Thanks again to Pirate’s Cove and The Other McCain for the Rule Five links!
Here’s a lesson for sporting-goods retailers: Don’t be a Dick’s. Excerpt:
Dick’s Sporting Goods may no longer sell hunting-related gear and products.
The CEO for the sporting goods retailer said Thursday that the company was doing a trial run in 10 locations, pulling all hunting merchandise and replacing it with other items.
“Though it’s too early to discuss performance, we’re optimistic these changes will better serve the athletes in these communities,” Dick’s CEO Edward Stack said in a conference call, as reported by JSOnline.
The reason for the new approach may be because sales in that department have plummeted across all of Dick’s 732 stores.
“Specific to hunt, in addition to the strategic decisions made regarding firearms earlier this year, sales continued to be negatively impacted by double-digit declines in hunt and electronics,” said Lee Belitsky, chief financial officer.
Dick’s sadly underestimated the impact of their support of gun control laws, and their virtue-signalling policy changes in not only removing but destroying semi-auto rifles in their inventories.
I’ve purchased precisely one gun from Dick’s, long before any of these shenanigans started up. They had a sale with a really good price on new Browning Citoris, so I bought my 12 gauge Satin Hunter from them. That was in 2007, I haven’t set foot in a Dick’s since, and never will.
There are plenty of folks out there like me.
Alienating a key constituent in your target market rarely ends well. Heard much from the Dixie Chicks lately? No? Well, now Dick’s is apparently following the Dixie Chicks model. Piss off a big part of your target market and see how it ends up.
As my grandfather used to say, you can teach ’em, but you can’t learn ’em.
