Distressed companies often receive seemingly conflicting advice from restructuring professionals. They are told: “stick to your knitting” and “stay inside your wheelhouse” and “hit your sweet spot.”

They are also told to “think outside the box” and “color outside the lines” and “reconfigure”  - or else face zombification. Continue reading →

The women in New York amaze me. Every day on the subway, I observe women of all income levels, ages, and walks of life. They all have one thing in common: they are remarkably well put together.

For years I have analyzed this question: how do New York women present themselves to the world so effectively?  What exactly do they do to develop this “core competency”? Continue reading →

In the beginning of January 2012, Fuller Brush Company announced that “this was a landmark year … we have devoted a significant amount of time and effort toward creating new strategies to better serve our customers” and “refreshed our branding to meet the needs of today’s consumers.”  Last week, after declaring only last month that it had “rebooted,” Fuller filed chapter 11.

Fuller’s use of the word “reboot” – meaning the restarting of an electronic device – for a company that sells manual brushes which have been replaced largely by newer (and often electronic) technology – was ironic, and as it turns out, unfortunate. Continue reading →

First of all, let me say that I am not a Luddite. I am about as far from a Luddite as I could be. But there comes a point where, in my role of the blogger-in-chief for the collective unconscious of the restructuring world, I have to throw sabots in the looms. (Or, in this case, throw Louboutins at the iPads).

The word "sabotage" came from the word "sabot" - the clogs that Luddites threw at looms in protest of industrialization.

If the thought of someone hitting your iPad with a high heeled shoe makes you cringe, then you need to read this.

In a recent article,  Dave Paul Strohecher commented on Nick Pearce’s examination on his blog of the zombification of higher education. Pearce observed that the use of VLE’s (virtual learning environments) was replacing “face to face human learning” with “undead digital teaching”:

http://digitalscholar.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/zombies-technology-capitalism/#comment-106

In the teaching model, VLE’s provide control and consistency in a way not possible with traditional methods. VLE’s do this by limiting personal interaction.  Strohecher suggests that teachers are driven to the use of VLE’s by student apathy. Continue reading →

zom·bie /ˈzämbē (noun): the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force; a corpse brought back to life unnaturally by witchcraft or voodoo

Zombies are very popular lately. There are zombie properties, zombie brands, zombie industries, and even zombie leggings.

“Zombification” is a variant of the word zombie, used in the restructuring world to mean headed toward death – as in the case of an industry or a brand.

Zombification can describe an asset with the potential for rebirth – as in the case of properties, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported (“Zombie Properties Come Back to Life”  by Eliot Brown, November 2, 2011):

http://online.wsj.com/article

Restructuring professionals are dealing with all manner of zombies. Each one became a zombie in a different way, and we have different approaches to each one of them.

In the case of zombie properties, the causes are so “macro” they are beyond our comprehension.  But zombie properties, like Kenny in SouthPark, come back to life.  Once a property is in the hands of a new owner, free and clear of old encumbrances, it loses it zombie characteristics, and snaps back to life. Continue reading →