Read the WSJ story on American Apparel and its CEO Dov Charney in today’s edition. Go ahead and substitute “idiot” for “eccentric” whenever you read Mr. Charney’s name. American Apparel is a mess, and a now public mess (through a reverse merger) because Mr. Charney won’t follow standard business practices…you know know, like GAAP…oh, and he sleeps with members of his staff (four sexual harassment lawsuits) and continues to open new stores even though same store sales are down, and to top it all off, the company has had to restate earnings several times.

This is a classic case of the product genius getting in the way of making his own vision a success. What Mr. Charney needs is adult supervision. He seems to have his shareholders over a barrel by threatening to leave whenever any approach to bringing normalcy to his firm is introduced.

At some point his shareholders, then his customers, are going to give up.