The presentation by Nau Vice President of Brand Communication, Ian Yolles, was probably one of the best I've been to so far at Anderson and addressed some of the major issues we have discussed in class. In fact, one of the first issue he raised dealt with Milton Friedman's view of social responsibility. Nau has a decidely different outlook: the key to profitability, he remarked, is addressing the interests of civil society. As we discussed in class, Nau, is a B-corp.
In Hollender-esque fashion, Yolles admitted that Nau is not a sustainable company. That said, they have taken some major steps to reduce their environmental footprint.
As I was writing this I decided to visit their homepage to share some of the steps they've taken and discovered that they are going out of business due to the dry up in the capital markets. Having been truly impressed by Nau, I find this news remarkably disappointing. I have included the link to their homepage for those who want to learn more about Nau's farewell (or get 50% of their collection).
https://www.nau.com/homepage/index.jsp#/homepage/index
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I too am extremely disappointed by Nau's premature departure. During the presentation, Nau talked about how they had decided to include some very unusual language in their articles of incorporation, and how they had to fight to keep this language inside the articles of incorporation. Nau managed to keep the spirit of this wording in, despite extreme pressure from their potential investor.
I'm wondering if that language continued to provide them with problems as they looked forward into the future and tried to get additional capital financing. In the presentation, they managed to convince the investor by arguing that whatever discount they might receive from the capital markets, they would essentially consider a marketing expense for their type of company.
Perhaps this marketing expense proved to great for the time being.
At the very least, I'm looking forward to buying some unique and very cool clothing on the cheap.
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