[evanelias]

That makes me wonder, are there any major examples of this kind of abrupt pivot actually succeeding?

Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games.

Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's funny because the original leather business was spun out and still exists.

But abruptly going from shoes to AI datacenters, or iced tea to blockchain, etc I really wonder if there's any non-scam precedent of that abrupt shift actually working for a major known brand?

[evan_]

The one that springs to mind is Tiny Speck launching an MMORPG, failing, and then polishing up the in-game chat tool and releasing it as Slack.

Oh, there was a certain pair of Ohio bike shop owners who pivoted to powered flight some time back.

[rogerkirkness]

Shopify is a pivot from selling snowboards online in Canada

[evanelias]

Yeah these are definitely some good examples of startups doing major abrupt pivots after a few years. But I was hoping to figure out if there were any successful examples of established, well-known brands doing it. (For comparison to the original topic, Allbirds was founded 11 years ago and is post-IPO.)

[bpev]

All Stewart tries to do is make game companies, and all Stewart actually ends up doing is starting big non-game-related tech companies.

[yencabulator]

Nokia was a pulp mill, a rubber boot manufacturer, and a tire maker. But it's also old enough (1865!) to have changed with industrialization itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nokia

[Wojtkie]

Yeah, doesn't this reek of the Dotcom era where non-digital companies would just slap (.com) at the end of their name for the stock boost?

[kccqzy]

Samsung started as a trading company for dried fish, noodles and groceries. Now it does many things as a conglomerate but it’s mostly known as an electronics company.

Toyota started as a company to produce looms. It’s now mostly known as an automotive company.