A Terrible Mistake: 1 Vacuum = 1 Free Flight

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Ever It has everything: planes, vacuum cleaners, marketing blunders, the British Royal Family, corporate humiliation, Italian appliance companies and, most importantly, planes.

Now, if you re one of those fussy, crumpet munchers, that we call the Brits you ll know that Hoover is a company that makes vacuums in the UK.

You don t even call it vacuuming.

You call it hoovering Like how Brits call cookies biscuits or call fries chips or call six raccoons in an unconvincing human suit.

Prince Philip, Now back in 1992, amidst Bill Clinton, getting elected Batman Returning and Macaulay Culkin being lost in New York Hoover discovered that they had a surplus of vacuum cleaners and washing machines, and so they decided to hold a promotion to get rid of them a promotion.

So insane that it makes Moviepass look like Microsoft, any customer that spent 100 or more on a vacuum cleaner or washing machine would get two round trip tickets to select European destinations, Of course, round trip.

International flights were generally worth much more than vacuum cleaners.

So, to keep things profitable Hoover had a plan.

First, they would try to upsell anyone who tried to spend just the minimum 100 requirement, convincing them to buy pricey accessories or a more expensive model, and second, they would reduce the number of tickets. They actually had to hand out by making the process of getting the tickets more confusing and convoluted than YouTube s.

Content ID appeal system.

First, after spending at least 100 on their product customers had to mail a receipt and application to Hoover within 14 days.

Then Hoover would mail them a registration form which they also had to mail back in 14 days, Then Hoover would mail a travel, voucher and customers had to choose a date point of departure and destination and mail that back to Hoover, but Hoover could reject those choices.

If that happened, customers could mail in a new selection, but Hoover could also reject that and then Hoover had the right to select the flights themselves which the customers could either take or leave.

It was a brilliant business strategy for each person.

They d either lose hundreds of pounds or infuriate customers through intentional inconveniences.

If there s one thing, I know about business it s that you should lose lots of money and make all your customers hate.

You I mean hey.

It worked for Uber At first. The plan worked, the surplus was getting bought up and because of the bureaucracy, only about 10 of customers actually redeemed their flights, But then Hoover made what many consider to be one of the worst business decisions in the history of business.

Right up there with New Coke and the DC extended universe, they doubled down and expanded the offer to include round trip flights from the UK to America That, on its face, sounds totally insane.

But when you actually dig into the numbers it turns out, it was totally insane.

Apparently the people at Hoover didn t only suck dust off carpets.

They also sucked at math.

You see the most popular vacuum model to meet the 100 minimum.

Was this the Turbopower Total System which sold for 119 99 For each Turbopower sold Hoover made about 30, but two round trip tickets from the UK to America cost about 600? That means for every person.

Redeeming tickets Hoover lost okay, subtract, carry the one square root, math words for every ticket, redeemed Hoover lost 570.

They advertised their offer in print ads that read Two Return: Tickets, Unbelievable, But people did believe it so much so that Hoover saw a surge in sales.

More than 10 times what they had expected, they not only blew through their surplus. They had to nearly double the staff in their flagship plant just to keep up with demand, but even though they were selling more vacuums than ever, they were losing millions.

Soon.

300.

000 people bought Turbopowers in order to get their two tickets, which meant that, if Hoover honored all those requests, they d be looking at a loss of 171 000 000, Which is you know bad And so Hoover desperately tried to do everything they could to deny people Flights, they said that thousands had filled the forms out wrong.

They assigned customers to flights that departed hundreds of miles away.

They even got into the holiday spirit by sending their request forms out on Christmas, in the hopes that a combination of mail closures and holiday distractions would keep people from responding within the 14 day window.

Soon, customers discovered what Hoover was up to and an entire interest group.

The Hoover Holiday Pressure Group formed and demanded that Hoover clean up their mess and eventually the courts got involved and Hoover was put under legal order to fork over the tickets.

In the end, Hoover sold about 30 million more in vacuums and washing machines, but had to pay out about 72 million in flights for 220 000 customers still less than half of what they owed, which meant that they both lost millions and made millions furious.

The PR fallout was so bad that the British Royal Family even revoked Hoover s Royal Warrant, which is a weird kind of endorsement. The royals give to certain British companies, because the Royal Family is weird and makes no sense and is partially headed up by several raccoons.

In a human suit, But the PR wasn t even the worst part because to get their flights, people had bought a ton of vacuums, they didn t need which for years and years would be handed off as gifts or sold on the secondary market.

In other words, now Hoover wasn t able to sell any vacuums because everyone already had one or more likely three of them.

In the end several executives were fired, the company was nearly bankrupted and Hoover.

Europe was sold off to an Italian appliance company called Candy, giving a sweet end to a salty story Now time for an epilogue there s another epic business blunder going on right now.

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