Last month, Dick’s Sporting Goods announced that its CEO Ed Stack would be stepping down from his leadership role. Stack is expected to step down on February 1, 2021.
Under Stack’s leadership, Dick’s earned a bad reputation for its decision to stop selling “assault” rifles at their stores in the aftermath of the Parkland massacre. Stack is currently the company’s largest shareholder and his successor will be Lauren Hobart, the current President of the company.
Stack will still keep his position as chairman and chief merchant for the time being.
Gun owners shouldn’t get ahead of themselves though. Hobart is no friend of the Second Amendment. She was in favor of Stack’s anti-Second Amendment business strategies. She in fact, assisted Stack restructure the company in a way that a significant reduction in gun sales would not force it to close its doors.
According to a report by Fortune, Hobart played an instrumental role in helping the company withstand heavy losses after they scrapped guns and other hunting items from their stores:
She played a key role in formulating Dick’s strategy to replace the $300 million in annual sales lost in 2018 after the company made the controversial move to significantly pare its firearms assortment in the wake of a spate of mass shootings. Hobart, armed with the deep customer data a marketing chief needs, also helped Stack come up with a plan to aggressively pursue more serious athletes, not just casual participants, and outdoor enthusiasts who usually shop at REI or L.L. Bean.
2nd Amendment Daily News highlighted that “Unlike Stack, whose father started the sporting goods retailer in 1948, Hobart comes from a background working with global corporations.”
Hobart has worked with corporate titans such as PepsiCo, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo Banking, thus demonstrating that she won’t be catering to the interests of gun owners anytime soon. Stack has led the way in making Dick’s a paragon of woke corporate virtue signaling by taking firearms off its shelves.
Back in October of 2018, Stack said to a reporter that Dick’s scrapped $5 million dollars worth of rifles they had available when they announced their move to stop selling AR-15s. The company subsequently lost $250 million dollars in sales in the ensuing two quarters.
Corporate America has clearly lost its marbles. The embrace of leftist causes is one sign of America’s cultural decline and reminder how multi-faceted the fights we face are these days.
Liberty conservatives would be wise to boycott companies which engage in leftist policies and shop elsewhere. For those with financial resources, they should finance pro-conservative companies and even start their own companies should they have the determination and resources to do so.
