September 22, 2019 – Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) says it will close all of its stores on Sept. 27 until 5 p.m. local time “to support staff who choose to lend their voice to the movement.”
January 22, 2020 – MEC cuts costs, boosts perks in effort to turn around struggling retailer
h/t KC5150
It will be interesting to see where this goes with those changes. Invest it all in staff. We will see. Having spent a dime there in years.
I first joined in 1972, a little store in Kensington Calgary, no big corporate mission statements
As posted elsewhere, and somewhat related, it would appear the shine may be wearing off “woke” businesses:
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/more-than-a-dozen-companies-report-planet-organic-delinquent-in-paying-bills-1.4711951
Planet Organic owes The Happy Camel over 21000.00?
Very bad especially when a customer reviewing the company says this about one of their products:
“the best sheep dip I’ve ever tasted”
Back in the 1990’s, I read over a copy of the MEC co-operative agreement. It was outright anti-hunter, which spoke volumes about where it was headed. It always did, and always will, cater to the whack-job market. There was no way then, and especially now, that I would patronise MEC. It can go under for all I care.
I also refuse to shop at MEC. Anti-hunter outdoor businesses are an obvious oxymoron and won’t be missed.
Two totally different customer bases. People who shop at MEC snack on granola and don’t hunt. People who shop at Bass Pro outlet eat beef jerky and hunt and fish. MEC really focuses on the image of active people – jogging, skiing, hiking, biking. But (from what I have seen) most of the people who shop there seem more image conscious (I want to look like a mountain hiker but I’m just walking to work in these boots).
Who can afford to ski anymore?
I suspect that flannel shirts are the chains largest seller. Oh! and size 40+ women’s “hiking” shorts
Yes, but Bass Pro Shop doesn’t make hunting a requirement to be a customer. MEC stated you were not to hunt in order to buy into it’s cooperative.
HA!
How true.
I still have my membership, and though I haven’t bought anything from MEC for more years than I can remember, I’ll still go into a store and look around when I visit a city where there is a store. If I engage a member of staff I like to try to drop into the conversation that I’m looking at (whatever garment/equipment) to use for hunting. Because I like organic, free-range meat, and foraging in the wild doesn’t cause people to convert more natural habitat to farmland to feed urban-dwelling, virtue-signalling vegetarians.
Ah, the black hole of wokeness.
Once you cross the event horizon you can never escape it’s destructive forces.
I went over MEC’s financial statements. Overall this company is in good financial health.
2019 gross revenue increased from $455 million to $462 million.
Cost of sales stable at 68% of revenue (a little high).
Overhead (administration etc) at 30% of revenue – very high but maybe not for a “non-profit”.
The change from a $11 million profit in 2018 to a loss of $11 million in 2019 is due almost entirely to the sale of their Toronto building on Front Street and a subsequent 42 month lease back. In 2018 this arrangement added over $29 million in cash. In 2019 it dropped to about $15 million (there is $14 million of the $22 million right there). Add another $8 million in restructuring charges (they closed a few buildings) and the $22 million difference is fully explained.
So the woke and broke on this story is busted. Coincidentally they changed CEOs last year and the incoming CEO would know of the loss of “other income”, namely the decreasing income from the sale of their Toronto store.
The take-away for me on MEC is that they spend most of their revenue on their employees – with admin costing 30% of revenue, probably a great place to work, more so than a great place to shop.
Thanks. That narrative died fast.
How did the “narrative” die, other than in your desperately-blinkered mind? You don’t make “major changes” (per MEC’s CEO) if your business is doing great.
READ THE ORIGINAL COMMENT. Christ.
Thanks, confirms the impression I’ve had for a while that MEC is run for the employees and not for the customer members. When I joined in 1981 its philosophy was providing excellent products at low prices. Period. I still wear a jacket I bought there around 1988. But over the years it has become more and more irritatingly ideological and I have bought less and less there. My “stick to your knitting” messages from time to time to managers and Board were never even acknowledged.
I looked into Maple Leaf Foods because their CEO went on a anti-Trump spaz. He, McCain turned out as I suspected, a libtard dolt.
I was wondering what kind of genius insults near half his customer base. ( A lib, thats who ). Actually, most likely the majority of his customers in that us deploribal, pick up driving, 4th of July cook out types like hot-dogs, sausages, meat, as opposed to meat is murder, vegan signalling, anti-farm/ranch Democrats. But there you go.
And the no tie, long hair, woke CEO blathering on about sustainability. Except his profit, and sales.
Maple Leaf Foods corporate report was all woke with sustainability jargon. Not to much, actually nothing about making the greatest, tastiest hot dogs in the world( too Trumpy, I suppose )
I read that MLF two main investors were the McCain family self dealing fund and the Ontario Teacher Pension. Smells of lefty back scratching ‘investments. They didnt seem to be doing too good. Get woke, go broke.
Kate, thanks for the good news on MEC. My wife and I buy from the one or two locally-owned stores in town.
Don’t snack on granola but I still have a few MEC items. A Nunatak tent and a 850 fill goose down expedition parka that used to travel on winter highways in Sask and Alberta. Called my Barney parka due to the colour and puffy nature. Stays in the closet until it is at least -30
Bought a lot of stuff from MEC over the years, excellent quality like my Black Diamond winter coat. Have written a few letters to them about their CEO’s political actions, note he was fired recently. There are great competitive stores like SAIL and Bass Pro to shop at.
As a capitalist I dont shop at co-op’s. The mec crowd is not for me. I don’t go to a store to feel good or to hear a virtue signaling message.
abt You are like a guy in Saskatoon I talked to one time . When I told him I was looking for the Co-op Lumber Yard he said, “the communist chain store? Sorry I don’t shop there”
abt:
?
you mean like stuff costs more at co-ops?
I noticed that ages ago.
and limited selection.
approaching best before date en mass.
I got one around the corner from my place but I keep forgetting its there.
Normally a co-op is member owned at least in theory. How is MEC a co-op in the traditional sense of the word? It appears to call itself a co-op to appeal to a certain clientele.
It’s a Co-op in the traditional sense that members own it and if the members don’t vote and speak up their employees who directly manage it will run as they, the employees please. In that it is like a publicly traded corporation, but it is different in limiting each owner to one share. And as far as I know it is still pickier than some co-ops in that it will only sell its wares to members.
Doesn’t REI use that meme as well? We have their credit card, but that does not a co-op make. Most large retailers have their own credit cards.
The M.E.C. is opening a large branch in Saskatoon’s downtown mall, the Midtown Plaza. It is touted as part of an attempt to turn around the struggling mall. An anti-hunting bias is not going to go over well in Saskatchewan, who still has a healthy, pro-hunting rural friendly culture.
During the Christmas shopping season, I’d walk through the Midtown Plaza to their improved food court. There were never any of the crowds of shoppers, as used to be the case, especially so when I managed a retail store there in the 1980s. However, the day I went to Cabela’s, at Preston Crossing, during the same time period. It was packed and even difficult to find parking.
Downtown Saskatoon is now officially incorporated into “The Hood” by the drug dealers shootings, armed robberies, et al. If the Mountain Equipment Co-op were to stock ballistic/stab proof vests, for the latest in “urban” fashion in the Liberanos Canada of “tough gun control”. I bet they’d have trouble keeping them in stock.
The Pleasant Hill variant would sell like hotcakes in sizes from elementary school to extra-large adult. Mind you, as the last high school student gunned down and died in the entrance of a Credit Union in a middle-class area of the east side, recently. Maybe, a generic Level IIIa vest, with a in store added label for your neighbourhood, town, city, or gang, that would work.
I quit shopping there when they pulled Camelbak products off the shelves because their parent company sells guns. No doubt 3 people complained and they folded. I emailed them and told them I would stay away. 15 years ago it was a good place to buy affordable products, but the prices have gone way up in recent years.
John, did you cash in your share? I heard of people doing that when they binned all products from companies owned by that corporation because it owned a firearms maker. I was surprised that they got back a sum that tempted me. I’ll be keeping a closer eye on how well MEC is doing in future years and may get out if I think I can realise enough to buy another gun with my payout.
I did the same with Target when their HQ virtue signalled about bathrooms becoming unisex to avoid hurting the feelings of .01% of their customer base. Didn’t shop there for a couple of years. Now I’ve moved to a small Atlantic coast area of Florida that remains under-developed (I know, hard to believe, and I’m not telling where it is). It’s Target or drive 30 miles one way. An irony is that the bathrooms in Iowa as well as the bathrooms here remain segmented between the sexes.
Dick’s has been avoided as well due to their anti-NRA/gun stance. Haven’t shopped there since which is a real hardship. Their golf section was terrific. Dick’s bottom line has done fine without me.
Cancel culture works both fricken ways you useless little wokey cretins.
the warranty is great , got a new set of poles for a 10 year old tent after i scattered them on the highway with the tailgate down .. no questions asked . no dirty looks. and i buy the most stuff at Bass Pro now too.
I shop at MEC. It’s one of the few places in Canada to offer a discount (15%) to vets.
All co-ops are founded on a lack of trust in free and open markets. Each co-op replaces it with some other fundamental belief in how goods and services are delivered, invariably with some flaw that dooms them to ultimate failure.
MEC folk have embraced the enviro wacky ideas that pervade a large subset of our culture, and rational thought must be suppressed to support this belief. We should not be suprised with this outcome.
Woke or traditional, we are seeing massive creative destruction in the retail industry. Increasingly, the middle men between manufacturers and customers is being reduced. Online sellers have less property taxes, fewer employees, fewer government costs due to regulations and inspections of retail space, no mall rental fees…on and on. When I shop in the city, the prices are very high compared to online retailers.
Everyone knows this of course but municipal governments are trying to recoup revenue by raising rates on remaining businesses (see Calgary) but that only increases the pace of retail shop closures. I assume municipal utilities, service fees, traffic fines and residential property taxes are set to rise even more dramatically.
Ramping up of carbon taxes, sin taxes, fees and regulations, property taxes, utilities, high personal and government debt levels, plus all I’m missing will increase costs, reduce disposable income/consumption and suppress job creation (except government employees). Will stagflation return?
it all comes with risk LC
save and save and save online, to the tune of many $thousands then oopsie!!! payment info all hacked !!!!
dont talk to us, talk to yer bank !!!!
Credit card theft happens at retail stores at about the same rate. Data breaches are risk everyone takes with all of their info.
I suspect that it won’t be their fealty to green theocracy that will put them under but more likely displacement by Amazon.
I treat MEC like I treat most stores: of they have what I want/need, I’ll buy it. I have a membership, and there’s a store quite close to where I live (and my wife likes the store).
I don’t think boycotts generally work, though it seems that way. What seems to work is bitching loudly and/or publicly.
Also, if they fold, I’m not likely shedding tears: their products are available elsewhere.