On Sunday I saw this video about how Nordstrom went private and is now thriving, having returned control to the founding family.

It’s refreshing to see a story like this. I think if companies were content to make payroll and not worried about pleasing Wall Street, the world would be a better place. To repeat an Edward Abbey quote I saw in the comments of the video below, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."

As a testament to the power of the media, this video made me curious to visit the King of Prussia Mall and see what Nordstrom and everyone else was up to.

King of Prussia is one of the largest malls in America and contrary to most malls, it’s still thriving. The corridor of luxury stores is also a fun place to people-watch.

While at KOP, I thought I’d check out the Allbirds shoe store. I’ve been wearing my current Allbirds for two years and they’re holding up great but I wouldn’t mind a refresh; they’re nearly carbon neutral, after all! To my dismay, the Allbirds store was gone. I asked Google and discovered Allbirds had closed their brick and mortar stores.

Today I was surprised to learn Allbirds sold its shoe business and is pivoting to AI. Their stock has apparently jumped 600% on the news, as the nebulous pitch of “we’re gonna do AI now” is considered much more valuable than making sustainable shoes.

I wonder how the shoe brand will fare under new ownership. Ben & Jerry’s was another socially conscious brand that sold to a larger company, only to now seek independence, regretting their decision.

It’s hard to find many examples where a good company was acquired and became better. YouTube might be the best case but that was because Google was willing to lose billions of dollars in pursuit of their coveted video and ad monopoly. Financial warfare has become increasingly common in this era; spend as much money as quickly as possible, until your competitors go out of business.

This video touches on how companies like Uber lost money on every ride, undercutting cab drivers and putting them out of business. Human drivers were just a stopgap though; the goal has always been to remove humans completely. I can’t judge; I’ve used Uber and Lyft in all sorts of situations where I wouldn’t have called a cab. Disruption happens, we all need to think about our values and what things we want to preserve, and what are better off as history.

YouTube’s rise had an overall positive result for creators, but YouTube needs to keep making the line go up, which is why ads are getting longer, unblockable and unskippable. Advertisers also want their lines to go up, so they are suing Google, citing the ad monopoly.

Tying this back to Newgrounds, I still get regular emails from companies and private equity firms expressing interest in acquiring Newgrounds. It’s hard for me to imagine that working out; I think I would end up like the Nordstroms and Ben & Jerry with regrets. Maybe someone would spend millions of dollars creating a few great years but ultimately, the line would need to keep going up and a bunch of wealthy people would want to extract their 10x return. I think NG is on a better path, despite more than a decade of difficulty.

I didn’t start out meaning to pivot this post to NG, I just can’t help myself lol. I've got NG-brain after all. I’m happy that people here appreciate NG and like Nordstrom, I hope we win over more people in the months and years ahead!