Boycotts Versus Buycotts

Ed Stack, the anti-gun CEO of Dick’s, said the buycott of his chain really didn’t help his company’s bottom line. However, the boycott of Dick’s by Second Amendment supporters did hurt the company’s finances.

This comes from an interview Stack did with Business Insider.

Dick’s Sporting Goods contended with both boycotts and “buycotts” in the wake of its decision to draw back from the gun business.

But according to CEO Ed Stack, the consumers who gave the company the cold shoulder had a far greater effect on business than any newfound supporters.

The word “boycott” originated with a protest by the Irish Land League against the actions of Captain Charles Boycott 1880. It means withholding your services or financial support as a means of political protest.

“Buycott” is of more recent vintage and means just the opposite. You go out of your way to buy the product or services of a company as a show of support for their political position.

Stack noted that while he appreciated all the support for stopping sales of modern sporting rifles, it was short lived.

“The buycotts were really nice and we appreciated it, but they were kind of short-lived,” Stack told Business Insider.


Stack said that alienated consumers included both hunters and non-hunters who felt “angry” over Dick’s decision to back away from the gun business. All in all, striking guns from the stores ended up costing the company.


“By the time we got done, it was about a quarter of a billion dollars,” Stack said.

It is one of the tenets of sales that it costs more to gain a customer than to keep one. Moreover, the lifetime value of an existing customer far outweighs that of a one-time purchaser. The person who spends $750 on an AR and comes back to you to buy ammo on regular basis is worth more to your company than the mom who drops in once in a blue moon to buy running togs.

Stack should have read Joe Girard’s book How to Sell Anything to Anybody. Joe Girard was the world’s greatest car salesman. He found that the average person has about 250 friends and acquaintances who will show up to your funeral. If you make that person angry by your service or attitude, he or she is likely to influence 250 other people. Unfortunately for Stack, people are more likely to complain than to give kudos and his bottom line proved it.

Dear Larry J. Merlo

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This is an open letter to the CEO of CVS Health.

Dear Mr. Merlo:

I have been a customer of CVS and its predecessor chain Revco since the early 1980s. That is when I moved to Waynesville, North Carolina. I received fantastic service from Ken Holland, R.Ph., who has long since retired. The advice and consultation I received from Ken proved invaluable over the years.

Due to a change you announced on September 5th, I can no longer ethically or morally patronize your stores.

The announcement read:

We support the efforts of individuals and groups working to prevent gun violence (sic), and continually review our policies and procedures to ensure our stores remain a safe environment. We join a growing chorus of businesses in requesting that our customers, other than authorized law enforcement personnel, do not bring firearms into our stores.

This goes to the heart of my ability to provide for my own self-defense and that of my family. I am a law-abiding citizen with a North Carolina Concealed Handgun Permit. I have gone through multiple background checks including both criminal and mental health. I have been fingerprinted. I have had training.

My wife and I are the type people you want shopping in your stores and pharmacies. However, in an effort to curry favor with those who would put us at risk, you don’t want us in your establishments. That is your choice and it is our choice to move our patronage elsewhere.

I totaled the amount I spent on prescriptions alone with CVS this year. It amounts to $213.23 as of September 4th. I realize that this is only 0.00097% of your fiscal 2018 compensation of $21,939,098.

This is only a drop in the bucket compared to what you make as CEO of CVS Health. However, if just a fraction of the approximately 17 million plus concealed carry permit holders decide to shop elsewhere, that could impact your corporate bottom line. It is not like there aren’t other options outside the major chains.

I wish you the best as you try to explain to your board and others why you don’t want us, the most law-abiding citizens in the country, as your customers any longer.

Sincerely,

John Richardson

UPDATE: I had a prescription waiting for me at CVS. Rather than picking it up, I had it moved to another local pharmacy today. In doing so, I saved $13 over the price that CVS was charging. That is a win-win in my book!

Marketing Jiu-Jitsu Or How To Turn An Anti’s Campaign Into A Win For Gun Rights

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You may have seen the story last week that announced with great fanfare that Toms Shoes was going to donate up to $5 million to “combat gun violence” (sic). Since they are trendy shoes popular with Millennials, the announcement was made by company founder Blake Mycoskie on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The money will go to organizations like Giffords, Everytown, Moms Demand, and March for our Lives among others.

For those that don’t know about Toms Shoes, their value proposition is that when you buy their trendy (and flimsy) shoes, they will donate another pair to a shoeless child in a Third World country. In other words, spend $50 on their shoes, feel good about yourself, and in return they will ship another pair which cost them probably a buck or two to Haiti or the Congo or a like country. What a great marketing ploy that even uber-liberal Vox calls a sham. Moreover, the shoes manufactured in China, Argentina, Haiti, and Africa could be coming from sweatshops.

The End Gun Violence Together campaign even features its own trendy-looking logo that will now be used throughout Toms Shoe stores nationwide.

Adams Arms, the Florida based maker of piston ARs and piston conversion kits, saw this and is using it as the genesis for their own campaign to help homeless veterans and promote gun rights. They are calling it Adams Arms’ #MagsForToms BuyBack Movement. They are trading 30-round Amend2 magazines for new or used Toms Shoes. In states where 30-rounders are forbidden, they will trade a 10-round magazine. Their original idea was to take all the shoes traded in and burn them in an Instagram live video.

“Originally we were going to burn the shoes, but decided that’s no way to treat something that could be used again by homeless veterans,” VP of Sales & Marketing, Jens Krogh, said.

“But then we thought to ourselves… we should at least make the shoes less hippie. So we’re going to alter them with a pro Second Amendment message and THEN donate them to several worthy causes for veterans and impoverished people living in oppressive countries where they do not have the freedoms we cherish.”

Amend2 Magazines liked the Adams Arms plan so much that they donated the first batch of #MagsForToms to be traded for Toms Shoes.  Details on how to make the trade are below.

Here’s how it works. Send Adams Arms your shoes at:

Adams Arms
Mags for TOMS
1551 Gunn Highway
Odessa FL 33556

You must include a note with your shipping address and email address. It must be legal to ship a 30 round mag to your state, or if you live in a restricted state, Adams Arms will send you a 10 round magazine.

Before you send them… post a picture with #shoeburn #magsfortoms and #shallnotbeinfringed to spread the word.

 As Adams Arms correctly notes in their release, the Toms campaign which includes a push for universal background checks “to end gun violence” (sic) will do nothing to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. I would go further and say it does nothing to address the root causes of the criminal misuse of firearms in places like Chicago or Baltimore.

My granddaughter Olivia has Toms given to her that I’m sure she has outgrown. I may just to trade them in on a new magazine. In the meantime, I applaud Adams Arms for doing something positive for both the Second Amendment and homeless veterans.