Elizabethtown- Mercury Shoes: Running Into Trouble?

Elizabethtown is bold experiment in film-making. In a plot never before or hence attempted, Elizabethtown features an emotionally detached man who meets a quirky woman at a difficult time in his life and she teaches him how to love and to enjoy life. Wait, I'm being told, that's actually the most common plot of all time. So, as we begin year three, we revive a rich No Spoiler Tags tradition of pretty much ignoring the actual movie and focusing in on some tiny details which are actually kind of important. The plot of Elizabethtown is driven in large part by two major companies, American Airlines and Mercury Shoes, making some terrible business decisions. For any Fortune 500 CEOs reading this comically-centered movie blog for financial advice, do not overestimate your market the way these companies did and stop reading comically-centered movie blogs for financial advice.

In the opening act of the film, Drew is fired from his job at Mercury Shoes for the failure of his experimental design which will cost the company 972 million dollars. Already we see a problem, why would a company invest 972 million dollars in an experimental design, especially in a field like shoes where there really is no need to experiment? But the real problem with these shoes was not their design, (although they are ugly) but their marketing. These shoes were released under the name "Späsmotica". And a consumer base of image conscious athletes loves nothing more than strapping on a pair of ugly Spazs before a game. As I paused on the recall notice to get the proper spelling of this shoe, I learned another detail about Mercury's blunder. Mercury Shoes recalled 350,000 pairs of Spazs. In order to get up to the $972,000,000 loss, that puts the production cost per pair up to $2,777.14. With a reasonable retail markup, these shoes would probably sell for more than $3,000 a pair or 30 times more than I'm willing to pay for a pair of tennies. Add it all up, and this product was clearly doomed from the start.

Claire and Drew meet on an apparently non-stop flight from somewhere in California Oregon (We'll assume Portlandia.) to Louisville, Kentucky. They have plenty of time to talk because Drew is literally the only passenger. As they chat, Claire mentions it's 3AM and the Louisville Airport is bustling when they land, with an estimated four and a half hour flight time, this conversation must have taken place just after take-off. I can't imagine the Portland-Louisville route being packed anytime of day, but for a flight time after the bars close I can't believe they got anyone. And they sent a big plane, too. A wide-body design large enough for two classes. By the Wikipedia line-up of planes operated by American Airlines I looked at, I reckon it was a Boeing 767, a plane designed primarily for international routes. At a $3 per gallon jet fuel cost, it'd take an estimated $47,161.28 to fly one of these bad boys from Portland to Louisville. That's almost 17 pairs of Späsmoticas! American Airlines should have never offered this fateful flight and they should have canceled it when they only sold one seat. And judging by Claire's palace, they are paying their employees way too much. (Judging by reality, probably not.) If American Airlines keeps running their business like this, they will have to declare bankruptcy two years ago.

I did way too much research for this post.

As a mixed tape CD played an important role in the Planning Paradox ending of this slightly overly-sappy story about love and loss, we will end with a slightly over-sappy love song about making a mixed tape from a band we recently lost.

(Hey, I just got that song is about trying to get a girl back. That only took seven years.)