As most of you know, I'm a car person. I've worked in the auto industry my entire life and I'm lucky to have spent most of that time at a great company with a world-class brand: Land Rover. I also spent a short time - a year to be exact - at Fisker Automotive and last week when the news broke that 75% of Fisker's employees had been laid off, it was a sad day: for the company and the industry in general.
I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of what happened at Fisker or what went wrong. I wasn't there long enough to know the whole story, but I was there long enough to know some of it. Unfortunately there will be a slew of upcoming articles with variations on the headline "Bad Karma" and I'll read them with interest like everyone else.
When a company struggles, it's easy to lose sight of all the good people who worked there day after day, trying to do the right thing. Analysts will concentrate on what went wrong and who's to blame and that's what will be remembered when all's said and done.
Creating a car company from scratch and making it work is a massive undertaking and history is littered with brand names that failed and others that just faded away. There were good people at every single one of those companies that no one will remember, but the names of their founders live on as case studies on how not to do things: Tucker, DeLorean and, yes, Fisker.
I'll leave you with this thought. When Hollywood does a remake of Back To The Future, which they surely will, what car will they use? My bet is a Fisker Karma, arguably the DeLorean of today.
You heard it here first. Now the only question is who will play Marty McFly and Doc Brown?
I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of what happened at Fisker or what went wrong. I wasn't there long enough to know the whole story, but I was there long enough to know some of it. Unfortunately there will be a slew of upcoming articles with variations on the headline "Bad Karma" and I'll read them with interest like everyone else.
When a company struggles, it's easy to lose sight of all the good people who worked there day after day, trying to do the right thing. Analysts will concentrate on what went wrong and who's to blame and that's what will be remembered when all's said and done.
Creating a car company from scratch and making it work is a massive undertaking and history is littered with brand names that failed and others that just faded away. There were good people at every single one of those companies that no one will remember, but the names of their founders live on as case studies on how not to do things: Tucker, DeLorean and, yes, Fisker.
I'll leave you with this thought. When Hollywood does a remake of Back To The Future, which they surely will, what car will they use? My bet is a Fisker Karma, arguably the DeLorean of today.
You heard it here first. Now the only question is who will play Marty McFly and Doc Brown?