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Reluctant Lessons: Where Businesses Go Wrong - Rubbermaid - Episode 1
Published 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Description
I’m excited to introduce a new series on The Reluctant Entrepreneur Podcast:
Reluctant Lessons: Where Businesses Go Wrong
This series takes a different approach to business failure.
We’re not talking about fraud.
We’re not talking about scandal.
We’re talking about real businesses that made strategic decisions that, at the time, seemed reasonable… but ultimately led to significant decline, loss of control, or failure.
Because the truth is, most businesses don’t fail overnight. They fail through a series of miscalculations.
Episode 1: Rubbermaid and Walmart – A Costly Miscalculation
In this episode, we examine how a company founded in 1920 as the Wooster Rubber Company in Wooster, Ohio rose to become Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired Company… and just a few years later, was forced into a sale.
We walk through:
• The growing dependency on a single customer
• A critical miscalculation in pricing power
• The impact of rising raw material costs
• And how a $1.2 billion decline in valuation and roughly a 31% drop in stock price reflected a deeper shift in control
At its core, this episode is about one thing:
Power.
Who has it.
Who thinks they have it.
And what happens when it shifts.
If you’re building a business, scaling one, or relying heavily on a key customer, this is a story worth understanding.
Know where your power comes from.
And more importantly, know when it starts to shift.
Reluctant Lessons: Where Businesses Go Wrong
This series takes a different approach to business failure.
We’re not talking about fraud.
We’re not talking about scandal.
We’re talking about real businesses that made strategic decisions that, at the time, seemed reasonable… but ultimately led to significant decline, loss of control, or failure.
Because the truth is, most businesses don’t fail overnight. They fail through a series of miscalculations.
Episode 1: Rubbermaid and Walmart – A Costly Miscalculation
In this episode, we examine how a company founded in 1920 as the Wooster Rubber Company in Wooster, Ohio rose to become Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired Company… and just a few years later, was forced into a sale.
We walk through:
• The growing dependency on a single customer
• A critical miscalculation in pricing power
• The impact of rising raw material costs
• And how a $1.2 billion decline in valuation and roughly a 31% drop in stock price reflected a deeper shift in control
At its core, this episode is about one thing:
Power.
Who has it.
Who thinks they have it.
And what happens when it shifts.
If you’re building a business, scaling one, or relying heavily on a key customer, this is a story worth understanding.
Know where your power comes from.
And more importantly, know when it starts to shift.