Gerald Ratner was the managing director of a big jewellery business. In the eighties "Ratners" jewellery shops could be found in every British city and large town. They were very profitable and took the mystique and stuffiness out of traditional jewellery retailing. The market they aimed for was distinctly working class - making jewellery affordable for the masses.
Everything was trucking along very nicely until Gerald Ratner made a much reported speech to The Institute of Directors on April 23rd 1991. He said this:-
"We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."
It was what has become known as his "Ratner moment". Feeling grossly insulted, hordes of previously loyal customers voted with their feet and stayed away from "Ratners" shops causing the value of the business to drop by £500,000 or half a billion almost over night. Shops had to close and nowadays there are no Ratners shops left.
I think of Gerald Ratner in connection with Elon Musk - purportedly the richest man in the world. He bought up Twitter for $44 billion (US) and for spurious reasons related to his weird perception of democracy. Like King Midas, I guess he thought that everything he touched would turn to gold.
But now it is all turning to excrement for Musk. Advertisers are falling away and many thousands of Twitter users are voting with their feet and staying away just as Gerald Ratner's customers did in 1991. Maybe Twitter was already becoming old-fashioned and uncool. It will be interesting to see if Musk can ever revive Twitter but giving Donald Trump his old platform back is hardly going to endear Twitter to intelligent liberals around the world. It is also extremely misguided and dangerous to champion the notion that democracy is about allowing people to say what the hell they want without moderation or verification.
Musk may be a genius in some respects but when all is said and done he's not a very likeable man. I know that it is not quite the same and I may be very wrong but I think of Musk buying Twitter as his Ratner moment even though it may have little impact on his Tesla business. We shall see.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/SzNAmb1
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