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a tough question to answer fully. Here was the issue: the margin rate
on guns was not great, but hunters bought not only guns, they also
bought a host of other hunting products that are very profitable.
All told, our hunting and outdoor business approached $1 billion in
sales per year. Beyond that, hunting had been a mainstay of Dick’s
business since the company’s earliest days. Did it make sense to
needlessly alienate loyal, law-abiding Dick’s customers who bought
shotguns and deer rifles and who used them for legitimate sport?
Eventually, we reached a consensus that we might have more
impact if we narrowed our focus down to the actual source of trou-
ble—the guns favored by mass shooters. Which is to say, AR-15s and
similar rifles, along with the accessories that went with them. You
might think that we wouldn’t have much at stake by pulling just the
assault-style rifles. But guns are such a polarizing issue that we stood
to lose a lot of customers. The people we’d anger didn’t just buy fire-
arms from us. They bought baseball gloves, running shoes and sports-
wear for themselves and their families. We estimated that the damage
would amount to well over a quarter-billion dollars, at a minimum.
After much discussion, we figured we could offset the potential
loss by boosting sales in other categories. Even if we fell short, I
was okay with it. The choice seemed plain. If those kids from
Parkland could muster up the courage to take their fight to the
country, we had to be brave enough to make this move.a small thing, maybe, but it’s a start. And we should.” I had the
draft with me and started to read it—and halfway through, I got
so choked up that I couldn’t speak. Our chief of staff, Ami Galani,
took the paper from my hand and read the rest of it.
All 10 people in the room favored most of the points I’d made.
Just one caused concern—suspending the sale of guns. The prob-
lem, they pointed out, wasn’t all guns—it was specific weapons.
And what kind of impact would such a move have on the bottom
line? I didn’t care about that second point and said so. “Well, okay,
CFO Lee Belitsky said, "but I’m just going to run some numbers so
we have them. We’re a public company, and the first thing every-
one will want to know is how it will affect revenue and earnings.".
The conversation turned to discussing in greater detail just how
extensive this suspension of sales should be. As a group we found itWe made arrangements to consult with the board of directors.
There was pushback, but ultimately, the board as a whole supported
us, though not without questions. The board shares our fiduciary duty
to our shareholders, and they wanted reassurance that we’d thought
this through. Satisfied that we had, they gave us the green light.
Our leadership team, along with our outside public relations
consultants, argued that if we wanted to have the greatest possible
impact with our announcement—if we wanted to truly influence
public opinion—we might want to go bigger than a press release.
This is a big deal, they said. This deserves something more. So we
chose to book an interview with one of the morning news shows.
So it was that at 7:08 a.m. on Wednesday, February 28—two weeks
after the shooting—I sat with George Stephanopoulos on the Good
Morning America set. By sheer coincidence, that was also the morning“Until we are confident there are checks and
balances that ensure we are not going to sell a gun to
someone who plans to walk out of our store
and kill, we are suspending the sale of guns.”FRO
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