Upper Deck is essentially cash poor. That is not to say it's broke as a company, but it puts a lot of faith and equity in the brands that it has in its wheel house. Because the company is so tight on cash, it will cry poverty at any chance it can find. You will hear it during quarterly staff meetings or during annual reviews in an effort to make employees sympathetic when they get their raise that is less than the standard cost of living increase. The main reason the company is cash poor is due to multiple bad business decisions that they continue to double down on. Spending money to get terrible sports/entertainment licenses that do not sell to consumers because someone in upper management had a "passion project" for that license. Also spending copious amounts of money on unnecessary superficial cosmetic items like $250k on a set of wood bleachers in the middle of the office when there are multiple sets of stairs all over the office. When you voice concerns over the amount of pointless spending the company does, you will be brushed off by upper management. And getting brushed off will happen a lot. The president only listens to his directors/VPs within the company, The first problem is that most of the directors are nothing more than yes men and will only give the president the answers he wants to hear regardless of facts. The second is that many of the directors are close personal friends with the president/owner. This creates a very large and obvious nepotism in the office. These people can do no wrong in the presidents eyes regardless of how much money they cost the company. Even if you have the best possible idea in the world, if you can't convince these close personal friends of the president to get on board, it is pretty much DOA. Because the company is resistant to change, unable to accept criticism, and either oblivious or ignorant of the facts, they are not able to grow the consumer base much further past what is already there. The average age of their consumers continues to age and will eventually die off. They don't want to try to engage or attract a younger audience because "what has worked ok for 30 years should work just fine in the future".
