(Newswire.net — March 27, 2017) — Every entrepreneur has made some bad business decisions, after all it’s a part of the trill, but some are more painful than others. MSN Business compiled a list of most epic business failures of celebrities.
The epic business fail list contains names such as Curt Schilling, a Red Sox superstar, whose videogame industry adventure had cost him $ 50 million of his personal funds, and Steven Spielberg who went bust as a theme restaurant owner.
Owning a restaurant is rather dominant on the celebrity bad investments list. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Demy Moore tried with Planet Hollywood, and for several years it looked like it was the right kind of investment. The restaurant chain grew to more than 100 locations and went public at $32 per share in 1996. However, by 1999, the action heroes behind the most famous celebrity venture declared bankruptcy, with share hitting bottom at $1 per share.
Planet Hollywood managed to survive, but in the hands of a businessman, Robert Earl and now has just a handful of locations left, including New York City, Las Vegas, London and Paris. Movie stars have cut all ties with this venture.
Rapper William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. aka Flavor Flav, thought that fried chicken franchise is a winning investment. Since Americans love fried chicken, he believed that if put a celebrity name into the game, the money is guaranteed to enter the equation. Teaming up with a partner, however, proved to be a bad idea. After struggling financially, partners started accusing each other for negligence and bad managing. The partners ended up going their separate ways and Flav opened two more restaurants in Las Vegas and Michigan, but they were both unsuccessful. Flav was even evicted for failure to pay rent to the building’s owner for his restaurant in Michigan.
Burt Reynolds also tried securing a bright financial future by feeding Americans. Instead, he fed news agencies with bad publicity and filed for a bankruptcy two times. His first restaurant chain called PoFolks was founded in South Carolina. Along with his business partner, country music executive Buddy KilleBy, he almost reached the food industry heaven with the restaurant chain being spread on 100 locations by 1984. However, the business ended up failing, leaving both partners with $20 million debt each.
The ‘business dynamic duo’ then invested in the Daisy Diner chain, which soon also went down ungraciously, costing them $10 million more each.
Another superstar tried to fix all of her problems by investing in a restaurant. Instead of sticking to what made her rich in the first place, Britney Spears decided to invest in the restaurant business. The restaurant named Nyla, which specialized in Cajun cuisine (Spears is from Louisiana), went downhill following severe criticism that ‘killed’ her movie “Crossroads” as well.
Besides bad critics, the restaurant received a few health code violations and the menu was switched from Cajun to Italian. That didn’t help Spears’ business and Nyla ended up filing for bankruptcy, owning $400,000 to its creditors upon its closure.
The most epic fail list of celebrity’s businesses is populated with names like Nicolas Cage who made some really bad investments in real estate, Debbie Reynolds with her hotel and casino business in Vegas, Jay Z with Boutique hotel bust, Kanye West with fashion industry mishap and Kardashian sisters who thought pre-paid debit card business is a solid investment.
On the top of the list, however, is the actress Kim Basinger, and her idea to own a city. Partnered with Georgia pension fund AmeriTech, she spent $20 million on 1,751 acres of the 2,000-acre town of Braselton, Georgia. Basinger – who grew up in Georgia – put about $600,000 into the deal, buying a bank building in the heart of the town.
What was supposed to be a new city with film festivals and art shows actually lacked cultural events after Basinger lost all of her money. She was sued for dropping out of a movie (“Boxing Helena”) and declared bankruptcy. Basinger sold the bank building for $600,000 to help pay her bills, and left the city project.
People of Braselton, however, have moved on. The population has more than quadrupled since Basinger pulled out in the 1990s, and has headquarters for Year One and Peachtree Tooling as well as distribution centers for Williams-Sonoma, Hitachi, Whole Foods and Haverty’s.