I would say this is not the Ratner effect but the Othello effect (as in Reversi not Shakespeare)
Ratner merely put down the last piece that flipped almost the whole board. Marketing is usually the uphill struggle to persuade anyone looking at the board that "white is winning" when it is really anyone's game.
But eventually one piece is played, often a public failure, and everyone realises the board was destined to be black anyway.
It's much harder to play this marketing game when you are selling costume jewellery or other fashion lead items. And the odds of someone flipping the board are high without you realising it.
That board didn't have to flip. Ratner could have just kept selling the brand instead of stating his true opinions to a media circus. And the brand would have retained its value, perhaps all the way to today if he could have kept the unit economics alive.
What made the brand successful wasn't what Ratner thought it was.
The word at hand here is 'hubris'. Successful people slowly lose touch with the rest of the world and eventually make a colossal screw-up.
The re-branded company he was forced out of is now the largest diamond retailer in the world- so I'd say that the problem was him and his mouth, not an inevitable flip in fortune.
It's also possible he wasn't a real problem, but when his remarks caused a temporary (big) problem for the company, other stakeholders saw the opportunity to take control.
There's probably a counterfactual universe where he remained in his position, he learned a valuable lesson on keeping his mouth shut in public, and the company re-branded and recovered on a similar trajectory.
Zuckerbergs infamous "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumbfucks" springs to mind. While I'm sure there is some amount of long term damage, you'd be hardpressed to say it has crippled Facebook.
The tired analogy is premised of that this was some "final piece".
It wasn't, the company was going from strength to strength.
And whether "eventually it would flip" is another thing, and is irrelevant to this argument. Sure, every company will go down at some point.
That doesn't validate the idea put forward that this was some kind of "final piece" and the company was ready to flip anyway. There's absolutely no evidence for that. Your argument presupposes what it should prove.
Ratner merely put down the last piece that flipped almost the whole board. Marketing is usually the uphill struggle to persuade anyone looking at the board that "white is winning" when it is really anyone's game.
But eventually one piece is played, often a public failure, and everyone realises the board was destined to be black anyway.
It's much harder to play this marketing game when you are selling costume jewellery or other fashion lead items. And the odds of someone flipping the board are high without you realising it.
But people play it that way anyway.