This article explores the relevance of the notion of entrapment in explaining the decline of small businesses. Entrapment refers to situations where individuals become bound to a suboptimal course of action through the passage of time. The vehicle for this exploration is a dilapidated hairdresser’s shop. By analysing the artefacts of the shop and interview data, analysis seeks to understand how and why a once successful business can reach a point of ‘no return’. What emerges suggests that whilst entrapment partly results from mixing economic and extraneous interests (‘side-bets’), the reasons may be more complex. Specifically, entrapment is distinctly risk averse and may reflect social pressures and ego-defensiveness, sustained not so much by illusion as delusion.
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