Check out the biggest business comebacks

Great article on the top business comebacks of the past 20 years as seen in FastCompany.com.   Understanding how dynamic brands fail and recover is important as we are in a new market where trends shift more quickly and traditional brands have to reinvent themselves to survive.   We all need to stay in touch with our consumer and what they need from our goods, products and services, and we must change as we see the  markets change.  Understanding ones consumer is job number one, and The Page Group works hard to help you understand who your consumer is and how they connect with your brand/company. 

 

THE BIGGEST BUSINESS COMEBACKS OF THE PAST 20 YEARS

OUR VERDICT IS IN: APPLE STAGED THE MOST IMPRESSIVE RECOVERY OF THE LAST 20 YEARS. HERE ARE 19 OTHERS THAT OVERCAME HARD TIMES.

Apple: The Most Impressive Business Comeback Of The Past 20 Years

In our fast-changing, startup-crazed economy, it can seem like only the newest companies have the agility to thrive. But entrepreneurship can propel businesses of all sizes and ages—look no further than Apple, which almost foundered in the late ’90s before Steve Jobs resurrected it to become the most valuable company in the world. In our estimation, Apple’s triumph is absolutely the No. 1 business comeback of the last two decade.

So what are the other biggest turnarounds of the past 20 years—and what can we learn from them? As part of our 20th anniversary (Fast Company’s first issue appeared in November 1995), we’ve identified the top business comebacks of the past two decades. Check out the rest of the list, and use the comments section below to tell us which business comebacks have impressed you the most:


General Motors

Once the world’s most revered automaker, GM faced disaster in the late 2000s when it filed for bankruptcy and laid off tens of thousands of workers. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that just a year after the federal government’s bailout plan earned it the -sarcastic nickname “Government Motors,” the company roared back to profitability. After trimming costs and killing its struggling Pontiac, Saturn, and Hummer divisions, GM went public again, raising roughly $20 billion. By the end of 2013, the government had sold off the last of its GM shares, capping a remarkable turnaround that saved an estimated 1.2 million jobs.


Marvel

As the home of Spider-Man, Captain America, and other iconic characters, Marvel has long been the comic-book world’s biggest player. But in the mid-1990s the comics market crashed, Marvel went broke, and there was no superpower strong enough to stave off bankruptcy. But fear not! After restructuring, our hero changed its approach, focusing on movies rather than paper and ink. Today, Iron Man, the Avengers, Spider-Man, and X-Men are all billion-dollar franchises, and the company’s master plan—to connect many of its characters in a single cinematic universe—has turned it into one of pop culture’s most powerful brands.


Delta

After evolving from a fleet of crop-dusting biplanes into one of the nation’s biggest airlines, Delta was in trouble by the mid-2000s. Squeezed by higher fuel prices and disrupters like JetBlue and Southwest, it was forced to file for bankruptcy. But after renegotiating union contracts and expanding its fleet with used planes instead of costly new ones, among other things, Delta once again took flight. In 2013, 120.4 million passengers boarded Delta planes—more than any other airline.


Starbucks

Sometimes too much success can mean trouble. In the 2000s Starbucks overexpanded, -diluting profits and damaging the brand (not every corner needs a Starbucks). By late 2008 net income had fallen dramatically, cutting the stock price in half. A look at how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz turned things around:

See the rest of the top 20 as published by Fastcompany.com

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