I suppose you could make a business case for way the company was run for the past 10 years. They had a stale product line whose popularity was sinking. Either you invest in building a whole new product line or you milk the company for whatever you can get out of it for as long as you can.
Who knows, that might have been the smartest strategy?
It appears that milk it they did.
Driscoll outlined a "Turnaround Plan" to get the firm back on its feet. The steps included closing outmoded plants and improving the efficiency of those that remain; upgrading the company's "aging vehicle fleet" and merging its distribution warehouses for efficiency; installing software at the warehouses to allow it to track inventory; and closing unprofitable retail stores.
A company with inefficient plants, an aging vehicle fleet, no software to track inventory, and unprofitable retail stores is on its way to bankruptcy. Now, I suspect [as is often the case] that high union wages combined with investors' need to see a return led to ignoring capital improvements.
It's what happened to American railroads in the seventies and the steel industry in the eighties. It is only through capital investment leading to greater productivity that employee wages can increase.