The Larkin Soap Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larkin_Company

by samclemens • 2 years ago

31 25 2 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

iwaztomack3• 2 years ago

What's the catch? Why post this?

ars• 2 years ago

I assume it's because it's (it was) a startup, and HN likes reading about those, and what they did different to ensure success.

iwaztomack3• 2 years ago

A startup from ... the 1800's? Thanks for the context, I guess.

teruakohatu• 2 years ago

What's the catch? Why post this?

If you are a new user, I suggest reading the guidelines [1].

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

iwaztomack3• 2 years ago

Been here for 10 years. :)

I think there should be a higher standard than just posting random links without context. How about a single line of text explaining why it is interesting to them?

FrustratedMonky4• 2 years ago

A cautionary tale maybe.

Any company can fold rather quickly. Just some strife, some headwinds, etc...

How stable is Boeing right now?

"Internal struggles among the next generation of Larkin executives and the loss of key executives, precipitated the demise of the company. Sales fell from a high of $28.6 million in 1920 to $2 million by 1939.[2] The company was sold in 1941, liquidated in 1942,[6] and the new owners continued a mail-order business until 1962.[3]"

silisili2• 2 years ago

What fascinated me was that a driver for their demise was the rise of the department store and automobile hurting their mail order business.

Nearly 100 years later, the department store has demised because of the rise of a slightly faster form of mail order business.

labster• 2 years ago

Everything old is new again. Had Sears gone back to focus on mail order instead of spending their waning years trying to save retail, they could have got Amazon's business before it was started. But instead they killed the catalog in 1993, one year before Amazon was founded.

JSDevOps• 2 years ago

Shame no wonder They didn’t make it. They didn’t pivot to AI soap

The Larkin Soap Company

Related Stories