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. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

This is a Thinking Aloud podcast from the BBC, and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud,

go to our website at BBC.co.com.

Hello, one of the many strange mental aspects of growing old is that one's consciousness is

intermittently invaded by childhood memories that seem, well, utterly inconsequential. I mean,

I doubt that even Sigmund Freud could find any hidden psychological meaning in, say, my recurrent

memory of the fleck of green paint on the otherwise pure white ceiling of my childhood bedroom.

But there are moments when such apparently insignificant memories can suddenly gain meaning.

In this instance, it is the memory of nothing more than a shoe.

You see, in the late 1950s, I occasionally played bit parts in plays staged by

the Merseyside Unity Theism, and although I cannot now remember the names or plots of a single

one of those dramas, I do now and then remember the strange sight of an actor in one such

play, dramatically holding up a shoe for close inspection by other members of the

cast, a mere shoe. What was that about? Well, a new book, suddenly, and rather unexpectedly,

has made me realize why a simple shoe could have served such a dramatic purpose, how it could

become linked to dark and difficult histories of war and disaster.

...