Failure is a word loaded with meaning, a word that echoes when we say it. And although its connotation is negative, it is worth remembering that we are all exposed to mistakes and poor decisions. Major football signings that never quite worked out, Hollywood blockbusters that failed to earn what was expected and, of course, companies. Today, we are telling you about the 5 successful companies that failed before they triumphed.
Although Apple’s history is closely linked to the name of Steve Jobs, the truth is that he did not found the company alone. He founded it together with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne — who ended up selling his shares for 800 dollars just two weeks later — in 1976. After years of technological launches, Steve Jobs encouraged John Sculley, then president of PepsiCo, to stop selling sugared water and change the world with his brilliant ideas.
Just two years after Sculley’s arrival, and after many frictions and tensions, Steve Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT. From that moment until 1997, Apple launched products without any success, even coming close to bankruptcy.
In 1996, Gil Amelio, then CEO of Apple, bought NeXT and managed to bring Steve Jobs back to the company’s board of directors. From that moment on, a complete restructuring began, and so did the golden era that preceded the launch of the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
As a curiosity, Microsoft invested 150 million dollars in Apple to rescue it from bankruptcy in 1997. A decision that many criticised.
Marvel Comics was founded in 1939 by Martin Goodman as a comic book publisher focused on superheroes. During its early years, Marvel enjoyed moderate success with stories such as Spider-Man and X-Men. However, in the 1990s, sales plummeted and the company became heavily indebted.
Faced with this situation, Marvel filed for bankruptcy to buy itself some time to change its business model. They made some false starts, but eventually chose to create a film studio. However, they needed money to begin producing films, and to achieve this they requested substantial loans from banks, using the rights to their most important characters as collateral.
The first film produced was Blade, which cost 45 million dollars and became a massive success: it grossed three times what it had cost. In 2009, Disney acquired Marvel for 4.2 billion dollars.
The story of the world’s most famous trainers began in 1908 when Marquis Mills Converse opened his factory in Malden, USA. At the time, basketball was still a minority sport, and Converse saw its opportunity. The success of No Skid — as the first shoe was known — was only a matter of time, and they ended up becoming the main supplier for players. In 1920, No Skid was renamed All Star, and that same year Chuck Taylor joined the company.
Everything went well until 1968, when Chuck Taylor died and the company began to lose its direction, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2001. At that point, Nike bought one of its main competitors and saved this century-old company.
Starbucks was another successful company that also failed. In 2008, it even closed 7,100 coffee shops. How did it overcome this?
It was the year 2008, and Starbucks was close to dying from its own success. After 30 years of growing at a dizzying pace — even opening 1,000 coffee shops in 5 years — sales began to fall because it had lost its essence. They then closed 7,100 establishments in the United States, and that was where its resurgence began. If anyone deserves credit for that rebirth, it is Howard Schultz, the genius who was able to radically transform the company’s strategy into what we all know today.
