 E. H. Powell identified and fixed a key vulnerability of "Britannica", namely, that its sales (and, hence, the company's income) fluctuated strongly over the life-cycle of an edition.After the release of a new edition, sales would generally begin strong, and decline gradually for 10–20 years as the edition began to show its age; finally, sales would drop off precipitously with the announcement that work had begun on a new edition, since few people would buy an obsolete encyclopedia that would soon be updated.These strong fluctuations in sales led to economic hardship for the "Britannica".