
The Struggle of Keeping a Roadside Attraction Alive - Thevet
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/roadside-attraction-wild-bills-struggle
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stmw
Great article. After reading, I realized it may also describe Apple.

"Businesses like Wild Bill’s, which are formed around the passion and
personality of a unusual individual, can be hard to keep alive over the long
term, even when the founder is still alive. And when the visionary passes on,
and a family disagrees over how to run their inheritance, the chances of
survival become slimmer still.

...

In the past, part of what made Wild Bill’s Nostalgia a special place was these
sort of improbable, impractical projects, which functioned as round-about
investments because they attracted people to the store to spend money. Under
the supervision of a fiduciary, there’s little room for that sort of creative
marketing."

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nitwit005
The company hardly shut its doors after Jobs died. They're pulling in over
$200 billion a year, after all.

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gonvaled
They closed, once or twice - for all practical meanings of "closed"

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nasmorn
This headline is the rare opposite of a click bait headline given how good I
found the content to be. Is there even a word for that? Click shield maybe

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have_faith
The simplicity of the title and lack of clickbaity-ness actually made me click
through and read the article instead of checking the comments first.

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NotSammyHagar
So the administrator of the estate is basically drastically reducing it's
value by making it more organized. Get rid of that person.

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Firerouge
A Connecticut probate court appointed an independent administrator to manage
the assets.

It's likely the only way to remove the individual killing off the business is
for the families dispute over the inheritance to be resolved.

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tomohawk
If the attraction (and his daughter) was important to him, he should have
written a will and maybe set up a trust, or created a corporation to to ensure
this.

If you don't have a will, take some time and make one this week.

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lovemenot
In this case it's not as simple as having the right legal documents. It seems
the store was a physical manifestation of an iconoclast who's now dead. This
seems less a business than a living work of art.

A bleached coral can survive for a while, but if it cannot attract and retain
the right symbionts, it'll die.

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prepend
While this is a good point, it’s not applicable in this case as the main
problem is based on a dispute with inheritance that is closing and refocusing
the purpose of the business.

So even the bleached coral from your example isn’t being allowed.

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georgeecollins
The moral of this story is that people that own a business must have an estate
plan that they have discussed with their heirs. If you don't resolve a plan
while you are alive, it's likely your loved ones will suffer.

