Salena Zito: There’s no escaping politics, even in the basketball aislehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/salena-zito-there-s-no-es-cap-ing-pol-i-tics-even-in-the-bas-ket-ball-aisle/ar-AA1axZxIIn 2002, Ed Stack took Dick’s public, and it soon expanded by purchasing rival stores like Gaylon’s Trading Post. By 2018, Dick’s was the largest sporting goods store in the country, and Mr. Stack had become a billionaire.
One year later, after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Mr. Stack decided that Dick’s would phase out gun and ammunition sales from their stores. He made a clever public relations pitch: Though he was a gun owner himself, he didn’t want to be part of the problem, and so after deep reflection, he was removing certain guns from the shelves and halting the sale of firearms to anyone under the age of 21.
Within several months, the limitation on gun sales morphed into a “test” to pull all guns from ten stores, which soon expanded to 125 stores. Now the entire hunting category, including Dick’s Sporting Goods’ Field & Stream business, is being shuttered.\...
Mike Platz is one such customer. The 65-year-old retired IT professional and Navy veteran said that for decades he was a loyal Dick’s customer, but when they decided to weigh in on politics, he was done: “It is bittersweet because it’s local, but the stance they took on the Second Amendment hurt them. I never understood that because they sold guns the proper way.”
The upshot is that for all Dick's virtue-signalling,
legal gun sales have risen instead of falling, long-term Dick's customers have moved to other stores for their Sporting Goods needs/wants, and Dick's is moving to a different market niche to compensate. Speaking personally, I do not know if there is a Dick's in San Jose, but they are major sponsors of some running events, which I mostly avoid. Running event T-shirts usually have sponsors' logos on the backs, which means that when I do workouts, my shirts do not advertise Dick's.