Icicle rescued Carven from bankruptcy in 2018 — by 2024 it lost €14.4M on €7.3M of sales
Three creative directors in three years, each relaunch resetting the last. The filed accounts show the couture house losing twice what it earns.
Fall lesenmistake.clubEIN CASESTUDIES.CHAT-ARCHIV
Aus Fehlern lernen.
Am besten nicht den eigenen.
Unternehmerische Misserfolge, teure Entscheidungen und ihre Lehren.
Das gesamte Archiv in der AppArtikel gibt es auf Englisch und vereinfachtem Chinesisch. Titel und Texte bleiben in ihrer veröffentlichten Sprache.
Veröffentlichte Fälle
2,000 VERÖFFENTLICHTE FÄLLE · REGELMÄSSIG AKTUALISIERTBand-Aid was invented by a J&J employee for his wife — and became a billion-dollar brand
Earle Dickson, a J&J cotton buyer, invented the adhesive bandage for his wife. The company didn't see the market. The Band-Aid became a billion-dollar product.
Fall lesenRJR spent $1B on a smokeless cigarette — Premier tasted foul and vanished in months
RJR spent $300M developing Premier, a heated-tobacco cigarette smokers hated. One exec said it smelled 'like a fart.' It died in 1989.
Fall lesenSears Holdings sold Sears Canada's best assets and starved the rest — 12,000 jobs lost
Sears Holdings sold Sears Canada's best assets and starved the stores. It filed for creditor protection in June 2017 and liquidated by January 2018.
Fall lesenPacket One bet on WiMAX in Malaysia — industry chose LTE, company sold at a loss
Green Packet's WiMAX arm raised hundreds of millions from SK Telecom, Qualcomm and China Mobile, then lost to LTE and was sold to Telekom Malaysia.
Fall lesenVA's $10bn health record program is heading past $48bn — Oracle's chiefs subpoenaed
The VA bought a common health record from Cerner for $10bn in 2018, paused it in 2023 after botched go-lives, and by 2026 had raised the ceiling to $27bn.
Fall lesenRetro Green Revolution: a Telegram pump cost 18 entities ₹5.7 crore and 5-year bans
Sanjay Choksis group faked volume in a dead smallcap, tipped it on Telegram and offloaded ₹2.94 crore of shares to retail — SEBI fined and banned 18 entities.
Fall lesenMorgan Wallen got suspended — and sold more records than ever
After a video of him using a racial slur, his label suspended him and radio pulled him — then his album sales more than doubled.
Fall lesenMetronet: the £17bn Tube PPP whose £2bn overrun pushed it into administration
Five blue-chip shareholders promised to renew two-thirds of the Tube; poor programme governance burned £2bn and cost taxpayers up to £410m.
Fall lesenFranklin Templeton India froze six debt funds in 2020; SEBI fined it ₹512 crore
Franklin Templeton India wound up six debt funds (~₹30,000 crore) in April 2020, locking investors; SEBI fined it ₹5 crore and ordered ₹512 crore returned.
Fall lesenIQVIA fined €5M for health-data warehouses that tracked patients without telling them
IQVIA's authorized health data warehouses skipped log reviews and MFA, never told pharmacy customers, and extracted data despite opt-outs — €5M fine.
Fall lesenCathay Pacific broke five years of Asia Miles stability with three hikes in three years
Long-haul business awards cost 40% more in three years. Then Cathay hid its award charts, and its most loyal flyers braced for unannounced cuts.
Fall lesenJust Eat Takeaway cut 800 roles in Canada after a pandemic hiring bet reversed.
SkipTheDishes and its Dutch parent slashed 800 Canadian jobs in 2024, reversing the pandemic-era expansion that made food delivery look permanently bigger.
Fall lesenGM built the world's most automated plant — and the workers shut it down
GM's Lordstown was the most automated car plant: 100 cars per hour, 36 seconds per task. Workers struck. Six of every seven Vegas was recalled.
Fall lesenRobert Gallo's HIV claim — the NIH scientist who claimed what the French already found
Gallo announced in 1984 he'd discovered the AIDS virus. It was the Pasteur Institute's strain, sent to him earlier. He shared the patent and missed the Nobel.
Fall lesenAlibaba sold Intime at a ¥9.3B loss — the end of its New Retail bet
Alibaba bought Intime in 2014, took it private in 2017, and in December 2024 agreed to sell it to Youngor for ¥7.4B — booking an expected ¥9.3B loss.
Fall lesenGrand Egyptian Museum: 33 years from announcement to a $1bn opening by the pyramids
Announced in 1992, bid out in 2002, Egypt's flagship Giza museum was only inaugurated on November 1, 2025 — decades late at well over $1 billion.
Fall lesenBritain's £2bn Emergency Services Network stalled as Motorola profited from both networks
The Home Office promised ESN would save £1bn. Ten years and £2bn spent later, Airwave still runs — and Motorola was paid to walk away.
Fall lesenDar Al Arkan share violators' SAR 1.19bn of illegal gains went back to 17,000 victims
Seventeen traders' violations around Dar Al Arkan shares cost them SAR 1.196bn of gains; in September 2025 the CMA deposited the money into victims' accounts.
Fall lesenSpeedo ended its Lochte deal after Rio police called his robbery story a fabrication
A robbery tale that police called a fabrication cost Ryan Lochte his longest sponsor and the rest of his lineup within days.
Fall lesen