Broken China

Not that China, the other China (via Yahoo!): Crystal, china maker Waterford Wedgwood collapses.

Waterford Wedgwood PLC, the maker of classic china and crystal, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday after attempts to restructure the struggling business or find a buyer failed.

Waterford Wedgwood, which employs around 7,700 worldwide, is the latest in a burgeoning list of iconic British companies to succumb to the global economic slowdown and credit squeeze. Department store veteran Woolworths, the queen's tailor Hardy Amies, tea and coffee merchant Whittard of Chelsea and fellow ceramics stalwart Royal Worcester and Spode have all filed for bankruptcy protection in recent months.

Wedgwood has been an iconic name in British pottery for 250 years, after its founder Josiah Wedgwood opened the first factory in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, in 1759. It began making bone china in the 19th century.

Waterford Crystal traces its lineage to a factory opened in Waterford, southeast Ireland in 1783, although that business failed in the 1850s. The brand was revived by Czech immigrant Miroslav Havel in 1947.

Waterford acquired Wedgwood in 1986 to form the present company, listing on the stock exchange and expanding overseas in the 1990s before buying fellow Stoke-on-Trent ceramics maker Royal Doulton in 2005.

Much of the business has now shifted offshore, where it employs 5,800 people, including 1,500 people at a plant in Jakarta, Indonesia, which produces most of the company's ceramics. The majority of its crystal production has been handed to Eastern European subcontractors.

So they're basically a marketing firm with tons and tons of debt, a funny manufacturing unit out east, and a business model that depended on lots of people borrowing lots of money to buy their crapola.

Shocking that they failed. Quite shocking.