This first was surfaced by Sabertoothed (h/t) somewhere near here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/12/29/tips-notices-january-2019/#comment-106300
First off, I must admit I didn’t watch his video posting links. I just don’t have the time. HOWEVER… they “prepped me”, for when I launched Youtube on the Roku tonight and in the “recommended” was a rant about Gillette, to actually watch it.
I had no idea…
On What Planet does it make any sense what so ever to nag men about not being a Feminazi Ideal of a Beta Male and think that will cause them to buy your product?
Really.
So here’s the video I watched (25 minutes and all worth it):
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Dear Gillette,
You have now GUARANTEED I will NEVER EVER buy ANY of your products.
E.M.Smith
Sheesh…
Who am I, what do I believe, am I a troglodyte?
I am as close to being a Beta Male as you can get while not actually being one. I don’t like aggressive or abusive people (of any gender). I’m generally a passive “British Like” male (as Mum was a Brit and I was raised to be a polite British Gentleman – a thing that has caused me no end of bullying and “issues” in my live, BTW.) So if you’ve manged to Piss Me Off, well, you can kiss somewhere around 90%+ of your customer base good bye.
That said, what do I use to shave? BIC disposable razors. Why? They work really well. They are “dirt cheap”. They are everywhere. I just kind of fell into them on a road trip at a gas station. I needed to shave and the bag-O-BIC was cheaper than the card of Gillette.
About every 5 years I’m somewhere where I need to shave and don’t have “The Kit” for it. I’ll buy a bag-O-BIC for about $3 and that’s a dozen+ razors. Then it’s a year or three to use them up. The last bag I bought was about 5? years ago at a gas station in Disney World and I still haven’t used all of them up. Now I don’t have the Beard From Hell. I’m a Red-Head in terms of beard. Many more hairs per inch but not as thick, I also have “thin spots” so I get “Lamb Chop” sideburns and a nice goatee / mustache but with thin in between. So YMMV if you have dark black brass tough cables coming out of your face.
My point is just that, like the guy in the video, I don’t think about it. This works, I do it.
Some decade or two back I tried the Gillette “multiblade” thing (“the first one nicks you, the second one squeegees the blood, the third one takes off a slab…” ) and found no need for it nor interest in it.
Now that’s a whole world different from “I will NEVER EVER BUY ANY OF YOUR PRODUCTS and will ACTIVELY DISCOURAGE OTHERS”. That’s where they have moved me.
It is really really simple:
What I care about: Does your product work better than the competition at a better price. PERIOD.
What will drive me away: Nagging, manipulating, Political Speech IN ANY FORM. IF you are more focused on PC Crap than Product, I’m gone.
It’s just that simple.
This, from an Uber Geek tech dweeb sort. I can’t imagine how a Football Player or Seal Team Guy will react.
Yes, I’m a guy. This means early on I learned I was expected to DIE to defend THE INNOCENT. Guess what? You have taught me YOU are not the “innocent”, so good luck with that whole “defend you” thing. (Notice that Real Men ™ are no longer giving a shit about what you think, what you need, or even holding the door for you nor coming to your aide in a dark alley? I sure ain’t gonna do that for anyone I don’t know will appreciate it…)
I’ll defend and protect my immediate family, friends I know, and folks who “speak to me” as really being deserving. IFF I look at you being beaten by a Perp and you look like the Feminazi sort, well, sorry dear, you don’t want my “Toxic Masculinity” now do you…
How an iconic company like Gillette can get it So Wrong is just amazing to me. Watch for plummeting sales…
The PC SJW “movement” had a short period where folks gave them the benefit of the doubt. Ever more of us have made up our minds. (NOT “PRE”-judice, but “POST”-judice. We’ve observed and made a rational and informed decision. Y’all SJWs are nuts.)
Be “woke” go broke. It really IS that simple. ‘Cause us normal folks are just not gonna put up with this shit.
Musings from the Chiefio 
The psychologists who are trying to turn masculinity into a mental illness need a good, old-fashioned ass kickin’.
The idiots listen to the media. They believe what the media says (I am talking fake news,not all off it). If that was your sole world, what would you believe? Marketing is to get sales, not in reaction TO sales. So it is a bit of divination. Eventually when enough of the idiots lose their jobs and companies, the rest will wake up. Or be replaced by folks with common sense.
p.s. I will never buy Gillette either. I also dumped Carbonite, Pro Flowers, Target, etc. They basically told me they did not want my business. So they do not get it. I pay extra for some things I use to get from Target. Just so I do not have to pollute myself with their idiocy.
I wasn’t closely watching what happened to take down J. C. Penney, but I do remember they put a LGBT-ish sort at the top of the pyramid. Next thing I noticed was the photos of the models wearing the clothing showed no heads. Then the clothing had no models in them.
IMHO, there is not much less attractive than empty clothing. Maybe it’s just me…
Next thing I noticed was JCP was circling the drain. Sad.
I’m starting to wonder if that sequence of events is sort of a dog whistle to investors to dump that stock ASAP because it’s being eliminated.
J. C. Penney has been struggling for some time, in a gradual decline for maybe 25+ years. Their stuff was not high enough end to draw the Dillards and Macy’s crowd, but more expensive than Target and all the other mid range sellers. Did not sell enough “trendy” stuff to attract the young crowd. Good products mostly and well regarded by those of us old enough to remember their hey day, but not enough pizzazz to compete with the mall specialty shops. They survived as anchor stores in large malls but as Sears and other major anchor brands began to struggle the mall traffic went away. Amazon largely took away their last niche as you could buy just about anything they sold on line.
I have a long memory and carry grudges even longer. No effort at all Gillette.
Enjoy the termites.
LuboÅ¡ Motl of Reference Frame fame did a post on this — still up today.
He takes it apart second by second, but only the top 25 things. Many more he says.
I use BIC or a house brand, and don’t watch TV.
Gillette’s bottom line will be unaffected by me.
It’s a P & G company and I generally don’t use their other products.
Companies that spend a lot on ads generally have higher prices because celebrities get big $$.
They don’t need my money.
@John F.: Same here. I looked at the list of products and the only thing we use is the Febreeze plug-in air fresheners. I’ve bought cheaper substitutes, but they didn’t go over with the Mrs.
I always try the house brand before the national brand. In many cases, I actually prefer the house brand because it’s just plain better than the national brand. As you point out, the extra cost isn’t for making their product better. It is just extra money spent to convince you the national brand is better.
I can’t boycott what I don’t buy. I don’t think the one product we use that was on the list above – Febreeze – is going to be rejected by Mrs. H.R. but she hates all the PC crap going on so just maybe she’ll be willing to switch. I’ll ask her.
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Oh… I don’t use coupons for the national brands because in most cases the house brands are still cheaper even after the national brand’s coupon is applied.
I am liking the grocery chains’ use of loyalty cards. I get cents-off for gasoline for stuff I was going to buy anyhow at a store that I was going to shop anyhow.
But about 2-3 years ago, the 2 main stores I shop have started sending me coupons based on the things I actually do buy, including cents-off on their house brands. So I am using store-issued coupons now and liking it. Finally! Someone takes their customer information and uses it to reward and keep the loyalty of their customers. Smart. Very smart.
Around a year ago the local supermarché has an offer on twin-blade Gillette razors, so I bought a couple of 10-packs (BOGOF). Still around 15 left, so maybe in 3 years I’ll have forgotten about the Gillette adverts. Otherwise, I normally buy the house brand, which work just as well in general, though I have had some cheapy ones (not house brand, just cheap) that lost their edge after around 3 shaves or so. Standard liquid soap does a good job of lubricating the skin and so I don’t buy shaving foams. I don’t use aftershave in general, and I still have a Christmas bottle of aftershave that I received at least a couple of decades ago. I really don’t see me contributing much to Gillette’s profits anyway, and if they went broke and all the other razor manufacturers went broke as well, I still have an old cutthroat razor as well as a Japanese bi-metal blade that holds a razor-edge. Just takes a little more care with the non-safety razors…. Not good if I got Parkinson’s.
I’m OK with women wanting an equal chance. I think everyone should have an equal chance, irrespective of gender, colour or anything else. However, some tasks are better done by people with certain characteristics. Being a fireman can require a lot of strength to carry people out of a fire. Some women have that, but most don’t. Fine hand-work tends to require smaller hands, and women tend to have smaller hands so tend to be better in general. Where a job doesn’t depend on physical characteristics, such as programming, there’s no difference and it’s just a matter of aptitude at the job. You wouldn’t want to employ someone with a speech-impediment as a newsreader, either.
The problem for me comes when someone starts saying “I’m better than you and deserve more because I’m female/black/disabled (choose your criteria)”. If they can do the job better than I can, then they are entitled to the job. If not, then it’s discrimination and can’t be justified because it’s “positive discrimination”. It’s also not justifiable on what people who looked generally like me or might be my ancestors have done in the past. As far as I can see the majority of the technical advances of this world were made by men who were generally white or white-ish, and probably the reason for that is because in places where people were white-ish it took better technologies to actually survive. You needed to plan for how to get through the winters, whereas around the equator there’s year-round food naturally growing.
It looks likely that the cultural push against “toxic masculinity” will backfire. I’m not sure that that isn’t the purpose of it either, to try to destroy Western society and produce the New World Order from the ruins where people no longer have the wherewithal to resist it. Birth-rate will almost certainly drop further, with men not wanting to take the risk of flirting in case they get jailed. It’ll be far less hassle to get a sex-robot, which do seem to be selling well now. The big risk is probably the globalisation of these attitudes – when there’s a monoculture then any failures due to that culture will have very large effects. At the moment the “in” attitudes seem to be white bad, men bad, white men double bad, old white men triple bad (and Orange Man is the Devil incarnate). Hopefully the common people will find a solution that enables life to go on, but it could take a while.
Easy enough way to protest Gillette is just grow a beard. I’ve had one for many years and don’t use razors at all.
I have a Gillette razor and can of Foamy in my shower. I haven’t seen the video yet, but it may be my last Gillette purchase.
Years ago (~15?), after Sony was discovered surreptitiously installing software on your PC when you loaded one of their music CD’s, I decided to boycott Sony for one year. In the meantime I discovered there are many good alternatives to Sony and I haven’t bought a Sony product since.
The BIC disposables are probably fine, but I am reminded of when I was a young pup watching my dad shave the old school way, foaming up a lather in a mug. It looked like it might actually be a reasonably pleasant experience, so I may give that a try.
@jim2 – I came back to comment on that idea and there was your post!
yup. I’m thinking about growing a beard again. I started a beard when I got out of H.S. and had one until I was aged 35 when it started going gray. Who wants to look 50-ish when they are 35?
My hair didn’t start going gray until I was in my late fifties and the gray really wasn’t noticeable until 3-4 years ago. Now that the gray is noticeable, I can go ahead and embrace my inner geezer and grow the beard again.
I hated shaving and still do. I have sensitive skin and a tough beard, which is a sucky combination. I just realized I had preferred a beard for that reason but didn’t have one for employment reasons – to look like a young go-getter and not a closing-in-on-retirement geezer.
Doh! I’ve been painfully scraping my face for 30 years and now I don’t have to. I’m thinking that Gillette has screwed the pooch for all razor makers and beards will become a thing, with razor sales across all brands plunging into the basement.
Razor futures are DOWN!
😆😆
@Jim2:
I’ve done the beard thing before. Find it a bit ‘scratchy’ for my preferences, though nice on the ski slopes ;-) Then there is just the issue of the bare spots between goatee and lamb chops…
@Clay & H.R.:
I find that lately I’ve been shaving about once a week. Don’t need to look great for work, so mostly just on the Sunday Church & Shopping day. Thus part of why a bag-O-BIC has lasted a decade ;-) The other being that one razor seems to last a year+…
I use a can-O-foam from the bottom of the shelf at Walmart… Barbasol? or some such. About $1 and lasts a year-ish. Finally ran out of the can a couple of days ago so can’t say for sure the brand name (has stripes on it and is red n white). FINALLY got to start the cheaper house brand Walmart can I bought about 2 years ago when working in Florida… or maybe it’s 3 years ago now ;-)
FWIW, I’ve used a mug / brush before for a couple of decades. It’s kind of fun… Finally the pig-bristle brush “bit the dust” and when I bought a replacement, it was crappy and fell apart in about a year, shedding bristles from about week one, maybe less. Havn’t bothered trying to find a good replacement since… For a good while I was using my own home-made soap too. Yes, that old school ;-)
Maybe I’ll just use a small paint brush when I run out of this can-O-foam in a year or two ;-) All it really takes is an old mug, a disk of soap, and a brush…. In hotels when discovering no can in the luggage I’ve just lathered up with the bar soap in hand. Works fine. In some ways better as there is less foam in the way to scrape off. All you really want is some water making the hair softer and some soap to get it past the skin oils better and provide minimal lube.
@All:
That is a problem with “not buying it ever” when you already don’t. Maybe that’s part of their problem… too many men not buying their stuff anymore and they are trying to get women to buy it? I’ll need to inform the spouse that I want no Gillette Gifts ;-)
Of course, there is the inevitable rebuttal satirical video:
i wish my people would stop with the self-flagellation bunk. Enough is enough! I mean, if you have actually offended or violated someone, you need to apologize/get punished/pay for it. But if you’re just walking down the street living your life, you shouldn’t have to cower because you’re the biggest hunk of humanity on the block. Know what I mean?
I want to toss out a couple of anecdotes to try to explain why I say what I say.
I haven’t gone to a live football game in 30 years or so. But I had family coming for early Thanksgiving (the weekend before actual Thanksgiving). The night before, I suddenly realized we had the opportunity to go to a football game nearby. The grand-nephew athletes were coming in addition to the regular grown-ups. The elder was already in college playing soccer. The younger had just finished his football season in high school and received the “Player of the Week” award. “Duh!”, I thought) they might like to go to the game! So I texted the relatives on the road and got a go-ahead and then began digging around on the computer to try to find some last-minute tickets.
We went to the game. I was like a kid in a candy shop. The pre-game festivities were awesome! Fireworks! Jet planes flying overhead during the national anthem. The band gave what might have otherwise have been a half-time program before the game! Plenty of celebration of the local heritage of so-called “toxic masculinity” (according to Gillette et al). A fun time was had by all!
I don’t remember having so much fun at a live game before (30 years before!). The tickets only cost $50 each. I remember thinking, “Now, I think I could manage to find $50 in the budget to do this again next year! It’s worth that!” Of course, we were in the visitors’ section and the tickets had been reserved and then unreserved by someone before, but we were all together.
It was like culture shock! I had no idea there were places where you could go out in public and clap and yell and cheer for “toxic masculine” people, out in the open, in front of God and 50,000 of your closest friends! And no one dared to kneel for the national anthem. ;-)
OK. Here’s the other anecdote. I don’t have the URLs handy to document where I got these ideas, but I still want to toss them into the pot. I know a guy who has had surgery once or twice on each hand for Dupuytren’s contracture. One of my secret hobbies is looking to see if anyone has identified an emotional trigger for physical maladies. The ones I found for this malady are expressed as “self-devaluation” or “loss of self-worth”. One time I found a journal article that discussed research done in Europe, in an area where both Muslim and non-Muslim folks live. The non-Muslim folks were the ones who got Dupuytren’s contracture. The Muslims did not get it.
I figure that since Muslims consider themselves superior to the rest of the world, and never tell themselves they are inferior in any way, that they would never suffer from any significant amount of self-devaluation or loss of self-worth; so they aren’t likely to develop Dupuytren’s contracture.
The person I know? He’s one of those folks who doesn’t try very hard to shake off any demeaning comments or attitudes of others. At least, not where you could see it. He could very well be “holding on for dear life” to his own self-value, but figures it is socially unacceptable to express it.
As far as shaving…I guess my 2 cents’ worth is this: “Don’t give your money to a company that tries to put a guilt trip on you for being what you are…but don’t forget that there are those of us who prefer to kiss a clean-shaven face!” ;-)
I find it interesting to compare the response expected from various groups for an affront to their way of thinking. A minority group (like the LGBT crowd or Black Lives Matter, etc.) react with virulent obnoxious shows of hurt with shouting, protesting activists, and use that to get media attention to sway an organization. Of course, the community itself is so small in numbers and $ spent that if they all walked away from the corporation’s product or service; no big deal.
Then a corporation thinks that they must avoid any such public confrontations with these unruly radicals and succumbs to the woke culture trends and makes a corporate image decision to embrace a special accommodation to “woke culture”. This action then alienates the core majority of their clients and dollars. No picket lines. No activist garnering media coverage. The majority customers simply walk away. And business tanks.
Gillette should have talked to the folks at Dick’s before they decided to insult 90% of their customers. I’ve got no sympathy for them. I just wish I had more than 100 shares of PG to sell.
@Power Grab:
I think you’ve heard my story on this before, but…
At one paricularly fun Apple Party, all the girls ran off to the pee party together… leaving me and another guy wanting to dance. He was The Gay Guy secretary… well, all the indoctrination was about treating everyone the same, and I wanted to dance, and excess beer was involved… so we danced. Then the music changed to “slow dancing”…
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound… we slow danced.
I learned 2 important things:
1) Not a gay or bi bone in my body.
2) Guys! Stubble is HORRIBLE! SHAVE just before that date.
FWIW, the Gay Guy was thrilled. Said it was the first time he just felt like he was accepted and just one of the bunch.
@Crashx:
Yup. The SJWs stir up a ruckus for effect out of nothing or nearly nothing (just what % of the population is really trans? Fractional percent..) expecting the echo chamber to magnify it. Worked for a few years, too. Now resistance and awareness are setting in.
I now have Zero Tollerance for SJW “woke” Nag Crap. Toss it at me, I walk away from your products forever (or counter atrack if cornered) I’m from the “Just leave me the hell alone Party” and folks damn well better do just that. (Orange vest, hard hat, and battle hammer in car.. should it ever get that bad. Added when that poor lady was bloodied in San Jose just trying to go home from a Trump Rally and the cops would not open the door to save her from the Antifa Thugs.)
If I am reading the information at marketwatch.com
( https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/dks ) correctly, and I may not be, Dick’s Sporting Goods policy on gun sales has not affected them at all. According to their one year charting, Dick’s stock was $29.87 on 2/05/2018. On 4/05/2018, it was up to $35.57. From June until 12/21 it was over $30. My guess from their chart is an average price over the year close to $32.00. I did read someone somewhere point out that gun sales are not the bulk of Dick’s income. People have been known to release various angry snakes into the wild here in Florida. If I ever wanted a gun to take with me skiing, I would not have bought it at Dick’s anyway.
I shave daily for one good reason: the Missus is older ( 13 months ). Should an opening occur through natural happenstance, the opportunity to make a good first impression on any potential replacement is not to be missed. Disclaimer: the preceding two sentences are tongue-in-cheek humor, intended for entertainment only. The BIC razors work just fine.
@Crashex – Very insightful. One of those comments that is obvious – after you read it. Thumbs up!
@philjourdan,
“….p.s. I will never buy Gillette either. I also dumped Carbonite, Pro Flowers, Target, etc. ”
Right on! Any business that panders to the left or to the right will get punished by ~50% of their potential customers. Here are a few more that made this stupid mistake. The NFL, Netflix and the Main Stream Media. There must be thousands more so let’s hear from y’all.
@John F. Hultquist
Lubos Motl may be a “conservative” physicist. I like him because he is funny, yet he is a bigot and a light weight when it comes discussing what matters to us little people.
I note that the “Satire video” up link has been nuked by the carrier… Guess they can dish it out but they just can’t take it…
Rgd Corsair Red: Stock price is only one gauge of success and can/is influenced by corporate policies such as stock buy back programs. Dick’s has been spent nearly a Billion $ buying stock to hide the hurt. The change in the sales trend line is another data point.
From Seeking Alpha–“Dick’s reported $6.8 billion in sales in 2014, which then rose 7.35% to $7.3 billion in 2015 followed by an 8.2% rise in 2016 to $7.9 billion. In 2017 the company reported its last high single-digit growth year with $8.6 billion in sales, an 8.9% rise from 2017 and in 2018 (fiscal 2019), they’re set to report their first decline in sales to $8.5 billion, pending the fourth quarter release.”
Revenue trend paints the same picture.
From the CEO, Ed Stack, he said: “As expected, sales were impacted by the strategic decisions we made regarding the slow-growth, low-margin hunt and electronic businesses, which accounted for nearly half of our comp decline.” Yeah, their hunt business is only a portion of the revenue, but it is down. And I’ll bet the floor traffic figures took a hit too.
Thank you for the more in-depth analysis, Crashex. Stock price was my first thought. Like I said, I didn’t buy my skis from Dick’s ;-) , and I wouldn’t buy a gun from them.
Stock price has little to do with company success. It has a lot to do with Big Money and The Story. Thus companies with zero profit and no real product selling for $Billions because they have a “Good Story” and folks with lots of money have bought The Story.
What Dick’s has done is piss off a segment of the prospective customer base. You can think of this as highly negative advertising. They can spend a lot of money on positive advertising and recover some of it (by things like selling more swimming gear to college kids or shoes to “diverse” neighborhoods) but there’s a segment they have now Pissed Off that will NOT forget. Which of those segments is bigger? time will tell…
For me, I know I’ve become “SJW Sensitized” but not in the way they wanted. Some store or “platform” gives in to the Social Bully Tactics, they lose me. And it is a hard break not subject to future advertising.
Will I ever buy something from Dick’s? Maybe. But it will be LAST on my list of places to try. They not only lost my gun related business, but all my fishing business (that is much larger) and my boating business (that is growing).
Will that be “enough” to get the message across? Time will tell…
Dick’s could well “move on” to become a nice Sports Clothing Store for Woke Millennials. Hope that’s a big enough niche to support their dreams…
There’s a thing that started to be trendy in MBA Marketing classes in the ’80s. IMHO it is a mistake. The notion is that each year you cut the bottom 10% of your ” the slow-growth, low-margin … businesses” and only retain the fast growth high-margin bits. The problem with this is that you lose the guy who only comes in for that low-growth low-margin thing but then buys a cart load of everything else while he is there. Essentially it is the opposite of the “Loss Leader”.
So, for me, I use Goat Milk. Cow’s milk makes my joints hurt, so I don’t have a choice. I ALWAYS start my shopping at the store that has Goat Milk. What does the store that does not have it get? Only those things I can’t find anywhere else. Similarly, OSH (Orchard Supply Hardware) used to be a great hardware store that had all sorts of eclectic things you might need. Then they were bought out by Sears. Over the years the clothing section grew and the “odd stuff” left. Eventually it became “work clothes and Sear’s tool department”. All by the process of eliminating ” the slow-growth, low-margin businesses” and adding more of the high margin soft goods. Now it is bankrupt and gone.
In the end game of that process everyone ends up selling clothes and booze as they are high margin. Look at your local drug store… they are busy adding booze and clothing (and a few other odd bits) in “scrambled merchandising”. Amazon is picking up everything else… Who is growing like a weed on steroids? Amazon… WHY? Because whatever it is, I can get it there… and I don’t buy much booze and clothes.
So where will Dick’s end up? Selling sporting clothing. They already have a huge clothing section. Why keep that “slow-growth low margin” fishing line and tackle department… or that “slow-growth low margin” handball gear section… Rinse and repeat.
Old School merchandisers knew to have the “things people want” that don’t have much profit in them so that you built Floor Traffic, then sold them the “upsell” items on impulse. That seems to be wrung out of folks in most MBA programs these days. (FWIW, I had the MBA Marketing class at the local college – it’s a long story… so I don’t come at this without a basis. I was in the MBA program.) Frankly, my first trip to an OSH was because one of my friends told me that had this giant wrench. I went in just to LOOK at it. About 3 feet long and for the axle nut of a combine harvester, I think. I doubt they ever sold one at that store (as the orchards were planted with houses…) but it got me into their store… where I bought a bunch of stuff (including 2 x overalls… those high margin clothes). The strategy worked…
So now when I see a Dick’s sign I have an echo in my brain of “Dick Head’s”… and just drive on by. I only spent about $100 to $200 / year at Dick’s, and that’s just a couple of pairs of sneakers, so maybe they won’t miss me… but x 1 Million, that’s a lot of lost traffic.
Unfortunately, as that “cut your low margin items” process is now enshrined in MBA programs, don’t expect it to go away any time soon. It will ruin many good stores before it gets replaced. I note in passing that several drug store chains have “gone under” as they have had merger committed on them. Long’s. Rexall. etc. Now it’s mostly Rite Aide and CVS with the odd Walgreen’s. Selling booze and scrambled merchandise causes traffic shrinkage… I now rarely go to them. Walmart pharmacy is good and fast (for anything that the Kaiser built in pharmacy can’t provide) and COSTCO has great prices on bulk generics like aspirin and vitamins… Rinse and repeat…
The clothing and apparel are clearly a big percentage of the business at a conventional Dick’s store. But, a (previously) growing subsidiary is a big box destination store change called Field and Stream. All things hunting, fishing, boating and camping. A clear push into the Cabela’s market and format. The Dick’s “strategic decision” on guns has prompted several gun manufacturer’s to say they will no longer supply any product for the Dick’s/F&S stores. Popular names like Mosberg and MKS. The hunting/field side of the business will suffer. And the hunters know and will go elsewhere. And most of the sportsmen that hunt also fish, but they’re going to competitor now.
Watch for the long slow rollover; stop expanding to new stores, close a couple poor performers, reboot to emphasize available products….
Folks … my two cents on cheap razors vs expensive. Try the Gillette Flexball Fusion razor before you decide that BIC razors are fine. Here in Canada u get an intro pack for $14 with the handle and two blades and I think all of us can afford 14 bucks for an experiment. It is an eye opening smooth shave (5 blades and the flexball really works) …. my wife took the second razor I bot to take to our condo on a ski hill and loved it …. also I gifted one to a buddy that swore two blade razors were good enough and he was impressed with how smooth it is.
Now having said that Gillette’s Flexball Fusion is a good razor I am as pissed as the rest of you at the SJW bull sheet that we are bombarded with and yearn for the good old days when a commercial for anything for a male featured the large breasted eye candy product advisor ;-)
Be good gents and ladies.
link https://gillette.ca/en-ca/products/razors-trimmers-and-blades/fusion5-family-razors
@Crashex – Last I heard, Dick’s owns field and Stream precisely to separate out their fishing and hunting from Dick’s stores. Dick’s also bought Cabela’s in 2018, IIRC.
I buy all guns and ammo from local gun stores, the largest being a 3-store chain in the greater metropolitan area. The three stores in that chain give them enough buying power to compete on price with anyone, even the online stores.
I still shop Field & Stream, but only to scavenge, and I’m not talking the piddling 10-20% off stuff. There’s no margin left in the stuff I buy from them.
A quick google search regarding Cabela’s indicated that it was bought out by Bass Pro shops in 2016. Some speculation of a fit with Dick’s, but Bass Pro won the prize. Nothing about a 2018 purchase by Dick’s, though I might have missed something.
@Crashex:
Thanks for the heads up on Field & Stream. I’ve not seen one of them, but now I know to not bother.
@Stewart Pid:
It could be the best razor ever, and made of solid gold and sold for 3 ¢s; and I’m NEVER EVER going to buy it. I DO NOT FUND PEOPLE WHO HATE ME.
It is NOT about the product, it is all about the “hate speech” from Gillette telling me, my son, and my grandson that we are evil.
So sorry, but you can toss that 5 bladed wobbly headed monstrosity in the trash and burn it.
Per the BIC:
I’ve used the multi-blade products from folks like Gillette. They gunk up too much and nick too much. (I have very flexible skin and it doesn’t take well to multiple blades). I use a single blade product only. I do that since many of the electric razors give me too much road-rash. I had a Norelco that worked, then it died, and the replacement was back in rash-land. Different head thickness.
I’ve also got a very old school metal razor that takes double edge blades. It works well too. However, the last time I went to buy blades for it I had to get someone to unlock the cabinet and check my age… so it sits in a drawer…
There is simply NO need what so ever for more than one blade on my face; and considerable downside when I apply more than one. I wasn’t kidding (much) with the line about “The first one nicks you, the second one squeegees the blood, and the third one slices off a whole slab.” I had something like that happen (but stopped pulling at the first ‘digging into the nick’ and saved my face).
So “all faces are not equal” and you may well be better served with something else. But for me, whatever it is, it will not be P&G product nor branded Gillette. Period. Nor will I experiment again with the multi-blade gizmos. The first couple of times were painful enough. (And it was a Gillette…)
@Crashex – Thanks, The speculation stuck, the facts didn’t. (Kind of like how the Yellow Stream Media would like for us all to be. 😜)
Toxic Femininity
Great ad from Barbasol. From about 6 years ago but could have been made yesterday. Hey Hashtag, if you aren’t gonna fight like a man, at least shave like a man!
@Clay Marley:
Yeah, that’s my usual face foam! It comes in a couple of smells, so different color cans, but I like the original red/white one. IIRC, at Walmart (in Florida) it’s $1 for their house brand (that has too much smell but I can tolerate it – just started my first can of it) and about $1.40 for the Barbasol that I like a lot better and works Just Fine. I’ve tried other face foams over the years and nothing is noticeably better. (At least with my modest beard strength). Always liked their commercials, too. To bad they don’t make a razor ;-)
It only takes about 2 fingers of foam (and you can do it with one finger of foam spread thin) so a can lasts me way too long. We’re talking year ranges. The can that just died was bought in Florida about 2016 start… The Bag-O-Bic I bought was about $3 and the same time. It’s 1/2 done. So call it $1.5 for what I’ve used. About $3 total (foam & Bic) for at least 1.5 years? $2 / year? Something like that.. (Helped by my not shaving every day if I’m not working, or at all when driving cross country ;-)
I’m pondering the idea of just tossing the house brand can and buying another Barbasol ;-) We’ll see. I’ve only done two shaves with it so far. First one left my hand smelling of it. 2nd one I scrubbed that off a bit. IF it turns out to be a regular issue, I’ll just “move on”. (Nothing like going to get the mustache out of the nose and finding unexpected fragrance to cause angst for us allergy prone folks…) But you don’t just toss something that works… heck, I’d be wasting $1/548 per day, call it 1.277 ¢ / week! Now that would just be extravagance and wastefulness too far! /sarc;
I recently switched from Barbasol to Cooper&French (a MAGA company).