I need help with a Business question. All explanations and answers will be used to help me learn.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Skin and Money<\/span><\/p>\n Chippendales and brutal competition: who owns a business concept, and how far should they go to protect it from copycat enterprises?<\/p>\n Source: ( In the mid-1980s in Los Angeles, Somen \u201cSteve\u201d Banerjee and his friend Nick DeNoia pooled money to start a new kind of strip club: men baring it for women. Since they had no idea what they were doing, it didn\u2019t go well. What finally helped was a couple of showmen from Las Vegas. Steve Merrit and his partner (professional and romantic) Mark Donnelly came aboard and hatched the idea of a Vegas-type song-and-dance show wrapped around the disrobing.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n To find performers, they cruised the muscle beaches outside LA. They brought the guys back<\/a> to a studio, applied some Village People\u2013style outfits (policeman, fireman, construction worker, and so on), and ran the group through a line-dancing routine.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n Their idea was simple but innovative: sex sells; but instead of making the show lustful, they made it entertaining. Drawing on their Las Vegas experience, Merrit and Donnelly understood how to do it, how to produce a fun theatrical fantasy instead of a crude flesh show. The general concept made sense and the execution was professional, but on opening night, no one knew what would happen.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n Chippendales exploded. Women went crazy for the performances, first in the United States, then Europe, and then everywhere as Banerjee and DeNoia rushed to form multiple traveling versions of their production. The time they didn\u2019t spend together mounting the shows they spent in court fighting over who was entitled to how much of the profits and who really owned the suddenly very valuable Chippendales name and concept. The dispute ended in 1987 after DeNoia was shot dead in his office.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n One major problem<\/a> Chippendales faced is that it wasn\u2019t a hard show to copy. Get some muscled guys, some uniform-store costumes, a pop music<\/a> soundtrack, and pound it all together into a dance routine with a little teasing; you don\u2019t need a genius to do it. So others started.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n Michael Fullington was a junior choreographer for Chippendales. He struck up a friendship with some of the showguys, and they split away into a group called Club Adonis. The original choreographers\u2014Merrit and Donnelly\u2014also got in on the act, forming their own traveling revue called Night Dreams.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n Unhappy with these copycat acts, Banerjee hired a hit man to go around killing the whole bunch. The hit man, it turned out, was an FBI informant. Banerjee ended up in jail. The ensuing investigation led to more charges. There was arson (he\u2019d burned down one of his own clubs for the insurance money some time back) and also another count of conspiracy to murder since it was Banerjee who\u2019d arranged to have his original partner shot.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n The case never got to trial. Banerjee agreed to plead guilty, absorb a twenty-six-year sentence, and give up his rights to Chippendales along with nearly all his money and real estate holdings.<\/p>\n While the lawyers worked out the details, Banerjee\u2019s wife Irene worked feverishly to organize a group of character witnesses. By bringing a parade of people to testify about her husband\u2019s good side at the sentencing hearing, she was hoping to get the jail time reduced. Or, maybe she was hoping to hold on to more of the money and real estate they\u2019d accumulated.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n No one got the chance to testify. On the morning of the hearing, Banerjee hung himself in his cell.<\/p>\n Because the trial was never completed, the plea deal never went into effect. And because the guilty man was dead, there was no one left to charge with any crime<\/a>. Chippendales and all the money and property associated with it went to Banerjee\u2019s wife Irene.(Skin and Money Case Study Essay)<\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/cases.ethicsworkshop.org\/Skin_Money.html<\/a> )<\/p>\nQuestions<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n