Video game developer/producer THQ started off as a toy manufacturer under the name Toy Head-Quarters until successfully pivoting to video games in the late 80s leaving the toy industry behind but using their useful connections to become one of the largest and most successful developer of licensed games for children. In it’s most successful year in 2007 it made over a billion dollars in revenue.
However problems in the late 00s in regards to a changing market in games (mainly their licensed games stopped selling and they tried to pivot to more original games) lead to them releasing a drawing tablet accessory for the Nintendo Wii which was a smash success amongst kids, they couldn’t keep them in stock. They then tried to now make this their new thing and bring this tablet over to the more powerful Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles despite the fact the market was nowhere near the same as the Nintendo Wii (older and more game not gimmick focused) and it was a complete disaster. With no real software to back it up and lacking the casual audiences that the Wii had nobody bought it. They expected to sell tens of millions, they only sold tens of thousands. The tablet project burned through their cash reserves and resulted in the company going bankrupt in 2013.
In the late 1800’s to WWII, Elgin, Waltham, and Hamilton dominated the American watch market using precision production tools. Replacement parts were made available to the repair person, and fit without rework. Meanwhile, the Swiss were building their watches using old handcraft methods. and replacement parts for Swiss watches had to be “made to fit” by the watch repairers.
The interchangeability of parts in American watches came as a shock to the Swiss industry, and they made a deliberate effort to redesign their methods and make features such as self-winding watches more available. By the 1960’s American watch brands were using mostly Swiss movements.
The British watch industry stayed with handcraft methods, and were driven out of business.
Through the early-mid 1990s Apple was more or less languishing in a form of obscurity where they had a reputation with the Macs as being intuitive and easy to use (not so sure that was actually true), and largely without the hardware troubles associated with the Wild West of PC hardware and software at the time. But it came at a cost- your average Mac was several thousand dollars of 1995 money, while you could get a PC of similar capability for about 60% of the cost.
But in 1997 when Jobs became the Apple CEO, they made a pivot into more mass-market type stuff with the iMac. It was undeniably cool looking, reasonably capable, had the usual Apple closed-box setup, and in a bit of fluff, came in different colors. The marketing around the iMac touted its ease of use, reliability, and color choices, all of which made it ‘cool’.
Apple realized this and did a sort of conceptual pivot into “cool” stuff- in many cases their products weren’t the first on the scene or even the best, but they were the “coolest” in terms of design and feel. They’ve kept this up ever since to much success and acclaim, while their competitors scratch their heads.
Bausch and Lomb arguably pivoted – their big businesses had been general optics and eyeglasses. They got into soft contact lenses in a very big way in the 1990s, building a HUGE plant that’s still their and running.
But… the company itself has changed very significantly. It’s no longer headquartered in Rochester. It was acquired by the Canadian Valeant Pharmaceuticals, so its real HQ is arguably there. Its US HQ is now in Bridgewater NJ. The only part left in Rochester is the Vision Care center at that big plant on North Goodman. That’s quite a change from when I lived there and they had R&D plants and a worldwide headquarters in Rochester itself, far from North Goodman. There’s a building on the U of R campus named after them, and I see that, since I left, there’s a big new library building across the street from the Main Rundel Library in downtown Rochester that’s named for Bausch and Lomb.
Another company that didn’t pivot, but should have, is Polaroid. Just like Kodak, they were heavily invested in digital photography, and ought to have been able to pivot from chemical-based photography to to digital imaging. But, like Kodak, they saw digital as a niche market for scientific work and some high-end commercial and artistic photos. Their entire business model was based on selling the cameras relatively cheap and making their money on the disposable film. (When they came up with their innovative Apollo system for displaying X-rays, MRIs, CAT scans, and the like, they came up with something that laser-printed the image onto big pieces of plastic that acted like film – not displayed on computer screens. Thy were all set to go into production on this, but it failed. Again, they basically wanted to sell “film”)
But the market didn’t go that way – ordinary people got into digital photography, especially after it came as a virtually free option on their phones.
A lot of that innovation came from Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which was famous for (a) innovation, and (b) developing things that Xerox never actually successfully commercialized themselves. They had the opportunity to make a big pivot into computing, and in many cases, never really pursued it.
I don’t know the timelines, but before the Apple II and the IBM PC, IBM was a big scary company that you did not want to cross. They fought hard and they fought dirty. If that was a consideration, Xerox wouldn’t be the only company that decided there wasn’t room in the industry for more big players.
The ‘for profit’ college that I worked for back in the '90’s pivoted itself right into bankruptcy.
They were a business/accounting type school for over a century; purportedly the oldest such school west of the Mississippi river.
Decided to become a nursing school and tanked within 2 years.
Kenobi, yes, XIP was located in Palo Alto, next door to PARC. I got to eat in their cafeteria and attend public presentations they put on. In the mid 90’s I attended one of their talks, on high-resolution flat screens, for which there wasn’t a public application…yet. They were selling them to the US military to put into aircraft cockpits for now. Then, 10 years later, we all start running around with smart phones and tablets.
For both of you:
Another presentation I attended was focused on (surprise) an advanced printing technology. One of the slides was listing image problems that occasionally occur, including “Steaks” which was a typo; should have said “Streaks.” A wag in the audience shouted out that it was a “mis-steak.”
Powel Crosley Jr. had a small automobile accessory company. He later expanded by building cabinets for radio receivers, followed by the company producing their own line of affordable receivers, until he became known as “the Henry Ford of radio”.
This was the reason given for GE leaving the computer business. Xerox had a successful print and copy business: so did IBM: they each kept to their own side of the street.
