Last Friday we reported that several local bike shops decided to stop selling products from CamelBak, Bell Sports, Giro, Blackburn, Raskullz and CoPilot following revelations that their parent company — Vista Outdoor Inc. — has close ties to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and also owns brands that sell gun products and ammunition.
A lot has happened since then.
“We have decided to place a hold on future orders of products that Vista sells through REI while we assess how Vista proceeds.”
— REI statement
Momentum to boycott brands tied to the NRA has led several of America’s largest outdoor equipment retailers to stop selling these brands. After Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart, and Kroger (owner of Fred Meyer) made moves on controlling the sale of guns in their stores, both REI and MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op, Canada’s version of REI) have said they will stop selling all Vista-owned products. A Change.org petition calling on MEC to “stop selling products made by guns manufacturer Vista Outdoor!” has nearly 55,000 signatures.
In their statement released yesterday, REI said:
“This week, we have been in active discussions with Vista Outdoor, which has recently acquired several companies that are longtime partners of REI. These include Giro, Bell, Camelbak, Camp Chef and Blackburn. Vista also owns Savage Arms, which manufactures guns including “modern sporting rifles.”
This morning we learned that Vista does not plan to make a public statement that outlines a clear plan of action. As a result, we have decided to place a hold on future orders of products that Vista sells through REI while we assess how Vista proceeds.”
And now the brands themselves have spoken up. Blackburn, Giro and CamelBak have now released statements. The meat of the statement is the same from all three of them:
“As you may know, in the wake of the recent tragic shooting at a Florida school, there have been calls on social media for a boycott of Giro [Blackburn and Camelbak] products because of its association with Vista Outdoor, a company that also owns separate businesses in the shooting sports industry.
A major concern for the boycott centers around the incorrect assumption that the purchase of any of our products may support a cause that does not fit the mission/values of our brand. That is not the case. Our brand falls within the Outdoor Products segment of our company, which operates separately from Vista Outdoor’s Shooting Sports segment.
We recognize, support and respect the right of every individual to decide for themselves what brands they will purchase based on whatever criteria they believe are important.”
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“I can’t deny that it was a huge struggle of conscience at times to work there knowing who owned us.”
— Sophie Ballo, former Vista employee
One very respected and popular cycling website, Red Kite Prayer, added more details based on a question they asked CamelBak. Here’s more from RKP:
“What’s important to note here is how Vista Outdoor’s business divisions are siloed. Profits from the Outdoor Products division are not mixed in with profits from Vista Outdoor’s Shooting Sports division. They remain separate. That means that no matter what happens to the revenue of the Outdoor Products division, the funding that goes into lobbying on behalf of the Shooting Sports division doesn’t come from brands like Giro, Bell, Blackburn and CamelBak. Everyone could stop buying all CamelBak packs tomorrow and it wouldn’t change what Vista Outdoor spends on lobbying for its Shooting Sports division.
Another point worth clarifying is that while it’s been claimed that Vista Outdoor supports the NRA to the tune of $500K/yr., that’s not accurate. In 2017, they spent a total of $514K on all lobbying. The vast majority of that did not go to the NRA. Further, in looking at some of the legislation they lobbied for, like better gun education and training, some of their positions are pretty easy to endorse…
The bottom line is simple: Anyone who chooses not to do business with the bike brands owned by Vista Outdoor will really only serve to hurt those brands and the retailers invested in them.”
Another noteworthy part of this story are comments we received on Monday from Sophie Ballo, a former Bell/Giro/Blackburn employee who worked at their northern California (Santa Cruz) headquarters. She wrote that any boycott of of the brands, “Does imperceptible damage to Vista’s bottom line given their overall % of company earnings, or to harm the NRA, but it will harm a lot of good bike industry folks.” Ballo also said that she was well aware of Vista’s ties to the gun industy and that it weighed heavily on her conscience:
“I can’t speak for everyone in the building. But speaking only for myself, as someone who recently worked there, I know that it was very difficult for me to speak out in any way, not necessarily because I was afraid (though I’m sure if I spoke out I wouldn’t have been given a pat on the back), but because the Bay Area is a place where you can’t really rock the boat given how difficult it is to live there outside of tech. I can’t deny that it was a huge struggle of conscience at times to work there knowing who owned us, but there were also few alternatives in the Santa Cruz area that wouldn’t have totally upended my life if I had decided to look elsewhere, bike industry or otherwise. And that’s coming from someone who has no kids or other obligations. And more importantly, I loved the products we made and the people I worked with.
It begs to be said that the volatility and extreme high cost of the Bay Area makes it even more necessary for those with solid jobs AND financial obligations to keep their positions whatever it takes. Maybe if Bell or Giro were in a location with easier living costs, things would be different – but people there need those jobs to pay rent or mortgages or college or even just basic needs. It’s hard to take a risk or a stand when there’s others who depend on you that you need to think of as well.”
It’s interesting that REI isn’t dropping Vista brands. Their statement is careful to say they’re only putting orders on “hold” for the moment. This will make it easy for them to start selling the brands again after hearing more from Vista. It begs the question of what happens next. Given that CamelBak, Giro, Blackburn and the other brands caught up in this mess are only guilty by association, perhaps the best outcome is for Vista to sell them off. Pressure because of ties to the NRA has gotten us to this point. Pressure to sell off the brands might be the next goal post to aim for.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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It is hard to predict the intermediate steps in this chain of events but I can tell you that it ends with the lawmakers who stood idly by proclaiming victory. Their “brave” inaction kept government out of the way and let the free market speak for itself.
With or without a capital R, our republican government looks more like a dollar democracy.
Thanks for the Update on this Jonathan. Have you heard from any of the bigger local bike stores like River City, Universal or Bike Gallery yet?
I think the aphorism, going off half-cocked is applicable here. (as in many other places in life)
… further, ironically applicable.
That’s the “advantage” of a semi-automatic, one need not even cock it.
If we search hard enough, everything will be connected to something we don’t like. I suppose it’s simply a matter of what degree of separation triggers one’s outrage/levels of integrity about something.
Absolutely. As with everything in life, you’ve gotta draw the line somewhere.
Yes. Your bicycles tires are more than likely tied to modern slave trade. Don’t believe me? Just start looking online….have fun with that conundrum.
And look at everyone’s beloved Apple. A company who has products manufactured in factories so awful they have to install suicide nets around windows. Not to mention Apple’s deplorable record on tax evasion. But everybody has an iPhone in their pocket, or a MacBook proudly displayed while sipping their lattes.
**Crickets**
Yes there are awful things everywhere… and somehow *this article* is about the NRA.
There’s no way lattes are still the weird culture war signifier for ‘liberal’ when you can get them at McDonald’s for like a dollar. Isn’t it avocados now?
I didn’t find anything, which doesn’t mean it’s not there. Can you show me the connection between Compass tires, made by Panaracer, and the modern slave trade?
Camelbak made a choice to sell their products to the military, and the company that bought them does as well. It is when these products become close to home, affect our kids that makes us begin our action here. If wars are to steal resources from another’s country, then it is very much responsible to boycott the supplier and dealer. While we talk here, this manufacturer is writing letters to their share holders telling them boycotts will affect their return of investment just as we should be writing letters and talking to one another discouraging others from wearing a bicycle helmet made from Bell when we bike with our friends. Intimidation can be used not just for bad people wanting to continue, but can be used for those to encourage good. Here is a sales advertisement fro CamelBak, and a logo they designed says “hydration or die”. By the way, would you discourage your kids from visiting a store where they sell drugs. If you buy at another store then you hep them build larger, while ceasing profits from the one who lets people sell drugs in the parking lot. This is called “Buy-cotting”; it multiplies the effect.
“Find a great selection of Camelbak water bottles, backpacks & hydration packs. From the Camelbak LOBO to the military-grade Camelbak MULE & HAWG, Camelbak makes a pack for every occasion.”
If you look up “the parent company” you will see how deep they are into weaponry in the military, and we do have kids buying their products.
I agree with Jonathan that a best case outcome would be Vista making the decision to sell these brands, and I think boycotting the brands could help reach that point. It makes a pretty compelling case to sell when revenues are down but you can demonstrate that they would immediately climb under new ownership.
I don’t buy products in the category that often…frankly, I’m probably years away from a new helmet, rack, or hydration pack, so I’m on the sidelines until this thing is resolved regardless.
I disagree with the statement that these brands are only guilty by association. One could say that Puma shoes was guilty by association with Adidas (feuding brothers founded each company), but not if one of them owned the other. These brands are owned by a company that sells horrible weapons and ammunition that are used to slaughter innocent people. The ownership also chooses to support with political contributions and lobbying a continued lack of action on this issue, which just happens to be life or death. Money that goes into the parent company rewards it for its business and political practices, which I will not do.
All in all, it’s a shade of lipstick that might be palatable to some, but it’s still on a pig.
This company is actually owned by investors, bought and sold on the NYSE as VSTO. Bell, Giro, etc may be operated as separate units, but they all support the bottom line, and in general investors don’t distinguish between subsidiaries of any company.
I wouldn’t call those Vista-owned ammunition brands horrible. They’re not bad. But that Russian stuff on the market? Now THAT’S horrible ammo.
Vista owns Federal Premium. Federal HST is excellent ammo.
Well, after being a member for 26 years and spending tens of thousands of dollars I cancelled my membership today. I was really conflicted with this, but I just don’t think that it is right for REI to politicize this issue, differentially treat a whole class of citizens and penalize Camel back, Bell and Giro that have little to do with firearms industry. The real fear is that we are starting to see the extreme polarization of America along ideological and party lines. Not a good place to go.
For those of you interested in how to cancel your membership, go to the website: https://www.rei.com/membership/benefits and go to the bottom “feed back” link. Then contact with a live chat and ask for your membership to be cancelled.
I’m heading there now to get a membership and spend my paycheck.
REI didn’t politicize the issue. They are reacting to a development that has affected brands they carry. They had to do something and I think they are proceeding down the right path. Not doing anything would have put them at much greater risk than a few NRA members cancelling their REI membership. I’m sure they’ve done the math and it was an easy decision.
Correct – it’s like Camelback should just stop making products, because of who bought them.
Not really. CamelBak didn’t have to sell itself. And now CamelBak IS Vista, by CamelBak’s choice to take money in exchange for its independence.
And Vista has many other choices than to stop making CamelBak products.
Can we confirm vista was selling guns before Camelback sold to them? Either way, people are in business to make money. You might be projecting your morals on to Camelbak’s executives, when they never shared those morals in the first place. They were just making a product there there was a market demand.
It’s irrelevant to what I wrote whether Vista was selling guns (or donating to the NRA) before Camelbak sold to them. And I’m not projecting my morals on anyone–I don’t care what Camelbak’s owners’ morals are, and their morals are irrelevant to my point. The point is that once Camelbak sold itself to someone else–anyone–it opened itself up to being impacted by what its new owners choose to do, and to not have control over that.
And Camelbak (that is, Vista) still has many choices other than to stop making Camelbak products. It can keep selling them, or it can sell Camelbak, for two obvious examples.
I met a boy wearing Vans, 501s, and a dope Beastie tee, and in between sips of Coke he told me that he thought we were selling out, laying down, sucking up to The Man…
Are you saying that Camelbak didn’t have a choice other than to sell itself? Or that Vista has no choice but to stop making Camelbak products? Those are the statements that you responded to, unless this was meant as a response to another comment.
\m/\m/
We all have the right to vote with our wallets, and your decision is of course up to you, but REI is not the one that politicized the issue…the NRA took care of that long ago. If the political tide and popular opinion are turning against the NRA, the organizations that support it have a choice of which set of customers to alienate…I’m not happy to see how deeply divided our nation has become, but the NRA is one of the organizations that have driven the rift and now they have to face the consequences.
Well, but REI did *nothing* until someone forced their hand.
They could have smelled the stink long ago and made their own decisions with plenty of time to craft a thoughtful policy.
If you really feel like voting with your wallet, how do you feel about NRA support coming from Apple, Amazon, Gold’s Gym, and FedEx? Delta Airlines apparently offered discounts to NRA members for years until recently.
That’s a good point. And what of companies that, while not economically tied to the NRA, have economic ties to other companies WITH ties to the NRA?
How many degrees of separation pass the progressive (or conservative!) Litmus test?
Thanks for the suggestions, I already don’t patronize any of those companies — unrelated to NRA support though. In fact, I think everyone in America should think twice about patronizing Amazon given their well-documented inhumane working conditions for both professional and shipping staff and the willingness they have demonstrated to play hardball in contract negotiations (look into their rift with Hachette), impacting what books are available to people.
That’s not even thinking about how Amazon is impacting local businesses. I mean, people, you going to have no one to blame but yourselves when you need a plunger right NOW and every hardware store in your city has been driven out of business by Amazon.
I go out of my way to avoid doing business with two of those, and I’ve never had any reason to do business with the other two. if I were a customer, their support for the NRA would be enough for me to stop patronizing them. for what it’s worth, I own a gun. and for what it’s worth, I would have zero problem giving that gun up if reasonable gun control legislation required it of me.
I wonder how Delta Airlines feels about it’s anti-NRA stance this week?
Like many others, I’ll be doing the opposite. I’ll be stopping by this weekend to make some purchases that I might have made elsewhere just to thank REI and encourage them in a small way.
“Well, after being a member for 26 years and spending tens of thousands of dollars I cancelled my membership today”
Your NRA membership?
“Everyone could stop buying all CamelBak packs tomorrow and it wouldn’t change what Vista Outdoor spends on lobbying for its Shooting Sports division.”
While that may be true, it still doesn’t change the fact that Vista WOULD react to such a development to protect shareholder value, likely by spinning off the bicycle brands. Given that these brands were acquired to provide the company stability in the face of a tough business environment for shooting “sports”, it likely would impact the company considerably in the future and that translates to a bleak outlook for the stock price. It also blocks the ability of Vista and other gun brands to diversify, relegating them to a very uncertain future for arms manufacturers.
REI is doing the right thing. The NRA is in a panic because they know quite well that the tide has turned against them and their tiny membership composed of a small percentage of gun owners is entirely inadequate for the organization to continue pretending that they’re something other than an arms industry lobby group. America will begin to make progress on this issue now that people are no longer buying the NRA’s propaganda.
And the ‘nice people work at these stores that you’re hurting’ is misses the mark completely.
I’m sure many of the people who staff nuclear power plants and who build land mines or dig up tar sands or shoot black people on our streets in the line of duty are also really nice people(!) If all we were concerned about were the possible economic repercussions of boycotts on nice people who happen to work in dastardly industries we’d get nowhere.
I’m reminded of Universal Soldier by Buffy Sainte-Marie. More personally, I’m reminded why I left a previous lucrative career (in NorCal, no less). Sometimes, one has to be true to oneself and it can come at a financial cost, but in the end it’s always worth it.
So what is your saintly occupation?
To quote John Lydon….
Be a man, kill someone. Be a man kill yourself.
Do you not see your own hypocrisy?
Virtue is an illness.
So sad
Weird. Are you suggesting anything and everything we do is equally and unredeemably bad? Kind so a strange philosophy. If you ask me.
I fix old houses and am self-employed, thank you very much. Sometimes I also rent out bike trailers or dive into dumpsters.
I really had a different image of you. Thanks for narrowing it down.
Sure thing.
Isn’t it interesting how we create stories/bios for people we’ve never met based upon their online comments? In reality, people are often very different than how we imagine.
now you’ve got me curious…
The NRA is about 5 million dues paying ($30-40/year) members out of 75 million gun owners nation wide. What is the level of dues paying members of the “Moms against” or other “common Sense” organizations? I would say that this is not a small organization. Factor in that the membership has a much higher rate of political participation than the average American, and you can understand where the clout comes from.
“The NRA is about 5 million dues paying ($30-40/year) members out of 75 million gun owners nation wide.”
That’s a pretty small fraction. By the way, ZERO of my numerous relatives who own guns are NRA members, and most of them are pretty adamant about having nothing to do with that organization.
Know what’s an even smaller fraction? The proportion of the NRA’s budget that comes from membership dues. Most of it comes from gun manufacturers. For all intents and purposes, the NRA is an astroturf industry organization.
My association with the NRA is more important to me than my association with any cycling orientated groups. Insurance at the gun club I shoot at is backed by the NRA, so a NRA membership is necessary in order to participate in the shooting sports. I don’t agree with everything the NRA does, but I do appreciate what they do to protect our right to bear arms. For the record, I think not selling semi-automatic rifles to those not 21 is a good idea. But 18-21 year old’s should still be able to own their own hunting rifle. The recent shooting wasn’t the NRA’s doing, it was a failure of the background check system. But since you can’t really boycott the government, they pick on the closest thing they can target.
Given how political this issue is, I refuse to give my money to any of the nanny-state organizations that Michael Bloomburg backs with his billions. His organizations have friendly grassroots names like Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms demand Action. I will not give my business to stores that back Bloomburg.
As my cycling hobby is mature, I don’t need any more bicycles, and I have all the gear I need, cycling stores don’t really get much money from me anymore. But given that stores have decided to take sides, I’ll be happy not to go to those that do.
“The recent shooting wasn’t the NRA’s doing, it was a failure of the background check system. ”
Nice try.
And what organization been waging a decades-long campaign to weaken, undermine, insert loop holes into background checks, not to mention everything else dastardly to do with guns?
And to add, which organization has worked to redefine that a well regulated militia means not the group but the individual? Ease of access to guns and gun proliferation rests on the NRA. Easy access to gun and gun proliferation means more dead people.
That was defined over 200 years ago in the federalist papers.
If 18 year olds aren’t mature enough to be trusted with alcohol, are they mature enough to be trusted with firearms? It seems like a horrible idea to me to let high school students buy alcohol; why would we think they would be more mature with firearms?
Yet we allow 18 year olds to enlist in the military and be issued firearms.
After how much requisite training?
And the firearms are accompanied by hundreds of hours of training by experts, and tight restrictions on where and how they are stored, where they can be taken, etc.
Ooh, don’t forget to also boycott Soros, “John”, or should I say “Ivan”? LOL.
Use “Janos”, thats more reflective of my heritage. LOL. György Schwartz (Soros) and my grandparents are actually from the same country. Small world.
Politically I’m unaffiliated. I side with the right on some things and the left on others.
“I do appreciate what they do to protect our right to bear arms”
And how is that right even remotely under threat?
REI is a co-op. The managers who work for me, a MEMBER for 20 years, didn’t ask ME what I thought about the issue…..
Good point. They should’ve put it up for a vote when Vista acquired those brands.
I understand that was their intent, but at the time they were bogged down with tallying up their six-million-plus members’ votes on that contentious Mt. Rainer-sunset-vs.-North-Cascades-snowshoeing-scene-for-the-cover-of-the-Spring-Sale-Catalog-cover-photo vote.
Members have never voted on specific business decisions like this.
I’m willing to bet Bell/Giro helmets have saved more people than their parent company has killed.
Thomson’s biggest customer is Boeing (BDS), and Wound Up makes ICBM bodies for a living.
Time to subscribe and start commenting on skateboardportland.org.
I’d take that wager.
Actually, the ‘failures’ that led to the Florida shootings were human, not systems. Local police and FBI were warned ad nauseum that the alleged shooter was a ‘ticking time bomb’, and ‘people’ who should have responded and dealt with him dropped the ball. ‘People’ need to be held accountable.
Yes and no. It is sort of like Vision Zero and traffic carnage. You can be reductive and blame people, or, as the Swedes have done, recognize the fallibility of humans, and the high stakes of putting those fallible humans into autos, and adjust the parameters so that combination doesn’t automatically and predictably lead to 40,000 deaths every year. Except that with guns it is arguably 100(?) times easier than with autos because we really have no need for guns. Just look at any other country….
Of course people need to be held accountable, and of course we need to create systems that protect other people when those people fail, as is inevitable. Virtually every human activity has redundancies (inspectors, airbags, laws) whose purpose is to provide safety after a person somewhere in the chain has already failed.
That’s it! I’m done buying people, at least until this all blows over.
I get mine at Christian Supply – they are often on sale.
Freddy’s sells Bell. Time to start virtue signalling over your groceries too?
I’m not sure what you mean by this? Has anyone called to boycott a retailer because they’re selling Vista bike products? I haven’t seen it anywhere. It’s the gun nuts who are calling to boycott retailers due to exercising their right to not sell a product.
I think the best outcome is for Vista Outdoor is to sell off Savage Arms, or even better, retain Savage Arms and eliminate the ‘tactical’ and semi automatic rifles that have no place when hunting. While I don’t hunt, my belief is that the majority of hunters share my support of conservation efforts and access to public lands. Vista Outdoors certainly does, or they would not have amassed so many outdoor brands. Additionally, I don’t think Savage Arms sells handguns, which exact a far greater toll than the sensational shootings involving automatic rifles.
Maybe I’m irrationally swayed by the comfort of their Giro brand lace up cycling shoes, but I think a board coalition of outdoor enthusiasts, and an influential company serving that broad market, have a greater chance of enacting policies I support than splintered and narrowly focused advocacy that doesn’t seem to be getting results in the areas of gun control, carbon emissions, and the preservation of public lands.
I have been an REI member for 40 years and while I disagree with there decision to drop Bell and Giro products I will still continue shop there. I have used Bell and Giro helmets for years because of there fit and price. My last two helmet purchases at REI included a new Bell mountain bike helmet and a Giro Ski helmet both have the MIPs system. As for the effect of REI dropping these brands. I think the effect on Bell will be small. Bell brands have the largest footprint for bike helmets and accessories in both Target and Walmart. Bell is also a large supplier of Motorcycle and Motorsports Helmets. Giro and Blackburn are found mostly in bike shops and retailers like REI. Camelback products can be found in many places including Cabelas, Bass Pro Shops and Dicks plus many retailers dealing with outdoor products. Bell an Giro also have the largest footprint in helmets for Bike Nashbar and Performance Bikes and at last check they have not cut there ties to these companies. Just so you know I am a gun owner but not an NRA member. All my purchases for products owned by Vista Outdoor has been connected to my bikes not my guns. We all have the choice to select products based on our social conscience and I will not judge anyone for not buying products owned by Vista Outdoor but I would be surprised if it has anything more than a small change in there bottom line.
Deep cut. Well done!
Life is full of irony, and it seems the primary function of the human mind is to rationalize away hypocrisy; Maynard being an excellent commentator of such treatises.