alt Hacker NewsI just don’t understand why a company with $95m in sales would steal $200k. That’s a fraction of a percent of sales for the year.
There’s now a boycott against them that will easily cost them more than that.
If the case is as this blog says, it cannot be hard to find a lawyer to do this one pro bono. Breach of contract is one of the few things in America where you can sue for your legal fees. If you take over a business you assume it’s contracts even though your name wasn’t on them. You gain anything the business owns but a consignment shop doesn’t own the inventory.
BAM is going to lose millions and for what? Is this article just wrong on substantial facts? Simple greed wouldn’t explain this as it will almost certainly lead to far less money, even in a short period, than returning it.
Something must be missing.
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I agree with you. It makes no rational sense for the corporation to act this way. I can see how they end up losing a court case but can't explain why they don't pay up.
It sounds like the first franchise collapsed owing money. I expect the company had created strong incentives for employees to claw that back. Someone has followed those incentives against the interest of the corporation. This happens all the time although in this case they break the law.
Eventually there's a lawsuit and a lot more people get involved including people without any incentive to do illegal things. However those involved originally present some varnished version of the truth (to avoid getting fired!) the company trusts this version of events. They decide to fight the case in court.
Then they lose the case. Those who decided to fight it realise they made a bad choice and they now look bad too. It's at this point that the weirdest thing happens. Why do they choose to close the store instead of paying up? My guess is that it became personal for someone.
My take is that this all comes down to the stores being franchises.
Yes, franchisor hold a lot of power, and in the big picture the franchisees are small owners and a move like this ($200k of merch they haven't paid a dime for) can affect the PnL quite a lot on the local level. It seems like the average Bricks and Minifigs franchise store has annual revenue of just $600k. At that's revenue. Another search shows that their margins are around 10%-20%
If these franchise owners managed to pull of this, and sell the collection for $200k on top of the expected annual revenue, that would put their store margin for that year around 45%-55%!
I'm guessing Bricks and Minifigs, the corporation, just assumed this would fly quietly under the radar, and let their franchisees.
I think it just comes down to greed. A couple of franchisees figured they could make a killing, and become one of the most profitable franchise stores with no effort.
Because this isn't the first collection they've stolen from someone, presumably.
It's a lot easier to become a really successful company if you can keep your inventory costs down. Perhaps by investing in local law enforcement instead, to make sure no one looks too close at said inventory?
Donald Trump is famous for not paying even really cheap contractor bills, because he knew he could get away with it.
I have a family member who works in estate planning. From all the stories he's told me, a lot of wealthy people compulsively screw over people / refuse to follow the contract they agreed to / etc, simply because they can and know that it is too expensive for most people to file a lawsuit.