and we persisted with the labyrinthine process Hoover had put in place to obtain flights but eventually got away and had a fab holiday in Florida. Whilst there we bought a timeshare apartment in Sarasota which we kept for nine years, making many long-standing American friends plus making a $2,000 profit when we sold it and best of all - we're still using the wet and dry vacuum cleaner. Result for us, shame about Hoover UK.

Evan,

Didn't one of our greatest companies, (that former FTSE bell-weather) ICI plc, get it terribly wrong?

They lost their competitive edge mainly because of the low-wage competition from the far east and from a handful of more efficient western companies.

They put a far too lengthy accounting depreciation period on their plants and equipment, eventually and predictably resulting in enormous insupportable maintenance costs, as an 'internal' mistake. Were too slow in making their considerably overmanned staff redundant when it became apparent in the early 1960s, and employed an over abundant number of highly paid chartered accountants and other technical staffs. They are now a mere 'division' of the company of which was once a division of their own, Nobel. It was a complete disaster for their shareholders, staff, and the country's industrial reputation in my eyes.

Thank you for restoring my status in the family with the Mini Story. I worked for Ford in 60s and we couldn't understand why we were paying taxes on our profits to subsidise the Mini competition with our Anglia. My kids all thought this was an old buffer's urban myth.



Have you got the one about Monsanto and Glyphosate (Roundup). Thecut the price (by about 25% I think) to squeeze out the competition, but they weren't the lowest cost producer! I worked for ICI Plant Protection then and we and may others carried on competeing with our own versions. All Monsanto did was reduce the value of the market and their profits accordingly

This looks like a very interesting series... I am currently reading a lot of case studies and literature on the same topics. "If You Build It, Will They Come?" for example is one book that talks about taking products from concept/idea to market.

I live in the US now but is there any liklihood that this will make its way onto BBC America?

Hi Evan

May I add this to your stories - but this time success rising from the ashes of disaster.

In the sixties I worked at Thomas Hedley's (later Proctor & Gamble) factory. At this time they were making a soap powder called 'Cheer'. Coloured a pale sort of orange, the public hated it. When I as there they were giving away an assortment of free gifts to try to persaude people to buy it, all without success.

Eventually, it was withdrawn. However, removing the orange dye, flaking a few green specks of a P&G best seller into it - and bingo! Fairy Snow was born and became a runaway success.

There was a failure whilst I was there. Do you remember Camay?

I just watched the first show in the series. I liked the insight it provided. Coming from Silicon Valley where you are dealing with the difficulty of inventing the future on a daily basis it was interesting to see the examples presented. Some I remember watching unfold whiel others were new to me. It will great to see the balance of the series.



More than the show I like Evan's warning about not just laughing and feeling smug. Some things are a lot less obvious in the heat of battle than they are after the dust has settled.

Are you going to cover the mid-1970's fiasco, when a tobacco company tried to substitute tobacco with wood chips impregnated with nicotine in their cigarettes. They ended up having to incinerate their stocks.

How about mentioning the business disaster of the E-mail Plus? Or is the BBC perputrating the myth of Alan Sugar being a good businessman?

How about the business failure of Rachel Elnaugh from Dragon's Den?

The "disaster" that I remember .... painfully .... was when Sony brought out the Video 8 system video recorder. It was supposed to take over from the Betamax system & VHS. It was apparently a much superior system, with the option to record digital quality music on each of the 8 tracks, but failed to take off in the market place. Unfortunately, I had bought one .... for about £1000!! Ouch!

I watched the recent programme with interest and it was very enlightening. One thought that struck me was Coca Cola and Persil who had an obsession with the competition and how badly it affected their perspective. Translate that to the current international situation where America and Europe seem rather obsessed with what China are doing more than anything else. Could be similar outcomes for them in the not too distant future.

How amazing -- that was me on the phone in the Hutchinson office during the clip about the Rabbit debacle! Back in 1992/3 if memory serves me. Just the two of us answering the customer calls back then although it did get busier ... honest!

Steph.

Since I saw the Apple logo in the preamble to this series, I trust Davis will be giving Jobs & Co both barrels.

Evan,

I enjoyed the first episode. This is the kind of quality programming a lot of us would rather see on the box!



Thanks.

quality of the programme and relevance of its lessons in todays business world, out ways most of the wasted hours people spend in business school classes, it was so educative , informative and beneficial. thanks evans

Terrific programme, much spoilt by that awful music. Why, these days, does one have to struggle to hear what is being said through the loud, interfering din?

Don't the producers know they lose much of their audience, through sheer frustration, before the programme really gets started?

Good idea for a programme except for including the Ratner story. Your researchers should have told you that every book, case study and Ratner himself have beaten the hell out of the story. He spent 5 years going to every dinner in the UK to be an after dinner speaker to tell people how stupid he had been. Surely you could have found enough other morons to highlight.



The only other joke was that when he tried to launch his online business using Indian investors, the owners of the name Ratner stopped him. He forgot to do the homework. That's why it's called Geraldonline.



Why not focus on Branson thinking he could beat Coke and Pepsi with a virgin cola ? Surely the ultimate folly ?

hi Evan. Great programme. Just wondering where do you get your shirts from?

I hope you're not going miss the Marconi collapse. Lord Weinstock in 30?yrs slowly carefully built an empire with £4Bn in the bank and it took two whiz kids to bankrupt it in less than 18 months!

I liked this programme but I'm confused. During the Gerald Ratner story it clearly said that the business was LOOSING £350,000 a year. Then shortly after one of the screen graphics said that in the first year Ratner took over he doubled PROFITS. The company wasn't making any profit, it was loosing money ......... am I being thick?

The content of this programme was fascinating and informative, and Evan's presenting style excellent, as ever. What a shame that this programme was so spoilt by the the excessively rapid scene changes, camera angles zooming in and out, shots looking through moving busses, peoples names whizzing in and out etc. I agree with David Loynes, it became a very frustrating programme to watch and by the end of it I experienced a nauseated feeling akin to being travel sick! Please can the producers allow us to concentrate on the content of the programme and not turn what would be excellent viewing into an endurance test. We don't need bangs and whizzes to make the programme interesting, it only serves to detract from the real draw of this programme, the content!

Enjoying the show. It would be interesting to quiz James Dyson about the investment, launch & demise of the Dyson CR01 Contrarotator washing machine.

We watched the second episode last night and, with reference to the Ratner's story, both my wife and I came to the same conclusion. If the reporter from The Mirror hadn't been so keen to get himself a scoop (on a speech which was only intended for a bunch of business bigwigs), then everyone would have gone along happily and hundreds of people wouldn't have lost their jobs.

Freedom of the press is all very well but facetious comments made to an invited audience shouldn't be treated as if they were for public consumption. It's not like he was doing an Andy Gray, after all.

Please, Mr Davis, tell me why it is the producers of your programme feel it necessary to have constant music playing in the background, or should that be foreground. If you'd like us to listen to what you're saying perhaps it would be a good idea to drop the thoroughly annoying and distracting music track. What you have to say is interesting enough, you don't need to try to make it 'more exciting' by pumping out cheap shopping mall music.

I did enjoy "Business Nightmares", perhaps too much. Perhaps a follow-up series, "Business Euphoria" would be worthwhile? I'm tempted to suggest cases of when decision-makers have been rational and things have gone well - but I suppose that isn't particularly good entertainment. How about cases like Honda entering the US, whose strategy was to sell to motorbike dealers (allegedly), until (allegedly) a Sears executive stopped a Honda rep in Los Angeles to ask if they could stock the nice little scooters?

Enjoy the content of the show. I however find the production garish and annoying. I think the folk who watch this show aren't as bored by business/economics as the BBC thinks, and thus don't need the constant bed of music drowning out the relevant comments of those interviewed. Shame, it's barely watchable for me now.

Brilliant series :D , just like 'food that makes billions.....' , well done bbc, more please! :)

This is a great series. As a new business person whose trying to be successful I find it really educational. To learn by the mistakes of others - and realise that the people behind the huge companies are just human like me, whew!

The CocaCola 'nightmare' should be a warning to Twinings who have changed their basic Earl Grey tea, at present, only in teabag form, to add a lemon flavour. The comments on their blog are 100% negative. This change does not seem to have received any publicity although the new "improved" variety is replacing the original on shelves now. I would be interested in other people's views.

I'm really disappointed to see that there are only 3 episodes, please BBC do another series - I think this could have been 8-10 weeks long, easy! More........!!

Hello Evan



I watched, enjoyed and found the programmes extremely interesting.



I have just sat exams based on business performance, risk and control strategies and the programmes helped to put some of the content I was studying into very real context.



I have recommended other people who would benefit from the case studies to watch the programmes and am shocked to find within a week of the last show being aired is already unavailable on BBC I-Player.



Please can you advise if they are scheduled to be reshown on any BBC channel in the near future, or are they going to be re-instated on I-Player as the demand for a program like this comes from word of mouth and recommendations?

Hi Evan,



I greatly enjoy any programme radio/TV that you are involved with. You have a cheery yet super-effective way of getting business leaders to come clean - as you said it's not your job to make fools of them, nor to stop them making fools of themselves.



I apologise up-front becasue this comment is about your 'other business show'. Amongst others, the CEO of Travis Perkins, Geoff Cooper, was on your panel. You raised the issue of executive pay. He came back with the tired old cliche of having to pay the best to get the best..blah, blah - and all a bit smug.



But, when you asked him what he earnt he said he didn't know!! Brilliant, you didn't trap him, you simply allowed him to defeat his own argument. I noticed you picked up on his claim that he gave his wife his pay check unopened at the end of each month. I smiled as broadly as you did at that incredible comment.



Keep it going Evan, you're a people's champion if ever I saw one. You, Pesto and Steph should meet up in a N. London restauarant and form a new party one day. I'm serious.