Sunday, August 25, 2019

ICYMI: Dick's Sporting Goods Continues to Be Their Namesake

In case you missed it, Dick's Sporting Goods is apparently considering ending all gun sales.  This isn't really surprising, after all.  Dick's ended sales of the AR-15 at all of their stores, including the much smaller Field and Stream chain, after finding the killer from the Parkland Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting legally bought a gun from a Dick's in November.  Many of you will remember they temporarily stopped sales of AR-15s after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012.  This year, they started shutting down gun sales in some stores, saying they're ending all gun sales in 125 stores to start and apparently intend to get completely get out of the market.
“We did have a conversation about that [stopping all sales],” CEO Ed Stack told CNN Business earlier this year. “At the time we felt it was a part of our DNA and we should stay in it. So many people in the country are law-abiding citizens who use firearms to hunt, to use from a recreation standpoint. We didn’t think it was right to exit the business completely.”

That could be changing. Dick’s, one of the country’s biggest gun retailers, has been quietly testing the water on whether to pull out entirely from what it calls the “hunt” business, including firearms. An announcement with the results of the test is expected Thursday, when it is set to report quarterly results.
Dick's has been the poster child for "Get Woke, Go Broke" with earnings down since their decision to drop the AR-15.  They counter that with a story that dropping gun sales is turning out to be good for business.  According to The Hill:
The sports and outdoor retailer reported a sales increase of 3.2 percent nationwide, which the company attributed to solid performances in e-commerce, in-store sales and apparel sales while noting in a revenue report that the company was “continuing the strategic review of its hunt business."

The company reported that net sales for the second quarter of 2019 increased 3.8 percent and consolidated same-store sales increased 3.2 percent, compared to a drop of 4 percent for same-store sales during that quarter last year.
They claim stores that replaced firearms with locally targeted merchandise outperformed other locations.  It's conceivable that strong 2A supporters walked on Dick's and don't buy anything there while some people increased their shopping due to better deals or simply finding Dick's the only source for whatever that "locally targeted merchandise" is.

Retail sales of any kind is a rough business.  Margins aren't very big and the competition is intense.  It seems to me that companies should be trying to give shoppers a reason to come into their store, not a reason to avoid them.  They seem to be betting that they can grow new customers to replace the ones they've lost.  I'm sure there are people who will never go there again, I swore them off after Sandy Hook, but I also know a lot of people just buy wherever they find the best price.




7 comments:

  1. "Voting" with your wallet is one of the very few effective means the average person has of responding to PC crap invading the marketplace. It can be effective
    merely due to quarterly losses.....as in the multi billion loss in revenue caused by Gillete's anti male advertising earlier this year. However sometimes a company refuses to attribute poor performance to poor choices....unless they have been informed in clear language by consumers that politically motivated
    choices in the boardroom has resulted in politically motivated changes in shopping choices. Libs are notorious at ignoring the blatant evidence that is
    squarely in front of them.

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  2. The Dick's store out here is always deserted. Don't know how they stay open. Maybe the yuppie kids who go to CSU pump enough money into them during the school year.

    The locally owned and operated place has two stores, and they're crowded enough that they always have "Help Wanted" signs displayed around the store.

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  3. If their sales are up now, it only means they plumbed rock-bottom, and have finally started to rebound from freefall.

    (Note they always report "compared to the last quarter", rather than give an actual dollars-earned number, which would highlight how they've shot themselves in the junk, repeatedly, then reloaded, and opened fire again from their holster.

    Getting rid of guns entirely and chain-wide should start a whole new freefall, ideally leading to a death spiral.

    I wish the dicks at Dick's the absolute best on going out of business permanently.
    All they're doing is opening up the market to specialty guns-only stores everywhere, and getting people to stop shopping for anything from Dick's.

    I'm trying to see a downside there.

    This is pretty much the same model CNN is using to destroy themselves as a journalistic endeavor, with about the same results.

    Mazel tov!

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  4. Yeah, it's a totally good strategy for a bricks-and-mortar retailer to stop selling the only lline of products that Amazon can't carry.

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  5. Concur with the above, and the DIck's here is also empty, AND we have a new dedicated gun store that is more than happy to take their business. :-)

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    1. Every time I've been in one of the local gun stores they've been busy, crowded, or *packed*. Even if Dick's completely disappeared here I doubt if it would make any difference. My in-laws tell me the gun stores are always busy, even when it's not hunting season.

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  6. Not selling firearms at all seems more acceptable than picking one class of rifle to stop selling in a symbolic action. Makes no difference to me. I'm not going to visit their stores unless they are giving away ammo for free.

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