Sep 19, 2026
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10 min read
Self-storage facilities nearly doubled in twenty years. The company built to solve that problem went bankrupt anyway, and the reason is in two price indexes.
8 min read
Its CEO stood up in front of his own managers and said the industry expected the company to die. Then he explained the decision that saved it, and it was a retreat.
11 min read
It opened a hundred consumer stores in 1999 and nearly died. What came out the other side holds contractor licenses and sells builders a schedule.
9 min read
It earned $671,000 on $3 billion of sales, on purpose. In 2024 it bought a rival that had sold itself to private equity and gone bankrupt.
Free coffee, free popcorn, and live baby chicks in the spring. The strategy is to make a farm supply store somewhere people want to spend an hour.
Sporting goods stores in Memphis stock Dallas Cowboys gear. A Kansas gift shop built 300 stores on that mistake, and the moat is not the idea. It is being willing to pay for it.
It opened stores in small Southern towns that the big chains ignored, then went private when the public market stopped rewarding bookselling.
New and used books sit on the same shelf, side by side. That one decision explains how a bookstore survived the company that killed bookstores.
There is an IMAX theater inside a furniture store. Also a ropes course. People visit without intending to buy anything, which is the whole idea.
