Christina Warren is a software developer and former journalist who likes to collect trophies from failed companies.
An NPR article profiling this noble pursuit lets us know that Warren has spent six years building her hall of corporate failure, which grew out of the “pile of endless swag she’d get at tech conferences.” Inspired by the fact that her horde of conference junk included promotional items from a number of companies that “have gone out of business in really spectacular ways,” Warren decided to actually start building out a proper collection made up of souvenirs from failed companies.
She now owns stuff like an Enron-branded mug, a CNN+ PopSocket, a sweatshirt from the doomed start-up Fast, a MoviePass t-shirt, and Fyre Festival t-shirts that she bought on eBay. Basically, any branded junk from companies “that were flying high, too close to the sun” belongs in her collection.
New story on NPR: From CNN+ to Fyre Festival: This collector seeks swag from companies with epic ends Christina Warren collects T-shirts, mugs and other items from companies that promised huge changes, but failed to deliver — often in spectacular ways.https://t.co/5AJ5KpbSHe
— Teaching Change Podcast (@teaching_change) April 27, 2022
Warren, as the article notes, sympathizes with the ordinary employees who suffer from the fallout of ill-conceived or poorly executed business ideas, but she enjoys collecting artifacts from these failures because it’s a good way for her to reflect on how “certain things get the attention they get” and the ways in which “they fall out of favor.”
Naturally, then, Warren really wants to get something from Theranos, which is tough because counterfeits and overpriced merch (her limit is $75 on a single item) from particularly noteworthy failures make collecting difficult. She still holds out hope, though, that something—even just a Theranos pen—will surface one day.
Photo | iStock
