Dick's Sporting Goods to stop selling hunting rifles in 125 stores

HorizontalHunter

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Dick's Sporting Goods said Tuesday that it will stop selling hunting products, including rifles and ammunition, at 125 stores where the category has underperformed.

The sporting goods retailer said it will replace the category with in-demand merchandise. The company has already removed the category in 10 stores.
 
Presumably he backlash from hunters caused firearm sales to crater. Remains to be seen whether other parts of the business are suffering.
 
Normally I would never say "good" when a place stops selling guns, but f*** these people. I hope they stop selling guns and ammo entirely, at least other gun shops will benefit from the business and it will keep gun owners out of their stores and in other stores that suck less.

-Mike
 
Good. I haven’t stepped foot in one because of their stupid views.

I hope they continue to spiral down.

Unfortunately, the put nearly all the local sports stores out of business and all the douche bags still love to shop there for their Yeti and UA items.
 
We needed to get a set of soccer shoes for my son and while Dicks would have saved us money I refused to spend my money in their stores. We ended up finding something thru a church run program that was awesome for us.
Hope Dicks goes the way of the Dodo.
 
As long as the 2a guys remember to hold the grudge well after they stop carrying firearms.

It won't be long after that. So never fear - even the short-memoried folk won't have an opportunity to boycott for very long.

I have to say, I've been in to several Dick's in the last 15 years. (Better than having several Dick's in. . . never mind.)

I've never seen them crowded. Ever.

What I HAVE seen is that the hunting/fishing/shooting/whatever area tends to have the must buyers in it, short of the shoe area.

You can't run a store on a shoe area. Hell, the entire Payless model is collapsing.

Maybe the only other place that's hopping at times is the golf area. Again, do I need to go to Dick's to get $12 golf balls or can I get them on Amazon????

They are taking a huge sales area and voluntarily (through their own actions) making it smaller. The margins are so tight in retail right now they need every sale possible. They have these misguided principals and they will fail because of them. What is this? 2019?? I give them until 2022.

They have 850 stores. Already 15% of their stores are showing signs of lower sales.
 
Apparently not selling firearms and ammunition is not helping. Their overall profit was up, however repeat business is way down. That's why the stock isn't doing well. Repeat (paying) customers are the basis of a successful retail operation and Dick's is losing them.
 
Realistically, the firearms departments in the Lodge section of a regular Dick's store have always been a waste of space. Nobody but clueless newbies bought anything there. So this move actually makes sense. The real problem for Dick's in the big picture is that it's too easy, and too cheap, to buy stuff on the internet. There will always be demand for trying stuff on and making immediate gratification purchases, but not enough to grow a 700-store company or even to maintain it.

They had a great chance to show BPS how it's done, but they totally blew it. Field & Stream had reasonable prices across the board, an outstanding fishing department, and a really good gun shop (depending on the quality of the staff). They could have garnered huge loyalty by taking an intelligent stance after Parkland but they did the opposite and got the opposite.
 
Realistically, the firearms departments in the Lodge section of a regular Dick's store have always been a waste of space. Nobody but clueless newbies bought anything there. So this move actually makes sense. The real problem for Dick's in the big picture is that it's too easy, and too cheap, to buy stuff on the internet. There will always be demand for trying stuff on and making immediate gratification purchases, but not enough to grow a 700-store company or even to maintain it.

Buying small amounts of ammo and gun accessories online is a pain in the ass, there is always a market for retail gun stuff, across a bunch of different strata of shooters. Remember there are millions of people who
are johnny 1 box at the range that are basically newbies forever. A place like "dicks" is in their wheelhouse. I know a metric shit ton of "those people". It's just that dicks has managed to screw themselves out of it. You really think that their anti gun management/bad press has nothing to do with this? One hand washes the other.

-Mike
 
I still got grudges from 40 years ago. Does that count?

I got a good one for you.

I sold a guy an RF amplifier like 25? years ago , he connected it backwards (despite the warning that I passed along about the wire colors being wrong) and blew the f***ing thing up, then blamed me for it.... and because of
his "prominence" on the radio I was publicly cajoled into giving him a refund. That still pisses me off, despite the fact that the guy who did it has long since died. I still have the amp, got it rebuilt with new Motorola MRF-455s... which wasn't too bad, but what really sucked was it had MRF-454s in it, which were more powerful, but at the time, were made of unobtainium. (MaCom hadn't started making 454 clones yet).

Now that having been said, if he was actually a real friend, I would have given him the money back without even being asked, and then I would have just given him shit for the rest of his life about it (eg like "remember when you.... lol" but because he was a huge douche, I gave him his money back, got the amp back and never talked to him ever again. Like as in ever. Not even once. I don't think he was ready for that part, though.

Guy: "Do you think mike is pissed at me he won't talk to me on the radio."
My (mutual) friend: "Gee, what do you think? (laughing)"

-Mike
 
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Good riddance.

I admit I still go to Dicks. Just to view and handle stuff, but then I go off and get it online.

Regarding ammo:

Target Sports USA beats their prices and has free delivery.

There really is not a reason to go to Dicks unless you want to handle random retail grade knives and other low end stuff.
 
Good, But must admit, its a little bittersweet.

The amount of places where i can get my kids soccer cleats and also browse a department that interest me are dwindling. Yeah the place was mostly a sh1t show, but occasionally there was a decent deal on ammo, or some other related item that was onsale.

Between Dicks being a bunch of Dick antis, BassPro being fu#kWits, Cabellas being purchased by fu#kWits, and decent local shops closing up because of lost revenue from semi auto rifle sales; are we really winning here?
 
Dicks overall quality of goods in their stores has been tanking for years. Their fishing gear and other sporting gear is just cheap shit. Hope they go out of business soon
 
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