[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4277
Set by Rosemary Alters
We asked you for potentially insightful but fun analyses of why certain well-known business ventures failed.

This week’s winners
Well done. Hon menshes to Alison Prince for Woolies (“The Poundland of its day – till it went posh”); Basil Ransome-Davies for Betamax (“At the heart of the problem was the name . . . ‘Beta’ inevitably suggests ‘alpha’ as superior . . .”); and Ian Birchall for the New Statesman in 2017 (“The turning point was in 2015, when the editor took the decision to back Ukip . . .”). Ah, well! The winners get £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Adrian Fry.

Sinclair C5
The Sinclair C5’s failure was an early indicator (misread by sociologists and business analysts) of the UK’s reluctance to deal with issues surrounding physical fitness and obesity. Opting for a compact design that challenged the driver to maintain a semi-yoga position with knees folded perilously close to the chin, Sinclair failed to recognise what a minuscule percentage of the adult population could achieve this. A future utopia where such physical flexibility was the norm would prove a ludicrous pipe dream.
Similarly, the narrow seat, suitable only for adherents of a lettuce’n’lentil diet, militated against the adipose and naturally ample. Lack of protection from the British weather, as well as its near-invisibility from “normal” cars, made the C5 unappealing to the fashionable and safety conscious. If it had been broadseated, heavily cushioned and elevated, its history would have been different.
D A Prince

PPI
The failure of the payment protection insurance (PPI) initiative – which had been the much-vaunted antidote to the risk of the then newly deregulated mortgage products being oversold to a vulnerable public that didn’t really understand them via mechanistic, hard-selling, commission-driven techniques – was, perhaps, to be expected.
In the final analysis, the concept of then selling the PPI panacea, through the same people, to a vulnerable public who didn’t understand the PPI product via mechanistic, hardselling, commission-driven techniques, was odd. However, early indications are that those victims are ultra-responsive to the various PPI mis-selling compensation schemes that have been marketed via mechanistic, hard-selling, commission-driven techniques. Hopefully, consumers will now choose the right compensation scheme and then seek sound financial advice when selecting an investment vehicle for their hard-won compensation. It would be a travesty if they were to fritter it away on worthless gewgaws.
John Griffiths-Colby

Betamax
“What did you do in the videotape-format wars, Daddy?” It’s a question you dread if you fought for Betamax. Anyone could champion VHS but those of us who knew our technical specifications knew Betamax to be the superior system in all respects bar one. Ah, yes, Betamax tapes held only one hour of material. But, as we parried then, “Does it kill you to insert new cassettes for hours two and three of The Godfather?”
In Betamax homes, that sepulchral pause in the action was where the thinking went on. In VHS households, the popcorn-munching never stopped. The way one episode of Shoestring or two of Armchair Thriller fitted snugly on to one cassette still gives me a thrill. I can take the taunts of VHS owners now – we’re dodos but they’re giant pandas – but not the incomprehension of my daughter. It’s why I’m sitting here watching Shoestring. Again.
Adrian Fry

The Pony Express
The Pony Express, romantic and adventurous as it seemed, was doomed from the outset.
“Wanted!” screamed the posters in the situations vacant columns. “Young, skinny, wiry fellows . . . Must be willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” No, I can’t see this enticing the youth of Tombstone down to the jobcentre. No mention of a healthy, outdoor life, the opportunity to visit exotic places and meet Native Americans. (Not the Paiute tribe, obviously. Best not to mention them; they had some kind of grudge against Pony Express riders.)
Even those deranged and desperate enough, wiry and skinny though they might be, would surely be daunted by the oath required of them by the boss, Alexander Majors: to agree, on pain of dismissal without pay, not to gamble, get drunk, use profane language, and so on. In the wild (and woolly) west? I don’t think so.
Then came the telegraph!
Keith Giles