What Happened
Australian activewear brand Stax, once valued at around $30 million, has collapsed into liquidation, leaving employees, suppliers, and customers exposed. The founders issued a public apology describing the situation as the most difficult chapter of their lives. Receivers are now scrambling to find a buyer while the human fallout from unpaid orders and lost jobs continues to grow.
The Communication Angle
Picture this: your company just imploded. Hundreds of people are owed money. Staff are out of work. And your first public move is to tell everyone how hard this is for you.
That is exactly what the Stax founders did, and it is a textbook example of an apology that centers the wrong person. The moment you describe a crisis you caused as the most difficult chapter of your lives, you have lost the room. You have taken a statement that should face outward toward the people you harmed and pointed it straight back at yourself. That is not an apology. That is a press release about your feelings.
Here is what a real crisis apology requires: it must name the harm, name the people affected, and name the concrete next steps. In that order. Every word you spend on your own suffering is a word stolen from the people who actually need to hear from you. The Stax statement reportedly also shifted blame toward banks for order fulfillment problems. That is the second fatal mistake. Blame displacement in a crisis apology does not reduce your responsibility. It multiplies the audience's anger, because now they feel dismissed on top of being harmed.
The founders had one shot to shape the narrative before liquidators took over the story entirely. A well-constructed statement could have acknowledged specific groups (customers with unfulfilled orders, staff losing jobs, suppliers left unpaid), offered whatever clarity was available about the liquidation process, and closed with a direct line of accountability. Instead, they handed every journalist covering this story a gift: proof that leadership was more focused on reputation management than genuine accountability.
There is a lesson here that applies far beyond corporate collapse. Whether you are a manager delivering bad news to a team, a founder writing to investors after a miss, or a professional apologizing to a client, the structure is the same. Lead with what happened to them, not what happened to you. Follow with what you are doing about it. End with what they can expect next. Nothing else belongs in that statement.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I break down in Say It Right Every Time. The chapter on high-stakes apologies gives you a framework for structuring accountability statements so the first thing your audience hears is that you understand what they lost, not what you suffered. That sequencing is not just compassionate. It is strategic. It is the difference between an apology that closes a wound and one that tears it wider open.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Key Takeaway
Before you write or deliver any apology, do this one thing: read it back and count how many sentences start with "I" or "we" versus how many reference the person you harmed. If your sentences about yourself outnumber your sentences about them, rewrite it. The ratio tells you everything about where your focus actually is.
