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Bang / Guns Title: Dick's shocked to find their gun sales plummeting They’ve found the answer to that question. This month they were forced to announce to their shareholders that gun sales had tanked and were not expected to recover any time soon… for some mysterious reason. (Business Insider) After the February shooting, Dick’s Chairman and CEO Edward Stack announced the company would stop selling assault-style rifles… The sporting goods retailer showed a splendid first-quarter 2018 earnings report Wednesday, sending the stock up more than 20%, but gun sales weren’t a part of that success. “Our firearms policy changes impacted our hunt business which saw an accelerated decline,” chief financial officer Lee Belitsky told analysts on the company’s conference call. “We expect these businesses to remain under significant pressure throughout the remainder of the year.” Other aspects of their business are still doing well enough for overall profits to rise, but they’re just not moving anywhere near as many firearms (of any type) compared to previous quarters. Shareholders probably won’t be all that put off since a positive number is always better than a negative one. But Dick’s is still leaving money on the table here. How much better would their overall profit picture be if they’d stood their ground and continued selling the full range of guns rather than choosing to take a side in an ongoing political debate? (And it was clearly the wrong side for their target audience if you’ll pardon the phrase.) If the store had decided to quietly discontinue carrying these weapons after the current stock sold out they might not have had this much of a problem. Yes, some people probably would have noticed and brought it up in the media, but it could have been framed as a business decision, with Dick’s saying that they felt the popularity of the product was dropping due to media pressure or something like that. Instead, they went in whole hog on the side of the gun control groups and launched a PR campaign to champion their position. How did they not expect gun owners (and prospective buyers) to see that as a slap in the face? Sadly, Second Amendment rights have turned into a markedly divisive issue in national politics. Both sides are on edge and will likely be set off by any such slight. That’s a lesson that Dick’s is now learning the hard way. It may not put them out of business, but it’s going to be cutting into their bottom line for at least the foreseeable future. Poster Comment: They had a good quarter, probably due to running cut-rate sales on existing inventory just to hide how hard they're being hit by their gun policy. It may also be the case that libs were more likely to buy some stuff from Dick's because of their gungrabber policy. They would see it as a way to strike back against the NRA and support a company who openly hired two gun-control lobbyists. It seems likely that Dick's is capitalizing on future sales now and has been temporarily buoyed by Dems spending at their stores when they otherwise would not have. But that won't last if I'm right and subsequent quarters are likely to nosedive.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 11.
#1. To: Tooconservative (#0)
Looks like Dick's made the right call.
I wonder who Dicks sold the orders of their "assault rifles" to, and how much the difference between wholesale to them, then wholesale out was. I am thinking they made a killing.
#12. To: jeremiad (#11)
They actually destroyed their entire stock of ARs.
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