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Market Leaders that Went Under
I'm looking for a list of big firms that went under, i.e. either they went bankrupt or out of business in some sense. I'm interested especially in firms that succumbed to ordinary market forces so Texaco which went bankrupt due to a lawsuit doesn't count and neither does Enron. Famous names that once dominated their field are ideal. Examples so far include:
KMart
Pan Am
Atari
Penn Central
Polaroid
Comments are open for your suggestions. Thanks in advance.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on August 16, 2006 at 07:15 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Visicalc.
Wordperfect.
Compuserve.
Commodore.
Zenith Tv.All American tv brands.
Posted by: Salvador at Aug 16, 2006 7:49:40 AM
Atari is still around and so, of course, is KMart. KMart has gone through bankruptcy re-organization, but then, so too has pretty much the entire U.S. airline industry. In fact KMart was healthy enough to manage to buy Sears.
In the computer industry, companies didn't go bankrupt, but they vanished when bought out. So Compaq bought DEC which, in turn, was bought by HP. There are only bits and pieces of the two former dominant companies remaining inside HP.
Posted by: Slocum at Aug 16, 2006 7:53:16 AM
Woolworth
W.T. Grant (?) (think the initials are correct)
S.S. Kresge (unless it merged)--not sure about Grant
Posted by: Bill Stepp at Aug 16, 2006 8:00:18 AM
You'd have to put Kodak on that list.
Posted by: John Hawkins at Aug 16, 2006 8:12:11 AM
American Motors Corporation
RKO Pictures
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 16, 2006 8:16:41 AM
RKO's not perfect because of the Paramount antitrust suit, among other things, though.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 16, 2006 8:18:20 AM
Woolworth still operates in Germany.
Other retailers:
Montgomery Ward
Heilig-Meyers
Service Merchandise
And for fun:
Walmart (Germany, South Korea) :)
Posted by: Andy at Aug 16, 2006 8:19:05 AM
You'd have to put Kodak on that list.
Posted by: John Hawkins at Aug 16, 2006 8:19:08 AM
Mergers and buyouts make this sort of thing complicated to score, though.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 16, 2006 8:20:17 AM
Paul Ormerod ("Why Most Things Fail") has written on this and he mentions research by Hannah and Fligstein. Enough to find those papers? World’s largest industrial companies in 1912 included Briansk Rail and Engineering Russia), Hohenlohe Iron and Steel (Germany), Central Leather and also Cudhay Packing in the US.
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Aug 16, 2006 8:20:39 AM
It used to be that there were frozen yogurt all over the place, at least here in Southern Cal. I think the big chain was TCBY (out of Little Rock?). I haven't seen a TCBY in a while.
Posted by: cactus at Aug 16, 2006 8:22:44 AM
General motors ( er... not yet)
Posted by: alejo at Aug 16, 2006 8:23:03 AM
National Steel
US Steel is still major, but nowhere near the market dominating force it used to be. Antitrust basically failed against it, but time and competitors didn't.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 16, 2006 8:28:29 AM
Western Union
Posted by: S Harbour at Aug 16, 2006 8:37:33 AM
McDonnell Douglas was about to go bankrupt when it merged with Boeing.
In recent years, basically every single large specialty music and film retailer has gone bankrupt, some multiple times. Tower Records twice, Musicland (which owned Suncoast and Sam Goody), TransWorld Entertainment (f.y.e., Coconuts Music and Movies, Strawberries Music, Wherehouse, and others, which recently acquired Musicland), and a few others. They have mostly reorganized, merged, or sold. It's a case of the industry itself facing problems from online sales, downloading, big-box discounters, etc.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 16, 2006 8:37:46 AM
Western Union
Posted by: S Harbour at Aug 16, 2006 8:38:22 AM
Western Union
Posted by: S Harbour at Aug 16, 2006 8:38:33 AM
Clayton Christensen wrote a whole book of examples: The Innovator's Dilemma. I remember examples from the disk drive and steam-shovel industries but there were several others. His overall point was that big market-leading firms fail because they fail to innovate enough.
Posted by: Seth Roberts at Aug 16, 2006 8:39:17 AM
Western Union
Posted by: S Harbour at Aug 16, 2006 8:39:24 AM
American Motors Corporation 1954-1987
TWA bankrupt acquired by Anerican Airlines
Posted by: joan at Aug 16, 2006 8:41:47 AM
DEC was bought by HP rather than going broke, but had been pretty much dismembered or closed down by that point. It was the second largest computer company, and the leader in minicomputers.
Posted by: Tom Davies at Aug 16, 2006 8:49:49 AM
Western Union still exists, though I think all it does now is money transfers. WordPerfect is also around (it was bought by Corel years ago).
International Harvester was once the premier name in farm equipment. A few decades ago, it took a bigh strike and split into two parts, one making farm equipment and the other long ldistance trucks (Navistar). At least one of the parts "went under" (though I don't know if it went out of business right away or was bought by someone else and continued or was bought by someone else and died by degrees). I think the latter is what happened to American Motors. It was bought by Chrysler, which continued some of the AMC cars under the name American Eagle. But I don't think they make them anymore. Of course, the major reason Chrsyler bought AMC was to get the Jeep brand, which AMC had acquired by previously buying the Jeep corporation.
Posted by: Roger Sweeny at Aug 16, 2006 8:51:01 AM
Johns Manville, Eagle-Picher, Raybestos-Manhatten and a host of industrial/construction product companies disappeared into the asbestos void.
MBH
Posted by: M B Hallwig at Aug 16, 2006 8:54:13 AM
In the UK, MG-Rover have recently collapsed. They were the heir to the volume-car business of British Leyland, the other bits of which are now largely owned by Ford (Jaguar, Land Rover) and BMW (Mini).
Posted by: mikef at Aug 16, 2006 9:12:05 AM
What happened to the original 12 companies in the DJIA?
Company....................... What Became of It
American Cotton Oil............ Distant ancestor of Bestfoods
American Sugar................. Evolved into Amstar Holdings
American Tobacco ............Broken up in 1911 antitrust action
Chicago Gas ................Absorbed by Peoples Gas, 1897
Distilling & Cattle Feeding Whiskey trust evolved into Millennium Chemical
General Electric ...........Going strong and still in the DJIA
Laclede Gas Active.......... removed from DJIA in 1899
National Lead ..............Today's NL Industries removed from DJIA in 1916
North American Utility...... combine broken up in 1940s
Tennessee Coal & Iron ........Absorbed by U.S. Steel in 1907
U.S. Leather ................(preferred) Dissolved in 1952
U.S. Rubber Became Uniroyal........ now part of Michelin
When Charles Dow created the Dow Jones Industrial Average, first published on May 26, 1896, it consisted of a dozen stocks.
Only one of the original 12, General Electric, is in the average today. And even GE dropped out for a while -- deleted in 1898 but back nine years later as a replacement for Tennessee Coal & Iron.
U.S. Steel, run by tycoon J.P. Morgan, swallowed Tennessee Coal in a unique power play, according to historian Robert Sobel. In the panic of 1907, Mr. Morgan agreed to rescue the economy; President Theodore Roosevelt agreed not to object to the acquisition.
Several companies in the 1896 average are ancestors of firms active today (see table). American Tobacco was broken up in 1911 but was the progenitor of such companies as Fortune Brands and R.J. ReynoldsTobacco. Distilling & Cattle Feeding Co. became Distilling Co. of America, and later Millennium Chemical.
One original listing, U.S. Leather, was a preferred stock -- a hybrid between a stock and a bond. Back in 1896, common stocks were considered highly speculative, Mr. Sobel says. Leather, incidentally, wasn't just used for clothing back then: Thick leather bands were used for power transmission in factories.
American Sugar evolved into Amstar Holdings, which sold its sugar business to Britain's Tate & Lyle PLC and eventually became part of Sweden's Assa Abloy.
Over the years the number of components included in the average has increased from 12 to 20 to 30 as the U.S. economy has expanded. The Dow's focus has shifted from agricultural products and basic materials such as coal, iron, lead, rubber and leather to technology companies, financial services providers, manufacturers, and retailers
Posted by: spencer at Aug 16, 2006 9:13:35 AM
