Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site aecom.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!aecom!werner
From: werner@aecom.UUCP (Craig Werner)
Newsgroups: net.misc.coke,net.jokes
Subject: Cola Mistakes throughout History
Message-ID: <1806@aecom.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 17:33:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: aecom.1806
Posted: Sat Jul 20 17:33:04 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 04:06:13 EDT
Distribution: na
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 23
Xref: linus net.misc.coke:68 net.jokes:11178


	The tale is told of Lana Turner's grandfather , who owned a half share
in a small firm which made a soft drink called Coca-cola.  Despairing of a 
product burdened with so unappealing a name, he sold out.  He had not, however,
lost faith in the soft drinks business, so he invested the proceeds in a firm
he deemed more likely to flourish -- the Raspberry Cola Company.

	A few years later, the Coca-cola company, which in the meantime, had 
done rather better than its one-time co-wowner had anticipated, was offered
one of its twice-bankrupt competitors.  Its then owner, Charles Guth of Loft,
Inc., was willing to let his subsidiary go for a mere $1000. But with an
overconfidence born of a virtual monopoly of the soft drink business, Coca-
cola spurned the offer, thus missing the opportunity to strangle at birth 
the Pepsi-Cola Company, the business that would in due course become its
arch rival.

[From: David Frost's Book of the World's Worst Desisions]


-- 
				Craig Werner
				!philabs!aecom!werner
		"The world is just a straight man for you sometimes"