Earlier this year, Dick’s Sporting Goods was quick to cave into demands from David Hogg and the pro-gun control activist crowd. I’m a pro-business guy, but I’m also a pro-2nd Amendment guy, and as such I confess to getting some pangs of schadenfreude over this:
Gun policy, Under Armour weakness hit Dick's Sporting sales https://t.co/N4BigNwbNf pic.twitter.com/af9AMHxLST
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) August 29, 2018
Yep, that’s a big time backfire:
Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS.N) reported a bigger-than-expected drop in quarterly same-store sales on Wednesday and forecast further declines this year, hit by tighter gun controls and a drop in Under Armour sales.
Shares in the company fell as much as 10 percent after it posted a 1.9 percent drop in same-store sales, bigger than analysts’ average estimate of a 0.62 percent dip.
Dick’s was one of the first retailers to stop selling assault rifles and high-capacity magazines as well as bar the sale of guns to people under age 21 following a massacre at a Florida high school in February.
The company had predicted that its hunting guns business would be pressurized by the change in policy but said the move should also attract more people to its stores.
Narrator: “But caving to left-wing activists didn’t attract more people to its stores.” If anything it had the opposite effect. It seems company shareholders wouldn’t be too thrilled with the company’s CEO putting control of their investment into the hands of David Hogg, Shannon Watts and Alyssa Milano, but maybe that’s just me.
