[juitpykyk]

Article says 3M exited floppies because it was retail oriented very low margin business.

But how is Scotch Tape not that too?

[Ekaros]

Scale and complexity. Floppies were dying. And it might be that so was some equipment for making them. Tape is steady state demand with likely small but clear margin and demand also in future. So quite different future and production scenario.

[returnzero]

I imagine the difference is that Scotch tape is much better aligned with the R&D that goes into their other products in the adhesives and films categories compared to magnetic tape. If they didn't intend to go further into developing products in the computing space then selling it while it still had value was probably a wise call.

[system2]

Shipping businesses grew and still growing. I think they are making so much money from it despite its margin.