Warren Buffett · 1985 · Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
1985 Shareholder Letter
Buffett explained that the textile business had been a chronic disappointment despite capable management. The problem was structural: the industry's economics — commodity output, intense competition, heavy reinvestment merely to stay even — overwhelmed the efforts of honest operators. He closed the operation rather than continue pouring capital into a business that could not earn an adequate return, framing it as a lesson that a bad business is not redeemed by good people.
On closing the original Berkshire textile mills; the founding mistake of the Berkshire name.