The obituaries have flooded the Internet since SkyMall announced it had filed for bankruptcy Jan. 23.
Most of the stories had to do with making fun of the absurd, kitschy products that the publication offered.
And listen, there are plenty of oddities - my colleagues Barry Kaufman and Gabe Zaldivar have done a great job of chronicling the best and worst of the catalog.
The bulk of what I saw as I read the eulogies from the travel and mainstream media was a general uppity attitude about SkyMall.
"I read it all the time, but ew, I'd never buy anything from there."
I was the oddball, I guess. I loved buying from SkyMall, most recently buying a custom-engraved necklace for my wife as a Christmas gift.
Whether they're being honest or not, the non-buying admirers were not alone in the window shopping. The company had deals with every domestic airline, with 650 million potential eyeballs on the product each year. The company did its own research and bragged that 70 percent of passengers actually read the catalog.
Yet, its revenues never lived up to that potential. As a private company for much of the last two decades, there were spotty numbers put out there about how the company did.
But at its peak, in reporting numbers in 2009, SkyMall was estimated to have about $130 million in revenues between its website and hard-copy catalog orders. Those numbers are impressive but not in comparison to how many captive purchasers it had access to.
Those numbers fell off to $33.7 million in 2013 and just $15.8 million for the first nine months of 2014, according to the company's bankruptcy filing.
These numbers are criminal, but it probably shouldn't be a surprise considering the company that bought SkyMall in 2013. As pointed out in The Atlantic, Xhibit Corp. marketed itself as a tech company but in its 2013 annual report, admitted that most of its revenues came from hawking ethically-questionable weight loss pills and "nutriceuticals," as they called them.
From its inception in 1989, the company was always struggling to find its way. At first, it was set up for passengers to buy products while they were in the air and pick them up at the terminal while they land. This turned out to be a horrible and expensive operation, and thankfully, the company pivoted to more of a flea market of sellers.
But toward its end, the company was so far off point. Xhibit reported that 66 percent of SkyMall's 2013 revenue came from its loyalty business - product fulfillment for rewards programs of companies like Caesars Entertainment, Capital One and Marriott Rewards. That loyalty business was sold in late 2014 for pennies on the dollar.
The retail space is extremely difficult, there's no denying that.
But here's what I know.
• Ask anyone who has ever flown and they know what SkyMall is. The product was ingrained in the pop culture zeitgeist. The volume of eulogies is no coincidence. This is a product that people loved, cared about and obsessed about. TV shows made plotlines out of SkyMall addicts (just ask Ariana Grande, she played such an addict on an episode of "Victorious.")
• In just 25 years of existence, SkyMall managed to build up the kind of brand recognition that centuries-old companies pay millions of dollars in marketing and advertising to achieve.
• The company never did anything to capitalize on that brand recognition. The products featured in the catalog often came from innovators and inventors, but it was always a step above "As Seen on TV" products (though yes, some of those were advertised in SkyMall at times). It began to thrive at a time when reality TV exploded. Why was there never a "Shark Tank"-type show where inventors competed to be featured in SkyMall?
I'd even go so far as to ask this: Would there be a "Shark Tank" if not for the popularity of SkyMall? The catalog showed that innovation was cool, yet they never did anything to celebrate the innovators.
Richard Jaffe, a retail analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co., nailed it when he told the Wall Street Journal that SkyMall fell victim to the biggest mistake that catalogs and brick-and-mortar retailers make in the fight against growing online competition.
"I don't think [SkyMall] had a compelling identity," he said. "It's all over the place; it has no real point or mission."
Celebrating those innovations could have been and should be that identity. The catalog should be more like a magazine, with stories about innovators and products from the destinations that flyers were flying to.
The bonehead owners that officially ran SkyMall into the ground put a lot of blame out there in announcing the bankruptcy. They said that the airlines offering Wi-Fi was the nail in the coffin. That, all of a sudden, their exclusive window with flyers was gone.
That's a bogus excuse. I would turn around that whining.
See, SkyMall could learn a lot from travel agents here. The growth of online travel agents like Expedia was suppose to be the death of the traditional travel agent. Instead, the Internet became so overrun with travel information that the travel agent became the trusted source to cut through all the noise.
Likewise, instead of complaining about the excess of e-commerce competitors, SkyMall could thrive by being the trusted source that cuts through all that clutter, offering the best of useful and innovative products.
I see two recent comparisons worth drawing, the death of Twinkies and Blockbuster Video. Both brands were enormous at one time, both were mourned as they died. Blockbuster was a product of not keeping up with the times and technology like Netflix steamrolling a category leader asleep at the wheel.
Twinkies became more popular in its death, to the point where the company was resurrected. It was too popular to let die, the new owners got a bargain and have capitalized on its pop culture standing with innovative marketing.
I see SkyMall more like Twinkies. There's too much good there to let this die. Too much opportunity. In this society where the geeks now rule the Earth, SkyMall and its geeky kitschiness should thrive more than ever.
If I had the money to pony up, I'd be first in line at the Mar. 24 bankruptcy auction. Because beyond the mismanagement and the challenges, there's a brand here that never even came close to an iota of its true potential.
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