Dick’s Sporting Goods won high praise from gun grabbers and the media for their knee-jerk reaction to the Parkland school massacre. Under CEO Edward Stack, the chain pulled magazines and modern sporting rifles from their shelves. They also unilaterally decided to end sales of all guns to anyone under 21.
It hasn’t gone well for Dick’s since then as sales have sagged. Fortune Magazine reported on a “deeper-than-expected sales decline” for the sporting goods chain. What’s more, the company’s stock price hovers near seven-year lows. For those really keeping track, it sank 5% on Friday.
Ever the intrepid reporter, I stopped by the Champaign, Illinois Dick’s-owned Field & Stream store to look around.
Sure enough, store staff replaced the rows of America’s favorite rifle and many others with widely-spaced long guns on display. It’s almost as if they’re trying to conceal the massive inventory gaps left by the suddenly banished, hot-selling modern sporting rifles.
Shelves formerly jam-packed with AR magazines and accessories now display long strings of ammunition spread out, in many cases just one box deep.
In the next aisle, I found quite a supply of Rem Action Cleaner and other Remington products.
It looked as though Dick’s ran out of enough cans of Remington’s products to cover the empty space on their shelves. Lacking product, Dick’s staff simply removed one entire shelving unit near the gun counter. In its place stood a lonely clothing rack filled with a few shooting vests.
On the counter, I saw the new sign announcing Dick’s arbitrary policy to deny 18-20-year-old adults their constitutional rights. I snapped a picture of the troubling sign and nobody said a peep.
Looking beyond the rows of .22s and gun cleaning stuff, I found lots of hard-cases spread out to take up the maximum amount of shelf space.
In a world where performance is measured in gross sales per square foot of floor space, Dick’s must be putting up some scary-low numbers these days.
What’s more, in a store almost completely devoid of customers on a Friday near noontime, those of us who were there weren’t exactly bumping into each other.
Of course, Remington recently filed for bankruptcy. The question on many minds now: How soon before Dick’s does the same?