I get all of my shipping materials I need from a company called Uline. At one point I was working the Office Depot coupons and sales to get stuff cheap, but you just cannot beat Uline.com.
They are also good people. Let's read an essay from the back of their current catalog, with permission from the boss at Uline:
This past spring, gourmet gift purveyor Harry & David filed for bankruptcy protection. The 77-year-old mail order company is an American business icon famous for its premium fruits, exquisite gift baskets and extraordinary service.
So what brought the high-end gift giant to its knees? The slide began in 2004, when a New York private equity firm purchased the Oregon-based company for $230 million in a highly leveraged buyout, only paying $82 million in cash. One year later, the private equity firm sold $245 million worth of bonds to pay off the debt and recoup its original investment. Later in 2005 they took out another $19 million. In one short year, the firm recovered 125% of its original investment and left Harry & David saddled with an insurmountable mountain of debt.
People who knew little about running a successful direct marketing business, let alone fruit baskets, were now calling the shots. Add an economic downturn and you have a recipe for disaster. Sales plummeted from $566 million in 2005 to $426 million in 2010 with only $6 million in operating profits and nearly $11 million in debt service. When a leveraged buyout occurs, everyone loses except the private equity firms responsible for the destruction, in my opinion. Wall Street vs. Main Street.
For a long time, too many of our brightest and best graduates have been going to Wall Street. It is a new economic era where the U.S. is becoming poorer. Is there any chance that some of the folks will be accepting the challenges that Main Street has? Let's cheer for bright Americans who want to work for Ford, 3M, or Uline over Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Again, just an opinion.
Liz Uihlein
I like fact-based opinions. It is pretty discouraging to work for a company that is not profitable, which means no bonuses either, especially when you know it is not profitable because all of your profits and more go to NYC "investors."
The banks that put up the funny money for this will have their losses covered by the taxes paid by the people still working at Harry & David, which does continue to limp along. What may happen is employees or some group that cares buys the company out of bankruptcy, and whatever the difference is taxpayers make it up. Thems the rules, and the players new it before they moved.
People are blaming "deregulation." Nonsense, there is no industry more regulated in USA than finance. The problem is the regulations permit this legal piracy. The trick is to not "protect" (the root of legal) the bankers and "investors" who do these deals. Make any lost they incur their loss. Such deals would not happen. Current regulations allow the loss to be passed off to taxpayers. The result is Harry and David is in bankruptcy, the people who own it took out 125% of the value, cash, and banked it, and still own H&D, and whatever they sell it for will be pure profit. It is madness to write regulations that not only permit this, but protect it. Rescind those protections.
Why was Harry & David sold to begin with? No doubt the kids of the founders were facing death tax vs. capital gains tax. I do not know, but our regulations encourage families to unload assets before death, which leads to terrible loss of value. We need to get rid of death taxes.
But we need the money! For what, pointless wars? Declare victory and bring our boys home. With no bail-outs for stupid banking decisions, with no corporate raiding destroying viable businesses, with no death tax to discourage the business start up or sell-off, we may need those boys here to fill the high paying jobs we'd see as a result.
Let's switch from war to prosperity as a basis for our economy.
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