10 brands that look to be in trouble
Each year, 247WallSt.com identifies 10 important brands sold in America that they predict will disappear before 2014. This year’s list is filled with companies being torn down by innovation, competition, and financing. The take an in depth look at the state of 10 brands in trouble by analyzing sales, losses, market share, public disclosures that may indicate a parent brand will sell the company, sold companies, bankruptcies, loss of customers, and so forth.
The 24/7 analysts claim the following ten brands will disappear in 2014 based on their research:
| Rank: | Brand: | Top Reason it Will Disappear: |
| 1 | JCPenney | As Macy’s, Target, and Amazon.com are seeing healthy growth, JCPenney has had a lot of drama in recent years, seeing dramatic sales losses that many speculate are insurmountable. |
| 2 | Nook | Despite a lifeline from Microsoft’s massive investment, the Nook just doesn’t appear to be able to withstand competition from Amazon’s Kindle or the iPad, not to mention e-reader sales are declining overall in favor of tablet computers. |
| 3 | Martha Stewart Living | Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. has three divisions: publishing, broadcasting and merchandising. Broadcasting and merchandising look great, but publishing is in the tank and is seeing massive losses and abysmal ad sales. Having already shuttered Everyday Food and Whole Living magazines, Living could be next or at least taken out of print and put online only. |
| 4 | Living Social | The coupon phase is dying, and competition is tight. Amazon.com wrote down their $175M investment in Living Social by $169M last year and the company lost $50M in the first quarter of this year alone versus a $156M profit in the first quarter of 2012. |
| 5 | Volvo | As of April, Volvo’s market share has plummeted to 0.3 percent and sold only 19,571 vehicles in the U.S. last year, down 8 percent in a market where sales are trending up overall. In addition to that, several Chinese Volvo dealers committed fraud and the brand is generally thought to be in trouble. |
| 6 | Olympus | Having dwindled to only 7 percent of the market and three straight years of losses, pledging to stop issuing dividends to investors until they are back in the black, which they and others don’t project will be soon. |
| 7 | WNBA | With attendance and tv viewership in the dump, the brand will not likely survive current WNBA advocate and NBA commissioner David Stern’s retirement in 2014, and as profitability diminishes and teams disappear, the writing is on the wall. |
| 8 | Leap Wireless | T-Mobile and Sprint have snatched up all of the small wireless companies, but no one seems to want Leap Wireless whose shares are down 90 percent in the last five years. They won’t be able to build a comparable 4G network or pay debts, and is likely headed for bankruptcy. |
| 9 | Mitsubishi Motors | With the biggest decline in sales of any brand in America last year, selling only 60,000 units, mostly lower-priced, this company could exit the U.S., particularly after being ranked third from last in the new J.D. Power vehicle dependability survey. |
| 10 | Road & Track | Hearst bought this famous auto magazine in 2011 and also owns Car & Driver, both of which have seen a dip in ad sales, but Road & Track has been hardest hit. Both headquartered in the same city, consolidation of the brands is a possibility. |
Which of these brands will have what it takes to turn things around, or will 2014 see the death of some very old brands alongside a few startups that may not hold up to the test of time?
