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.

Hello and welcome to more or less with me, Lizzie McNeil.

This week we're going to start off with a question. Shout out if you know the answer. Why would you have to travel more leagues

from bus to province than from province to bus in medieval France? Did you get the answer?

Well, it's because at that time France did not have a unified system of measurement,

which meant that places like Boz measured a league as 3.2 kilometres,

whereas Provence said a league equaled 5.8 kilometres.

This wasn't just limited to distance, and some experts estimate that at the

start of the French Revolution, there were up to a quarter of a million different units of

measurements being used across France with varying levels of accuracy.

In the late 18th century, a group of French scientists, led by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier,

were commissioned to create a unified and defined set of measurements.

Included in these was the kilogram.

Defined as equal to the mass of one litre of water at maximum density.

That's a liter of water chilled to 4 Celsius.

In 1795, the court goldsmith made a cylinder out of platinum that was equal to this mass.

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