Why do some big successful brands go bust?

Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.

I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.

They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.

And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn?

It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive.

Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

Thanks for downloading the More or Less podcast.

I'm Celia Hatton. For the last decade, I've been covering China for BBC News.

As regular listeners know, more or less is usually your guide to the numbers in the news and in life.

But today, we're going to do something a bit different because when it comes to China,

numbers have a strange way of going missing.

Let's start with a very important number that the Chinese government used to publish, the number of young

people who can't get a job. The use and employment rate in China has been on a rising

trains over the past few years. The number we saw back in June 2020, reached about 21.3%.

This is Christian Yao from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

21.3 is a record high number, and that's a big problem for Beijing.

It's not good in any country for lots of frustrated young people to be unable to find jobs. High unemployment

can lead to political instability. And it's even more of an issue in China, where the now-defunct

one-child policy has created millions of so-called 421 families, featuring four grandparents, two parents, and one child.

Many young people carry the expectations and economic burden of their parents and grandparents.

So youth unemployment is a number worth watching, and we used to watch it, until August,

...