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Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

themarysue.com

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Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#41

Post by blazespin »

starbeast wrote: post #27
blazespin wrote: post #22

Employee ownership is a very old concept. All studies have shown that they are risk averse and have poor growth. I’d love for this to work, but you can’t fantasize your way to results.

On the other hand, Aardman is in the business of making cartoons for children out of clay. And actually has a business doing this. They are experts in successfully fantasizing their way to results. As far as being risk averse or having poor growth, their employees are animators. It is not a trade you take up if you tend to be risk averse. Growth will be judged a frame at a time, but growth is only vitally important t…

That's true. it might work in this instance. My guess though is a competitor will see this as an opportunity to copy and have a more efficient studio.

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#45

Post by Plastikdusche »

cazum wrote: post #34
beerlord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market failure got us to 400PPM. The externalities of carbon and methane pollution have not been properly priced in. That can be resolved with a market mechanism - a carbon tax. The free market has also brought us widespread electric cars, solar panels, gas power plants. The very things with which we will combat climate change. Socialism has brought us expanding populations globally, by offering free food to people w…

If we're just going to attribute anything that happened during capitalism as a result of the "free market" then I get to say that communism invented satellites, discovered stem cells, and cured maternally transmitted HIV. Electric cars and solar panels won't save us. You're not fooling anyone with that. Solar panels are not nearly efficient enough to replace anything major any time soon, and electric passenger cars w…

Do you have a source that natural gas is the largest carbon emissionss contributer? Genuinely curious, because over here in Germany gas companies (Gazprom.. ;)) market themselves as the opposite and the same argument is used for cars running on natural gas. I know that's just PR, but I thought it produces less emissions because it burns more efficiently than other fossil fuels.

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#46

Post by teslabox »

KLVTZ wrote: post #17

This reminds me of Bob's Red Mill and their Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP): https://www.bobsredmill.com/bobs-way-meet#ESOP

I just recently learned about ESOPs: a few weeks ago I visited Graybar's [0] website, and learned that this large electric/etc distributor has been employee-owned since the 1920's.

Louis Kelso was "the inventor and pioneer of the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP)" [1]. Kelso wrote *The Capitalist Manifesto" [2] about employee-ownership in 1958.

I think most businesses would run better if their employees were more invested in their success.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graybar

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_O._Kelso

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capitalist_Manifesto

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Employee-owned_compan...

(now I can close those tabs: HN comments are much better for me to keep track of things I've read than bookmarks.)

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#47

Post by geezerjay »

michaelchisari wrote: post #40
vanderZwan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how long-lasting are these companies? Do they fail at providing a steady income for their employees?

Mondragon Cooperative is 62 years old, employs ~75k people and has revenues in the billions.

Mondragon collapsed a few yeas ago, though, with a very capitalist series of cascading bankruptcies across subsidiaries

https://www.economist.com/business/2013/11/09/trouble-in-wor...

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#48

Post by ascar »

starbeast wrote: post #27
blazespin wrote: post #22

Employee ownership is a very old concept. All studies have shown that they are risk averse and have poor growth. I’d love for this to work, but you can’t fantasize your way to results.

On the other hand, Aardman is in the business of making cartoons for children out of clay. And actually has a business doing this. They are experts in successfully fantasizing their way to results. As far as being risk averse or having poor growth, their employees are animators. It is not a trade you take up if you tend to be risk averse. Growth will be judged a frame at a time, but growth is only vitally important t…

Growth at the inflation rate is at least important for employees in terms of pay-raises to actually maintain a stable standard of living.

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#49

Post by laumars »

blazespin wrote: post #22

Employee ownership is a very old concept. All studies have shown that they are risk averse and have poor growth. I’d love for this to work, but you can’t fantasize your way to results.

There’s nothing wrong with a company existing to specialise in its own field. Not every business has to be an Amazon nor Google. not everyone wants to work in such a company and a great many business owners equally don’t really care that much either just so long as their business sustains them a comfortable life.

We live in the bubble in the technology sector because growth is easy (data can be redistributed cheaply and we can work on an international scale right from the off). But for an animation studio that would mean having to write more scripts and thus potentially diluting their brand with inferior stores.

When You think about where Aardman began (stop motion animation that could take years just to produce one half hour TV movie), you can really see that the company is built around the love of animation rather than being a mass producer of family content.

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#50

Post by laumars »

blazespin wrote: post #41
starbeast wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, Aardman is in the business of making cartoons for children out of clay. And actually has a business doing this. They are experts in successfully fantasizing their way to results. As far as being risk averse or having poor growth, their employees are animators. It is not a trade you take up if you tend to be risk averse. Growth will be judged a frame at a time, but growth is only vitally important t…

That's true. it might work in this instance. My guess though is a competitor will see this as an opportunity to copy and have a more efficient studio.

Aardman didn’t invent stop motion nor claymation. So plenty of companies have been in the business of creating stories using those techniques. However I’m pretty sure Aardman could have grounds for legal action if another company copied their iconic character designs (which will be copyrighted).
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