They’ve been taking a beating, and are looking to exit the business. How stupid is Dick’s CEO? Let’s say you’re in a business where part of your business is regulated in such a way that emerging players like Amazon can’t easily compete with you. Lets also say you have some good economies of scale over mom and pop businesses that are your other main competition in that area, and can move product more efficiently and offer lower prices. Do you:
- Make every effort to stay in the regulated space and keep those customers happy with your brand, so give your brick and mortar business a business line Amazon can’t touch?
- Decide, in the same of Social Justice, to anger your customers in your regulated business and piss it away, leaving you to compete directly against Bezos, who eats brick and mortar stores for breakfast, in markets he finds much more favorable.
If you went with two, you’re about as stupid as Dick’s CEO. Angering gun owners and pissing away that business was about the dumbest things Dick’s could have done. You had a strong presence in a protected industry. Are you nuts?
Lots of compliance costs, too. Remember, this is the company that shut down the climbing walls when they bought Galyan’s
Shut down the climbing walls and exited the handgun business.
Yeah, that too. Which ought to have been a warning.
Maybe they should merge with Moviepass.
Good for the “mom and pop” FFL’s, Regional FFL Companies, and of course, Cabela’s/Bass Pro Shops.
Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for Dick’s Sporting Goods. I hope Amazon runs them right out of business.
I though Bass Pro did this exact same thing a few years back. Surprised they’re still in business.
Not sure precisely what you’re referencing, but my local Bass Pro has a selection of rifles, handguns, ammo and accessories that exceeds most any LGS I’ve seen. I haven’t checked in awhile, but AFAIK that continues to include AR pattern rifles. Bass Pro recently merged with Cabelas, which also sells guns.
Bass Pro has Evil Black Rifles!!!
Alas, I’m probably going to buy a new bike for my son there shortly. I am deeply unimpressed with the selection at Target, and I’m not quite ready to go to the bike-store-level bikes for him yet.
Shop at Dick’s. Order off Amazon.
We purchased a bike for my 11 year old off of Amazon last year for Christmas. I’m pretty impressed with the quality of it, and the price.
I’m given to understand that there is basically one OEM of bikes in the casual category, and everyone labels them with minor differences.
We’ll see what happens. Among other things, while he can fit the frame of a bike that will be big enough when he reaches his full growth, he can’t span the brake levers, so it might be a bit.
Also check out Academy, if they are in your area. Just don’t give any money to Dick’s.
I almost took a seasonal job at Dicks assembling bikes a couple years back. Knowing how careful the assemblers are, I *strongly* advise you to avoid them and hit up local bike shops for good used gear. Better deals, much better quality, and far safer for your kids.
This would be the second bike I’d have bought there. The guest one was not problematic.
I might buy off Amazon, but when I checked, it was notably cheaper at DSG.
It’s a problem for another day, at any rate.
(I should remind people that I don’t generally do boycotts, because I wouldn’t want someone to boycott me.)
Go Woke. Go Broke.
I’ll be excited to hear in 5 years about their going out of business sales.
exactly. screw em
I like visiting their stores.I walk though and don’t buy anything. Its the polite way of giving them the middle finger.
I think the Dick’s CEO knows a bit more about running a business than you do.
FIFY: I think the Dick’s CEO knows a bit more about running a business into the ground than you do.
And then there’s the comment from way out of left field here that has zero grounding in reality. That would be from you.
You probably don’t say the same thing about, say, Lee Iacocca or Alan Mullaly, because neither of them have supported your presumed politics while they made decisions that a lot of other people could see were terrible for the companies they were running.
CEOs are still people with biases, limited knowledge and no special ability to see the future–just like the rest of us. You may call it ‘conscience’ when it comports with your personal views, but it doesn’t make it any more sensible for a sporting goods store to deliberately antagonize a large part of its customer base in a way that will clearly cost it a significant amount of trade.
Indeed. There is no shortage of CEOs who are either brought in, or who panic, and then go on to run their company into the ground.
For that matter, there’s no shortage of CEOs who try to drag their company, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing, only to be kicked out, so that they could find a CEO that would allow them to take their company the direction they want — right into the ground.
Won’t happen because SJWs/Commie mindset/Left Coast, but if Bezos were a mind to he could outgunbroker Gunbroker et al (assuming the mfgs were more interested in cannibalism than their own futures). But…..to succeed he’d still need a local dealer infrastructure unless he was able to roll back the legislative environment to 1967.
Midway.com now selling firearms too. And unlike Amazon, Midway doesn’t always charge a sales tax (at least for now). I bought a lot of hard to find niche ammo from Midway (right up until Commiefornia outlawed mail order ammo sales).
Amazon still sells a lot of hunting and gun-related products, but that is probably more accidental than intentional.
Interesting caveat to CA’s “no online ammo” law: if you have a C&R FFL ($30 for 3 years) and a state issued Certificate OF Eligibility (basically confirms you passed a NICS check, costs about $100 for the first year, about $20 a year after that) you can legally buy ammo online and not have to register the purchase with the state. It’s actually written into the relevant law itself.
Annoying? Yes. Objectionable? Definitely. Unconstitutional? Maybe. But it lets you get around the regular state BS.
Does anyone think we will hear from the folks who wrote articles like this:
May 30, 2018
In A Repudiation Of The NRA, Sales Were Up At Dick’s Sporting Goods
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethmacbride/2018/05/30/in-a-repudiation-of-the-nra-1q-sales-were-up-at-dicks-sporting-goods/#8229a525828b
Hello Bloomberg Troll……..Your article is 6 months outdated.
Where did you get the idea he was a Bloomberg troll? Dick’s is losing money now, after people like Elizabeth MacBride wrote that Dick’s could defy NRA and shit on gun owners and get away with it.
In some ways, I would expect Dick’s to possibly get away with their initial crap, because they were still offering things for hunters, which is definitely justifiable on a sporting level…but now they’re doubling down, and jettisoning even that….
It was his copy & paste of the Article ‘summary’;…”In A Repudiation Of The NRA, Sales Were Up At Dick’s Sporting Goods”.
I got a ‘back-handed’ and condescending vibe from that. Also the fact that the Article is from May, 2018. 6 months outdated.
The purpose of the cut-n-paste was to ask the rhetorical question (and where we can almost assuredly speculate they will never do so) whether or not the people who wrote that now obsolete and contradicted article would write a new one where they acknowledged that they were previously all wet.
Hello everyone. I apologize for being off-subject, but I just read this article about the supreme Court all agreeing that “every right in the Bill of Rights” should be “incorporated” by the 14th Amendment.
The case deals with civil asset forfeiture, another object of my ire. The judges made some wonderful comments on incorporation that should reflect powerfully against State attempts to ban militia-type (aka “assault”) weapons. Here’s an excerpt:
‘Incorporation includes ALL RIGHTS in the Bill of Rights. 30 Nov 18
After this week’s argument, that appears likely to change. At oral argument, the justices appeared to uniformly consider the question of incorporation to be settled.
When the lawyer for Indiana, Solicitor General Thomas Fisher, stood up at the podium, Justice Neil Gorsuch said, “We all agree that the Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the states … can we at least get the theoretical question off the table?â€
Justice Brett Kavanaugh chimed in, “Isn’t it just too late in the day to argue that any of the Bill of Rights is not incorporated?‒
Link:
https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/jason-snead/scotus-signals-it-may-rein-governments-abusive-property-seizures
Here’s another excerpt that shows the greedy, usurpatious attitude of the State officials:
‘When Justice Stephen Breyer asked Indiana Attorney General Fisher whether, under his theory, “a state needing revenue†could forfeit every vehicle found merely to be speeding, Fisher responded, “Yes.â€
Several justices seemed perturbed by the implication that states and localities would be able to levy otherwise unconstitutional fines merely by saying they are forfeitures.’
No kidding! Here’s hoping the justices put an end to this atrocious tyranny!
Again, sorry for being off topic; just had to share!
Respectfully, Arnie
I see no reason to even set foot in Dick’s again. I can choose from Academy (better selection of what they still carry, and they carry guns), Cabelas, Bass Pro, or online. Dick’s has made it clear that they don’t want my business. And, to be honest, they rarely had anything at a price I was interested in paying.
one of my local FFL shops is tied in with an huge online warehouse. If they don’t have what you want they can get in within two or three days. AND…they are always less expensive than Cabelas or Bass Pro. So check the website of your local FFL shop, see if they have an Shop On Line link. That’s not a guarantee they’re connected to the warehouse I’m talking about, but you’ll be able to figure it out if the on-line sight has a list of every gun in ‘Murica available for order.
So when is someone going to sue the SoB for putting his own politics ahead of the interests of the shareholders. There definitely needs to be an investigation just to make sure he didn’t do something really illegal like shorting his own stock. When you get this kind of self-destructive behavior, it is worth a look for hidden motives.
Dicks is slumping for more reasons than just guns. Apparrel sales are way down, being lead by under armor. Dicks now is saying it wants to exit from all hunting gear, archery, clothing, accessories.
Business need to make money That being said It is good the financial consequences of pissing off your customer base to virtue signal is a bad idea. Smith and Wesson learned
It wasn’t really S&W that screwed up, it was at the direction of their parent BRITISH corp that they ended up playing footsie with Clinton the First. Those British anti-self defense Elitists thought they could dictate to the American people, and as a consequence their $600+million dollar American investment ended up being dumped for ~5 million.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a big enough loss to kill the British company, but it might have had a negative impact on bonuses that year.
Some large sporting goods chain should offer to take Dick’s inventory of unsold guns and accessories off their hands for pennies on the dollar. Then turn around and sell it for a nominal increase over the purchase price. People like me would never buy anything from Dick’s no matter how low the price was but if you launder it through a gun-friendly company, the price would be irresistible. Somebody (Cabela’s?) ran an ad that said “we are not Dick’s”. This would make a great name for the sale.