Just when you thought it was all going so well!

The Rise (and Overreach) of Brewdog

James Watt and Martin Dickie set out to revolutionise the craft beer industry. Through hard work and hard times they eventually won a lucrative contract to supply their flagship beer ‘Punk IPA’ to Tesco. By 2008 Brewdog had arrived.

They pulled publicity stunts and generated masses of interest with their irreverent attitude towards the industry. But their expansion needed to be funded so they set up Equity for Punks (EfP) whereby an army of fans could become part of the Brewdog revolution. In the early years some 200,000 investors provided the business with over £100m of funds.

They built a state of the art brewery and opened, at their peak in 2018, some 100 bars employing around 2000 staff. They had funding from a US private equity fund called TSG – to whom they had sold a fifth of the business. The company still kept going back to their EfP investors for yet more funds to open hotels and launch new gin and vodka brands – but all was not well. The founders began to believe their own hype- there were rumours of a toxic culture in the business. In addition TSG demanded a heavy price for their involvement– an interest rate of 18%.

The whole thing began to get out of hand. James Watt was credited as being the driving force behind the business with the goal of making Brewdog a unicorn company – a start-up valued at a billion pounds. Expansion was the name of the game but the company overreached itself – the COVID pandemic and the rises in rents and national insurance spelled danger for the business – the signs were ignored.

After a series of bad decisions in 2026 the company went into administration and was broken up. Bars were closed with over 400 job losses and the Equity for Punks investors lost their investment. The business had expanded too quickly on borrowed money and diversified too broadly into areas the management were unfamiliar with.

A Business That Should Have Worked: NCP

Contrast the rise and fall of innovative and daring, if reckless, Brewdog with a company you would think couldn’t fail because all it did was provide car parking. NCP, one of the most familiar names for motorists, collapsed into administration in 2026. Many asked how could a company who charged up to £65 in London for a day’s parking not make a profit?

NCP owned 340 car parks across the country including those at airports, train stations and hospitals as well as town centres. All – one would think- areas of high demand.

However social factors were in play – home working and online shopping contributed to lower occupancy of city centre parking. Rent rises linked to inflation, increased maintenance costs for aging sites and a failure to expand car parking spaces for increasingly larger vehicles. Technology played a part with online parking apps offering drivers more options with on-street parking rather than multi stories and some drivers even preferring to pay fines and penalties because they were cheaper than NCP’s charges.

Faced with a plethora of inflexible, long term leases which prevented them from reducing costs or closing unprofitable sites the company was doomed. Failure to invest in technological developments such as flexible app- based local parking added to the business’s problems.

Different Strategies, Same Outcome

So a contrast – two companies – one going for growth and change to shake up a traditional industry and one which was once the epitome of a traditional business which didn’t change – both ended in the same place.

Neither business demonstrated the best aspects of resilience- one changed too much, started well and got carried away and another which was as immovable as its concrete car parks. Did they read the signs? Was there a Plan B?

What lessons can we learn from these cases? Well, perhaps, don’t be in such a hurry and don’t assume the world won’t change around you would be a start.