La Redoute: the €1 sale that ended Kering's 20-year mail-order bet
France's catalogue-shopping institution lost money every year as sales fell 10%; in 2014 Kering recapitalized it, then sold it to its own managers for €1.
Read the casemistake.clubA CASESTUDIES.CHAT ARCHIVE
Learn from mistakes.
Preferably not your own.
Business failures, costly decisions and the lessons they leave behind.
The full archive, in the appPublished cases
2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDSingtel's fixed-voice outage cut emergency calls for 500,000 users and drew a S$1M fine
A shared firewall failed under a traffic spike, cutting Singtel's fixed-voice service and emergency calls for about 500,000 users — worth a S$1M fine.
Read the caseChinese Estates lost HKD 1.38B on Evergrande shares — a 12-year bet ended in fire sale
Joseph Lau's investment firm sold 108.9 million Evergrande shares at a loss of HKD 1.38B, ending a 12-year relationship with the developer.
Read the caseKalyan Silks' Onam ad promised ₹1,500 back; fine print made it ₹4,500 more spending
A 'spend ₹3,000, get ₹1,500' Onam offer delivered coupons locked behind ₹4,500 of future purchases. An 81-year-old litigated — and won ₹31,500.
Read the caseQatar Foundation fired Sidra's hospital builder and won QR1bn ($275m) in arbitration
QF hired OHL-Contrack in 2009 to build Sidra Medicine, terminated the £1.9bn contract for delays in 2014, and a decade later won QR1bn in ICC damages.
Read the caseRichemont forgave €100M of Delvaux's debt — the price of a bad Asian bet
Bought in 2021 and kept alive by a €90M loan, Delvaux had €100.6M of debt and ~€80M of accumulated losses when Richemont converted the loan to equity.
Read the casePG&E poisoned a town's water with chromium — $333M class-action settlement
PG&E dumped hexavalent chromium into unlined ponds for 14 years. The Erin Brockovich case ended with a $333M settlement and $750M+ in cleanup.
Read the caseVincent & Co sold ₩97M 'Swiss' watches assembled in a Korean basement for ₩100K
A fabricated 'century-old Swiss brand' fooled Korean celebrities and chaebol heirs. The watches were made in Siheung City. The mastermind got four years.
Read the casePatreon moved fees to patrons — $1 became $1.38, and creators watched pledges evaporate
Patreon announced fees would shift to patrons, making a $1 pledge cost $1.38. Creators revolted as pledges vanished — and Patreon reversed in a week.
Read the caseFreedom 251 sold a ₹251 smartphone to 70 million registrants — then the arrests began
Ringing Bells priced a smartphone below component cost, collected money from buyers and distributors, delivered a fraction — and ended in fraud arrests.
Read the caseA chemist forgot to wash his hands — and discovered a sweetener that survived a ban
In 1879, Constantin Fahlberg forgot to wash his hands after a day in the lab. His dinner bread tasted sweet. He had discovered saccharin.
Read the caseCool Kicks resold $500K of train-stolen Nikes — its founder was arrested live on WhatNot
LAPD raided celeb-faved LA resale shop Cool Kicks, arresting founder Adeel Shams and seizing $500K of Nike stolen off trains.
Read the caseRichemont held Shanghai Tang for 19 years — a Chinese luxury brand no Chinese buyer wanted
Shanghai Tang was China's first global luxury brand. Richemont held it 19 years; it never turned a profit, and was sold for no material impact.
Read the caseASX spent five years and A$250M on a blockchain CHESS — then wrote it off
Australia's stock exchange spent five years and a quarter of a billion dollars replacing its core settlement system with blockchain, then scrapped it.
Read the caseAnglo Irish Bank's property bet cost Ireland €34.7B
Anglo Irish Bank lent 100% loan-to-value to property developers. When the bubble burst, one bank alone cost Ireland €34.7B.
Read the caseA 'one candy replaces a plate of vegetables' claim jailed two Vietnamese livestreamers
Kera vegetable candy was sold on a fiber claim a lab test could not support: two Vietnamese livestreamers were fined, then prosecuted and detained.
Read the caseMizuho's eight system failures in 2021 drew two FSA orders and resignations
After a ¥400B core-system renewal, Mizuho Bank suffered eight IT failures in 2021; the FSA issued two business improvement orders and top executives resigned.
Read the caseiRhythm's $45M settlement over Zio AT marketing to high-risk patients
iRhythm marketed its Zio AT monitor as near real-time for high-risk patients without FDA clearance, then settled the securities class action for $45 million.
Read the caseKYB stored 5,756 dies at 167 suppliers — including tooling they paid to renew
The shock-absorber giant kept tooling warehoused free at 167 suppliers — even dies they had funded themselves — until the JFTC made storage a bill KYB pays.
Read the caseWish went from a $24 IPO to a $173M fire sale in three years
ContextLogic's Wish app IPO'd at $24 in 2020 on huge ad spend. The customers never came back; in 2024 the whole business sold for $6.50 a share.
Read the case