枪击惨案不断，美国枪店如何求生

几十年来，需要步枪和其他相关装备的狩猎者通常都会首选去Dick’s Sporting Goods的零售店。

去年的帕克兰中学枪击案后，这家零售商的首席执行官埃德·斯塔克宣布所有店铺将下架突击式步枪，并将购枪年龄全面提高到21岁，因而招致了许多忠实顾客的不满。斯塔克成为《财富》美国500强中首位态度鲜明的首席执行官也未能改善情况。他告诉《财富》杂志：“必须禁用突击式步枪。”

在他的新自传《我们行事光明正大：建立公司、表明立场、产生影响》（It’s How We Play The Game: Build A Business. Take A Stand. Make A Difference）一书中，斯塔克阐述了作为美国四大枪支销售商之一，Dick’s Sporting Goods如何“让自己成了问题的一部分”。同时，鉴于美国政府在这个问题上陷入僵局，他希望自己的公司成为解决方案的一部分。

2018年，Cabela’s和Bass Pro等渔猎用品连锁店以及无数地方经销商遭消费者“遗弃”，这让Dick’s Sporting Goods损失了约3亿美元的销售额。和该公司的其他许多商品相比，枪支的利润率要低得多，但枪支可以让狩猎者走进店铺并购买其他商品。斯塔克知道此类业务中有很大一部分将永远消失。

斯塔克说：“有些人对我们非常不满，我们也已经失去了这些顾客。”

For decades, Dick’s Sporting Goods was a go-to retailer for hunters needing rifles and other related gear.

So when the retailer’s CEO, Ed Stack, announced last year—after the Parkland school shooting—that he was pulling assault-style rifles from all stores and raising the age to buy any gun to 21, many loyal shoppers were apoplectic. It didn’t help that Stack was the first Fortune 500 CEO to be so categorical about his stance. “Assault-style rifles should be banned,” he tells Fortune.

In a new autobiography, It’s How We Play The Game: Build A Business. Take A Stand. Make A Difference, Stack recounts how Dick’s being one of the four biggest U.S. sellers of firearms “made us part of the problem.” And given Washington’s gridlock, he wanted Dick’s to be part of the solution.

In 2018, the defection of customers to chains such as Cabela’s, Bass Pro, and countless local dealers cost Dick’s about $300 million in sales. Guns offer far slimmer margins than the rest of Dick’s assortment, but they generate store visits from hunters coming in to grab other items. Stack knows a big chunk of that business is gone for good.

“The ones that are mad at us, we’ve lost them,” Stack says.

Dick’s Sporting Goods由斯塔克已故的父亲于1948年在纽约州宾汉姆顿市创立，最初是一家鱼饵和渔具商店。尽管当时狂飙突进运动余波未消，但这家店已经开始反弹。1948年上半年的可比销售额增长了1.7%，而且呈现出加速增长态势。

斯塔克并没有流连于过去。Dick’s Sporting Goods的727家同名店铺中，已经有125家将枪支全面下架以便寻找替代品。在18家与Dick’s Sporting Goods门店分开运营的Field & Stream狩猎用具商店中，销售枪支的也只有8家。实际上，该公司正在对包括枪支在内的整个狩猎用品业务进行“战略性评估”。

为抵销此项业务的影响，Dick’s Sporting Goods打算积极争取更为专业的射击运动爱好者，而不仅仅是“休闲玩家”。这个户外用品顾客群体通常会在REI或者L.L. Bean购物。Dick’s Sporting Goods还开始在自家门店中增设更有体验色彩的元素，包括HitTrax棒球室内练习场以及可以帮助购物者找到合适球杆的室内高尔夫练习场。

看来Dick’s Sporting Goods正在后拥枪时代打造未来，就像CVS Health 在2014年放弃烟草产品后对零售业务进行调整一样。斯塔克激动地说：“我们把一支猎枪卖给了帕克兰的那个孩子。虽然那并不是2018年枪击案使用的枪支，但他本就不该在我们这里买到枪。”鉴于Dick’s Sporting Goods目前展现出的前进方向，以后枪手也许根本就没有这个选项。（财富中文网）

本文另一版本登载于《财富》杂志2019年11月刊，标题为《不卖枪的Dick’s会是什么样？》。

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

Despite the lingering Sturm Und Drang, Dick’s, founded by Stack’s late father as a bait and tackle shop in Binghamton, N.Y., in 1948, has begun to rebound. In the first half of the year, comparable sales are up 1.7% and gathering speed.

And Stack is not looking back. Dick’s has removed guns altogether from 125 of its 727 namesake stores to see what could replace sales, and just sold eight of its 18 standalone hunting Field & Stream stores. In fact, the company’s entire hunting business, including guns, is up for “strategic review.”

To offset that business, Dick’s wants to aggressively pursue more serious athletes, not just the casual player, and the outdoor crowd that usually shops at REI or L.L. Bean. It’s also adding more experiential elements to its stores, including HitTrax baseball batting cages and indoor golf driving ranges to help shoppers find the right clubs.

It seems that just as CVS rejiggered its retail business after giving up tobacco products in 2014, Dick’s is building a post-gun future. “We sold that kid in Parkland a shotgun,” says Stack emotionally. (It wasn’t the weapon used in the 2018 Florida massacre.) “He should never have been able to buy a shotgun from us.” Given where Dick’s seems to be heading, a future shooter might not even have that option.

A version of this article appears in the November 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “What Is Dick’s Without Guns?”