Not so Super Nova
Years ago, Nova was a conglomerate, hiring native English teachers from abroad, bringing them over, housing, feeding and of course paying them in exchange that they speak the language they were born into. Of course, Nova's had its bumps along the way with its teachers, all seemed to be functioning well within it's corporate doors. Stock, students and its marketing efforts were up. It's mascot bunny even coming out with it's own buyable products. Take that, Hello Kitty.
But, as it is with most conglomerates, they got a bit greedy. With their "No Risk!" long-term prepaid contracts from the Japanese only wanting a bit more than their un-cultured neighbor, if they tried to cancel their contract, they soon found Nova intended to keep their money. Now, in my experience when one or two Japanese are screwed out of money they may just take it in stride. After all, Japan isn't a "I'm gonna sue your a**" type of nation. But when you screw a large group, daddy governement may decide to step in. And so, was the case. Nova was suspended for 6 months of obtaining new long-term contracts, their obvious bread and butter, as punishment for false advertising. Seeing the progression, other Japanese long-term students took the opportunity to run like rats from a sinking ship and ex-students filed lawsuits to get their money back. Oh Nova.
Money now quickly departing from Nova's bank account, the president, Nozumu Sahashi, took his cue to flee to...well noody's seen him since. Under new leadership, Nova desperately tried to analyze its possibilities. With the debt piling up, office space rent and its employees were going unpaid, which brought a whole new pile of problems as the Japan Labour board stepped in to settle the dispute. And, with their obvious financial problems made very public and inadequate amounts of teachers left to teach its lessons, Nova was forced to "temporarily" close its doors and apply for bankruptcy protection. What it boils down to is that the employees and banks may just get their money back, but the students-the ones so wronged in the first place- may, unfortunately, still be out of luck. Nova 's been given one month to find a sponsor so that it may continue in business. And it seems to be hopeful for another large school or IT company such as Yahoo to bail it out. But that will most probably signal a dismal goodbye for its bunny-like mascot. But there's an obvious lesson here. To all you other huge corporations, we people do have a say. Mess with enough of us, and you too will face the consequence of being bought by Yahoo...or something like that.
posted by Fudocom - Rei @ 8:46 PM
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