Anti-Gun Movement Is Infecting an Outdoor Brand’s Other Products

The national debate over gun control is now sweeping up bike helmets and water bottles.

REI and Mountain Equipment Co-op, two outdoor retail chains that are also customer cooperatives, said Thursday they were suspending orders for popular items like Bell bicycle helmets and CamelBak water bottles from the company that owns the brands, Vista Outdoor, because Vista also makes assault-style rifles.

The move signals an escalation of the stances businesses have taken in the past week in the controversial gun debate since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month that killed 17 students and staff members.

The wave of responses started with a number of companies cutting ties late last week to the National Rifle Association and gained momentum when Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart and Kroger announced changes to their gun policies, including halting the sale of firearms to customers younger than 21. Late Thursday, L.L. Bean joined its retail counterparts, also announcing a minimum age of 21 to purchase weapons or ammunition in its flagship store in Freeport, Maine, the only one where it sells firearms.

The stance by REI and Mountain Equipment also signals a widening of the goods and products that are coming under scrutiny in the gun debate. In recent years, Vista Outdoor, like other leading gun manufacturers, has acquired brands that are unrelated to their core firearm or ammunition businesses.

The acquisitions were done, in part, to diversify their revenue sources as gun sales, particularly in the past year under President Donald Trump, have slumped, but also to rebrand, or emphasize, their connection to broader outdoor activities.

On Friday, the stock of Vista Outdoor was down 7.3 percent at the close of the market. In February, the company reported that revenue for its guns and ammunition business in the most recent quarter had fallen more than 20 percent. But its outdoor products group, which makes up about half of its sales and includes brands like Camp Chef outdoor cooking products, Bollé eyewear and Jimmy Stykes paddleboards, showed modest growth.

Likewise, in reporting quarterly earnings Thursday, American Outdoor Brands, formerly Smith & Wesson, said that revenue from its firearms segment fell 40.6 percent, and that revenue from Outdoor Products & Accessories increased 13.4 percent.

In its statement, REI said it believed it was the job of companies that manufacture and sell guns and ammunition to “work towards common sense solutions that prevent the type of violence that happened in Florida last month.” REI suggested it was disappointed with Vista for not coming forward with an approach to finding those solutions.

After several days of active discussions, REI said it learned that Vista did not plan to make a public statement outlining 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,” the company said. “Companies are showing they can contribute if they are willing to lead. We encourage Vista to do just that.”

Vista did not respond to an email seeking comment and has not issued any public response to the decision by the retailers. But one of its brands, CamelBak, tried to distance itself from Vista’s gun selling operation, arguing in a statement that it was an “incorrect assumption that the purchase of any of our products may support a cause that does not fit the mission/values of our brand.”

CamelBak, founded in 1989, is popular with athletes for its packs that allow athletes to hydrate without using their hands as well as its brightly colored water bottles. It was acquired by Vista in 2015 for $412 million. “Our brand falls within the Outdoor Products segment of our company, which operates separately from Vista Outdoor’s Shooting Sports segment,” the company said in a statement. That segment manufacturers a variety of guns, including AR-15-style rifles.

On social media, some argued that boycotting brands like CamelBak and Giro would only hurt people making quality products. Others chided REI for what they saw as mixing business with politics.

But retailers are being forced to respond to the growing call to arms that is racing across the internet. On Twitter and Facebook, lists and petitions are being widely circulated of myriad companies associated with the gun lobby or brands owned by gun manufacturers, urging customers to boycott and retailers to drop them.

“I only discovered a week ago that my children’s CamelBak water bottles and the Bushnell binoculars that I bought for my 10-year-old who is into birding were associated not only with the gun lobby, but with companies that manufactured assault weapons,” said Sarah Latha, a 39-year-old mother of three who works for the provincial government in Ontario. “It was incredibly disturbing.”

On Sunday evening, Latha put up a petition on change.org demanding that Mountain Equipment stop selling brands owned by Vista Outdoor. It quickly drew more than 50,000 signatures.

Mountain Equipment was caught off guard. The cooperative had long sought out products for its 5 million members that were ethically sourced and environmentally sustainable. As myriad acquisitions occurred in the outdoor goods space in recent years, it had not paid attention to who currently owned the companies and brands.

“The ownership links to these products caught us by surprise,” David Labistour, chief executive of Mountain Equipment, said in an interview Friday afternoon. After reading more than 70,000 comments made in two days through the petition and emails and on its Twitter and Facebook pages, Mountain Equipment reached out to Vista, alerting the company it was suspending further orders of the five Vista brands the retailer carried. Existing inventory would continue to be sold in the store.

“Our general purpose is to get all of the brands that we deal with to become advocates in the conversation for the sensible and safe ownership of guns,” said Labistour, who grew up hunting on his farm in South Africa. “They’re in a tough place, though. They have two very different stakeholder groups.”

In an open letter posted Thursday to Mountain Equipment’s members, Labistour said the decision would not satisfy everyone, noting there were “as many opinions as there are people expressing them.”

Labistour said when it came to consumer activism, he had been fairly cynical, noting there was often a gap or disconnect between what consumers said they would do in a tweet versus what they actually did. But he believes this movement is different.

“We’re seeing the industry rally together, and I believe that we can have some influence in starting this conversation about the appropriate ownership and use of firearms,” Labistour said. “And when it comes to the sale of assault-style and military-grade firearms, that conversation needs to happen now.”