Dicks Ed Stack
Chairman and CEO of DICK’S Sporting Goods Edward W. Stack (Photo by Scott Dalton/Invision for DICK'S Sporting Goods/AP Images)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for years you remember how Dick’s Sporting Goods quit carrying ARs – among other things – back in 2018. Well, the CEO behind the chain’s anti-gun moves is now stepping down after 36 years building the business and running the show.

The New York Post reports:

Stack, 65, who is also the company’s largest shareholder, will be succeeded as CEO on Feb. 1 by Lauren Hobart, who has been president of the retailer since 2017 as well as a director. Stack will retain his role as chairman and chief merchant.

The billionaire businessman courted controversy in 2018 after a school shooting in Parkland, Fla, which killed 17 people, mostly students. Dick’s stopped selling automatic rifles in its stores and imposed stricter sales regulations of guns, which provoked customer boycotts of the company.

In case you didn’t know, here’s the lowdown on what happened to all the guns Dick’s took off the shelves back in 2018:

Last year, Stack revealed that Dick’s Sporting Goods not only took all assault rifles off its shelves — it even turned $5 million worth of the weapons into scrap metal.

“I said, ‘You know what? If we really think these things should be off the street, then we need to destroy them,’ ” he said in an interview.

So, does a change of CEOs mean Dick’s might stop being such…well, dicks about guns? Not likely. Numerous publications refer to Stack’s successor, Lauren Hobart, as having been his “right hand” for years, including through the company’s anti-gun purge.

Hobart was apparently also key in helping the company recover the lost revenue after they axed guns and other hunting gear 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.

Are you still shopping at Dick’s Sporting Goods?

 

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

98 COMMENTS

    • If I worked at any real gun shop, I’d send Dick’s letters to say they did the right thing with guns. I guess we can all write such letters, and continue supporting the patriots.

  3. Good riddance!. I would not step foot in Dicks if you paid me. Haven’t been in one since they did what they did. Cowards.

    • I went back in.
      Once. To let the manager know I was buying my kayak across the highway at cabelas.

  4. To me, Dick’s Sporting Goods doesn’t exist anymore. All my sporting goods purchases for hiking, camping, fishing, biking, soccer, etc. are all done elsewhere. I care not what they do. Slack, et al have a right to their opinions, and I have a right to mine.

  5. No and I know several people that don’t shop with them either! And I don’t believe they just turned $5,000,000 worth of stock into scrap Medal!

    • About 1% chance the SOB actually destroyed inventory. The board/shareholders would have hung a CEO that was that stupid.

  7. Didn’t a major chain, back in 2012, sell a bunch of Black Friday ARs, and then refuse to deliver them?
    Was that Dick’s too?

    • I think so…went to a Dick’s back then in 2012(?)and the poor guy working there(in Highland,IN)said he bought one with his employee discount and they refused to deliver it to him. Never bought a damn thing from them-never will. Dick sux😕

    • Let’s add the full story. Dick’s cancelled those discounted prepaid rifles. Virtue Signaling they were a decent company, and will only sell Fudd guns. Then started selling AR-15s for full panic pricing in their Field and Stream stores.

  10. I’ve not supported Dick’s since then. And I won’t buy anything from REI either. After Parkland they caved to public pressure and stopped carrying Vista (non-gun) products.

    • Don’t shop at Walmart either. Or Target since they don’t sell guns, or Costco, Ikea… Academy Sports likes to hide all their scary mags anytime there is a shooting. Definitely not Amazon.

      So, I guess we need to buy clothes, toilet paper, and phones from Brownells?

        • YES! Sportsman’s Warehouse bought Dicks Field and Stream in Altoona PA a year or so ago. I was never in the store when dicks owned it (yes, the small d was intentional). I like SW. Things are a little tough now for availability of certain weapons, but I’ve been able to buy a few this year at prices comparable to 2019.

          Haven’t been in Dick’s for years…7? We have another chain (Dunhams) that’s closer and has everything else that Dicks sells. I’ll keep my business with them.

        • Sportsmans Warehouse also got the former F&S in Camp Hill, PA, in the mall parking lot. I never understood why dicks pit a F&S there since there is a dicks right in the mall.

          I stopped shopping at dicks for fishing and kayaking stuff when they pulled their crap. Stopped Wal Mart back then too.

          To those who say Target, Costco, blah, blah, blah. Those places never carried guns or ammo AFAIK. Costco does carry hunting gear. Target barely Carrys anything outdoors at all. Their fishing stuff is a joke.

          Never carrying guns and ammo is not the same as taking a political position against guns and ammo, removing products you have carried for years, imposing rules that go beyond the law, and hiring an anti gun lobbyist.

        • Dunham’s got a lot of my business after we dropped dicks and wal mart. But their gun counter guys here in Lebanon are assholes and idiots so I stopped going there.

          You can show them the law right from the state legislatures web site and they will still insist on spreading lies. Until Dunhams gets gun counter employees who either know what they are talking about, or know that they don’t know, I avoid them too.

      • The Walmarts in my area are still selling guns. Mostly shotguns and bolt actions. They still sell ammo. However, pistol caliber ammo are no longer sold.

      • The difference is that Walmart just made the decision to stop selling ammunition.
        That’s a business decision that they are free to make.
        Dicks didn’t just decide to stop selling guns and ammunition, they actively destroyed guns that they could easily have returned to the distributors.
        That’s why we should boycott Dicks, but can still shop at Walmart.

  11. As a small GS owner, I’m thrilled. The closest location to me is about 70 minutes so they aren’t much competition to our small store.
    I promise to not sell soccer and baseball equipment as long as they stay the hell out firearms, lol.

  13. Been a dozen years since I gave Dicks any of my business. They hacked me off by running me through NICS when I had given them my GA carry license, it was only after I questioned the sales weasel that he admitted it was company policy. Told him that my new policy was never to give them another dollar.

  16. I dumped them when they dumped law abiding gun owners. Prefer buying from locally owned businesses that support my interests. Dick’s can suck it.

  18. What is wrong with Dick’s? It is a great store. I go there to try on the sneakers, find the correct size, leave and order them cheaper on-line from a different retailer.

  19. I’m curious what they actually sell now.
    Sports voyeurism and participation are bottoming out and the home gym market is being overtaken by apps.

    For what reason does Dicks still exist?

    • I think their profits were up the last few years. Check their stock prices. Up, up up since April 2020. They make their money on kids’ soccer stuff and beginner adult sport stuff. They don’t care what you or I think.

  20. I’ve never spent a nickel with Dick’s. Went in one once prior to Parkland. Firearms department was so anemic I never went back.

  21. I didn’t realize he was the company’s largest share holder as well.
    He has done extremely well for his shareholders. Since 2018, they have more than doubled their stock price. His bonus must have been phenomenal.

    • His father was the founder, and he also holds a majority of the voting stock. Nothing is going to change. If he doesn’t like something, he just has to call up the CEO and give marching orders.

      • “Nothing is going to change.”

        Why should it? Where is the moral driver that demands a company culture undergo some sort of renovation when the CEO, or even CEO/COtB moves on? The operational plan of Dick’s is apparently very profitable. Why should that change? And who cares if it doesn’t? There are alternatives.

  22. The CEO Dickhead steps down, he should have stepped down before he gutted the company,Well Bye Dickhead.

    • Green Mtn. Boy,

      One of the other commenters claimed that Dick’s Sporting Goods stock value has doubled since their “virtue signaling” act in 2018 to remove firearms from their stores. If that is true, I think it is safe to say that Stack significantly improved Dick’s position rather than gutting it.

  24. To everyone who supports our right to keep and bear arms:

    It would behoove us to face two simple facts and decide on the best strategy going forward. And those two simple facts are:

    1) Far more than 50% of the U.S. population wants a level of “gun-control” which grossly exceeds what most firearm owners deem permissible.

    2) A super-majority of “wealthy” people (the top 2%) ardently oppose general firearm ownership — especially for people in the bottom 98% (financially) and will go to great lengths to impose their will on that lower 98%. Even worse, that top 2% has the financial means to impose their will on the rest of us. Finally, we (the bottom 98%) cannot levy any financial penalties upon them (for opposing our right to keep and bear arms) which will be significant enough to dissuade them from their efforts to disarm us.

    Like or not, those are facts. Now we should decide what to do about it. Perhaps boycotting the myriad businesses which the top 2% operate/work is a good idea. Maybe it is not — especially given that it is effectively impossible to live our lives without directly or indirectly enriching the top 2%. What other strategies might be in order?

    • Number one is not a fact, not by a long shot. You may be skewed in your opinion due to your geography, or your social circle, but it is not true at all. Gun ownership and belief in the RKBA is growing and is in a far better spot then it was 20-30 years ago. The gun grabbers and left are just louder now, and have armies of trolls now.

      Your number 2 is more correct, a majority of the wealthy these days have become hard left. The irony in that. The left has become the party of the wealthy elite and media.

      • Also a lot of people who show up as supporting gun control on broad and vague questions turn into people opposing it when given more detail and an explanation of the status quo.

  28. He’s still Chairman of the company, so he’s the power behind the b!tch. I expect that he will continue to rule with an iron hand.

    BTW, Stack used to be a Republican — you know, like Mitt Romney — until his daughter wanted to run for office. That’s when he switched allegiance and personally donated $500,000 to the Dems. He bought her the spot on the ticket. Fortunately, she lost.

    • Ralph,

      Serious question: what is it with all these people, that become inconceivably rich, turning into ardent Democrats?

      • “Serious question: what is it with all these people, that become inconceivably rich, turning into ardent Democrats?”

        Learned and reinforced guilt.

        Where once the wealthy had a sense of obligation to “do good” with their wealth, in the last 40yrs, the wealthy have been told they are morally unworthy of being advantaged so bountifully compared to the large portion of the population. Guilt of success is the source of Obama’s claim, “You didn’t build that.”

        • Plus the Democrats are the party of wealth and social privilege, and have been for some time now.

          You get to go to all the cool cocktail parties, access the deals that are only available to insiders, and make connections with people who will ensure that you can only fail up, even if your social justice virtue signaling kills your bottom line (especially if it does; there’s no better mark of virtue than sacrificing a business, or even better, an entire industry, for the cause).

          I mean, look at what happened to Donald Trump. He gets elected as a Republican and instantly became a racist, misogynist, and a fascist, and nobody who is anybody will have anything to do with him. He’s out of the cool kids club forever.

  29. Was in a Galyan’s once. In Minnesota. Understand it’s the same corporate owner. Was there in early winter, on a no-notice business trip. Bought a coat. Was impressed with the gun department.

    An actual Dick’s Sporting Goods is a different story.

    Back before all the unpleasantness I went into a Dick’s for ammo on sale, couple of times. Winchester white box, just some .38 Special. On neither occasion did they have the sale ammo in stock. After complaining they sold me Remington at the sale price.

    Gun department was small. Bigger than, say, a Walmart, but small. They had only rifles and shotguns, no handguns, but they did sell handgun ammo. Talked to the guy at the gun counter he thought it all a weird way to do business too. I mean he said so.

    Before any reason to go back there came up, Ed Stack happened.

    These days it’s Cabela’s or Bass Pro for big box store gun stuff or other outdoors stuff.

    And you know what? The idea that Ed Stack’s replacement figured out how to replace the lost $300 million in gun sales is bad math. Lauren Hobart found business they had been missing out on, she did not replace what was lost. Had Ed Stack not dropped out of a lucrative marked, destroyed product too, they’d of had $600 million instead of $300 million.

    Sure, they gained $300 (or some big number) million in “athletic” sales.

    But they are still down that $300 million in gun sales.

  30. You get what you f’in’ deserve. Sadly he’ll probably get some sort of severance package on his way out the door. If there was any justice not only would be loose his job, but he’d get nothing in terms of finical compensation.

    • He doesn’t need a package. He essentially owns the company by controlling it’s voting stock. That’s why he could do things like destroy inventory without repercussions.

  31. I used to shop a lot at Dicks. When they started their antigun moves, I stopped shopping there. I drive 20 miles past a Dicks to shop at Academy.

  33. I’d like to say that I’ll never shop there again… but I’ve never been in a Dick’s store in my life.

    I don’t like the guys politics or his decisions. But he’s 65, he’s been the boss of that chain for 36 years. Since before he was 30. For that achievement, he has my respect.

    • He became the CEO by the time he was 30 because his daddy left the business to him. The only thing he did was to not drive it into the ground. It appears that with his virtue signaling, he’s attempting to do just that.

      The employees made gun purchases difficult prior to his show of “wokeness,” probably at the direction of management.

      I stopped shopping at Dick’s, Field & Stream, AND Golf Galaxy (which is actually a hardship, since they and the online stores have killed the small independents), but there’s Dunham’s and a couple of local stores.

  34. Cabelas is glad he did this. I’ve spent a lot of money at cabelas that used to go to dicks and I’m not alone.

  35. Just add my name to what is apparantly a long long list of people who stopped shopping at Dicks a long time ago.

  36. This is a private property issue. It always was. He as the majority stock holder, has every right to destroy millions of dollars worth of perfectly good guns, or anything other perfectly good product.

    For example perfectly good buildings are destroy everyday. For tax purposes. The real-estate owner doesn’t want to pay taxes increased on “an improved” property.

    But Mr. Stack like every other rich white anti-liberty Liberal, doesn’t live in or near violent neighborhoods.

  38. well I will say this about dicks sporting goods if they wait on me to spend money in one of there store they might as well shut down because I have never been in one of there stores and never will unless its a case of going in to take a crap because that’s all they will ever get out of me

  39. I stopped shopping there once the decision was made to destroy the firearms they had. I will never shop there again and my entire family feels the same way. It would be like buying a pair of Nike shoes or stopping at Starbucks. That will never happen. The anti gun agenda is full of ignorance and they make poor choices. US Veteran

  43. Is it really a boycott if they won’t sell you anything in the first place?

    The customer service at their North Olmsted, Ohio store is so unspeakably awful that I found it literally IMPOSSIBLE to even FIND OUT if they had something to buy. And that was BEFORE their dive into anti-gun cultism and the Chinese flu.

    DIck’s has brought Soviet levels of customer service to the retail industry.

    You can’t boycott somebody too lazy and too surly to sell to you in the first case.

    DICKS has well and truly earned their name.

  45. I would have to use Google to find out if there is a Dick’s anywhere near me. Assuming that there is one in Texarkana, it is located within five miles of a privately owned gun shop, one on the Texas side, another on the Arkansas side. I prefer dealing with local businesses anyway.

  46. Dick’s is the closest large store to me, and I used to spend a fair bit there. More than $1000 a year. They are dead to me now. Not one penny.

  47. When this C.E.O took his anti gun stance gun owners decided to not patronize his stores and just maybe this led to his stepping down eventually.We will not support any store that dosen’t support our constitutional right to bear arms.

  48. If that the way he feels & he owns the guns, then I agree, he should remove them.
    “I said, ‘You know what? If we really think these things should be off the street, then we need to destroy them,’
    I was in the store one time when it first opened & never went back, that was years before the gun thing.

  50. ” 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…”

    Those people already have REI

    Why would they decide to go to dicks instead?

  51. I enjoy golf as well as shooting. Haven’t been in a Golf Galaxy (owned by Dick’s) since their owner (Dick’s) instituted it’s anti-gun policy. Never did shop at a”Dick’s” to begin with.

Comments are closed.