In-Flight Catalog SkyMall Files for Bankruptcy | Hacker News Reader

In-Flight Catalog SkyMall Files for Bankruptcy

wsj.com

57 pointsherbig21 comments

I think the nail in the coffin was when portable devices were allowed during take-off and landing in the US.

I used to skim SkyMall when the flight attendants told me to put my phone away and would sometimes even continue reading when devices were allowed. But now that I don't have to put down my device at all, SkyMall gets none of my attention.

"The increase in the number of airlines providing Internet access “resulted in additional competition from e-commerce retailers and additional competition for the attention of passengers, all of which further negatively impacted SkyMall’s catalog sales,” [acting Chief Executive Scott Wiley] added."

The perils of a niche market.

Read this[0] - Xhibit and SkyMall have a very strange/shady past. This is the strangest part from that article:

"Xhibit is a cloud based technology development company with its primary historical focus on digital advertising, and a recently expanded focus on online and mobile social media, games and CRM (customer relationship management) solutions."

[0] - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/skymall-...

Not surprising at all, from the same article:

"The Xhibit Corporation went public via a "reverse takeover" of a shell company in 2012. Earlier, in 2011, the individuals behind the company acquired a shell company called NB Manufacturing for $350K, and voila, Xhibit was able to become a publicly traded company."

"How does a company go from $350K valuation to $300MM in under two years? The answer is that if a security is fairly illiquid, the "price" is more or less arbitrary because people aren't really buying or selling many shares."

So Xhibit buys a shell company to become publicly traded, drives up their stock price by taking advantage of minimal liquidity, then buys SkyMall with their inflated stock. Just surprising that SkyMall sold to them at all.

$350K ????

Not a bad way to go public. Cheap too.

Listing via IPO will cost you a lot more: lawyers, filing, lockups, paper work, brokers skimming.

Better the company get full value for their shares.

No need to cut some big guys in on the deal. It's just not a requirement.

More companies should use this strategy and avoid the Wall Street tax.

Once upon a time, there was nothing to read on an airplane but SkyMall. SkyMall held it's audience captive, and all but the most foresighted of us, whom thought to bring a book or some similar textual vessel, were held hostage by it's mediocrity. But then, one day, the great and powerful Science came. Championed by it's favored son, the Internet, Science set the passenger's free of the evil SkyMall's iron grip on airborne eyes. "But smartphones cause interference with airplanes for some reason!" SkyMall's proponents cried. "No" said Science, "Do gas stations explode when you receive a phone call?" it asked. "Yes" said the SkyMallians, "Of course they do!". "Please die and don't reproduce" said Science. And all was well.

The first few times I flew, SkyMall had awesome comedic value. Some of the items were just incredibly obnoxious. But that loses it's appeal quickly when you fly a lot.

I could never believe that people actually ordered stuff from there!

It's worth noting that SkyMall primarily (entirely?) aggregates content from other catalog, a lot of which are pretty silly but not all of them. I've actually occasionally seen things that looked interesting enough for me to take a look at the original source. That said, I don't really disagree with you. SkyMall's focus seemed to be on the weirder contents of the merchants it partnered with.

The comedic value SkyMall had for you led to a parody of it -- SkyMaul.

(edited to add different URLs, and saw that someone else got to this as well)

http://www.kasperhauser.com/skymaul_site/FlipBook.html

http://www.skymaul.com/

Wow, these are great!

Non-paywall article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/business/skymall-parent-xh...

It's worth noting that a while back, American Airlines calculated that replacing the 35lbs flight manual in aircraft would an iPad would save $1.2 million annually in fuel expenses.

If SkyMall weighs about 1 pound per magazine, and it's in a fleet-wide average of 200 seats backs, that might be >$3 million in fuel costs for airlines to carry the magazine.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/11/american-airlines-fir...

I just hope http://www.skymaul.com keeps operating.

From the URL alone, the first thing that came to mind was "Instead of office chair, package contained bobcat. Would not buy again." (https://xkcd.com/325/)

They'll be able to take over Skymall.com domain

SkyMall's Stock Price Triples On News of Rise in Web Sales [1998]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB914892097195473500

I feel bad for Hammacher Schlemmer also. The only time I ordered their products were when I was totally bored, mildly drunk and browsing SkyMall.