Something New at the Bottom Line

Posted by Joseph Phillips, Jr. on Tuesday, May 12, 2015 at 1:07 PM PDT

Have you noticed a change at the Bottom Line in the PACCAR Atrium?  Something new in the signage, perhaps?  After overlooking it for a number of years, it occurred to me that it was not a good idea to keep the WM stock ticker symbol.  And what does the WM stand for?  Why it is Washington Mutual, of course, not exactly a model organization to call out for our students!

No one ever complained about the WM, at least to me, so why bother?  My answer - I always sweat the details!

Or, you might want to argue that the WM should remain as a good example of a business that lost its way. My answer - that is easy enough to do without a daily reminder of this Seattle story with a bad ending.

Now what to replace the WM with is another story.  It seems most companies these days like to use the full four letters they have available for their stock ticker symbol.  After an exhaustive 30 minute search for Seattle based companies, I could uncover only two options - Zillow (Z) and Zulily (ZU). 

Both are interesting companies that appear to be benefiting from good leadership at the top.  Both are tech based companies.  How to decide?

I went with Zulily, mainly because if something ever happens to Zulily (such as they get bought out, which everyone says is not going to happen, at least with respect to Alibaba), then it is easy to drop back to Z by removing the U. 

It will be easier to do that than to order a U and get it installed, should we have started with only Z!

If you think I am making this up, check out the photo: