Have you ever had a big dream totally fail? People in that situation do NOT make good decisions. You're in the position of arm-chair critic. You can see what the guy in the fight cannot see. Now that I've said that...I've seen and been told that at least in my locality when a store or shop closes the stock of products which rests in it is sold off to other shopkeepers or sent back to the owner but this involves too much lowering of price than actual prices and sometimes owner has to suffer a loss. For instance there was a fireworks shop nearby which when winding up had no option but to distribute all the fireworks for free. It didn't make any sense to me. Why won't owners who are winding up simply put up their stock on an e-commerce website and same price with which they were supposed to sell? I might be missing any point or operation. Would be great if anyone could tell why this doesn't happen and would this work!?
This is an example of why the owners need an "if-then" plan. If ______ happens, I do __________. That way when you and/or your business is under stress, you have already chosen a knee-jerk reaction. You don't have to think when you are under that pressure.
And you can take this preplanning to a step-by-step track to run on. You can make if-then decisions in your business for different situations. The way that this works is to set benchmarks. By tracking the normal ebbs and flows in the business, the owner can decide at which points they should make meaningful changes. And then do it, no matter how much it hurts.