The world is full of these weird business cases where people aren't aware of the actual product, like how Starbucks US morphed from a coffee shop into an iced dessert drinks company that also incidentally sells hot coffee.
Edit:
Other fun examples -
In the mid-2000s, Porsche was an incredibly successful hedge fund that also sold cars who tried to acquire VW using a short squeeze.
Most US airlines are profitable frequently flier points companies that also operate airplanes to justify the program.
Target US is a real estate company that operates also (profitable) stores.
They're exactly as much a real estate company than a mom & pop store that owns their space. They just have a lot of stores.
When I think about the band shirts, I think about this time an indie game dev youtuber did a full breakdown of their different revenue streams. They were a "full time indie gamedev", but the overwhelming majority of their income came from gamedev Udemy courses.
So really, they were an online course seller that used their gamedev youtube content to convince people to buy the courses.
Their business has run into trouble a couple of times because MBA types in the company lost sight of this, then focused on trying to sell drinks efficiently. Thereby diluting the brand and business.
If you've got 22 minutes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym7YwFq8ZuM is a very informative walkthrough of the history and the business by the always funny youtuber, The Fat Electician. Highly recommended.
So they try to find a way to get more growth, even if it changes and perhaps kills what the business was.
Obligatory "in a gold rush, sell shovels" ;)
Freakonomics Radio had a series about airlines. They claimed this was not true and that frequently flier points only accounted for 5% of profits.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/freakonomics-radio-take...
WSJ said it was true:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTTW8RDJUEE
I don't know who to believe.
Also the one about Target being a real-estate company I've also heard about McDonald's.
More interestingly, they tend to set up in historically significant or listed buildings and as a result, preserve them. Not unusual to find a Spoons set up in an old 19th century bank or something.
I think it's much more likely it's just a reference to extremely popular and economically successful movies but happy to be proven wrong.
RVs are put together by methheads and there are less protections (such as no lemon law for RVs) for the consumers. Many RVs spend there whole one year warranty period in the shop with no actual fixes being done and then the warranty runs out. The people that do hear about RV problems, buy new thinking that will be less problems, when in fact the newer RVs are the lower quality ones that have issues. There are YouTube channels dedicated to this phenomenon (https://youtube.com/@LizAmazing), and why one famous consumer lawyer (Steve Lehto) says "You Must be INSANE to buy an RV These Days": https://youtube.com/watch?v=xElhTNS_xn8
A great video where one major manufacturer does not even properly VIN their RVs leading to a $600,000 fine given to one RV owner: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zGOANydJURQ
The reason we don't evaluate things in this "measure what is actually goin on" manner is because the actual goings on are only able to go on as they do so long as a public image that emphasizes something else is maintained.
People wouldn't go to starbucks in the manner they do if they thought of it as a sugary drink place.
