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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 20th, 2012
I’ve enjoyed poking fun at the National Organization for Marriage boycotts of Starbucks and General Mills. The absurdity of Starbucks’ customer base suddenly deciding to forgo a mocha frappuchino because Brian Brown asked them to is laughable. So far they’ve not been able to get fifty thousand signatures on their Dump Starbucks site and their Dump General Mills is only half that.
But wacky conservatives play by a funny rule book. When their boycotts achieve nothing (which is always) they just Make Sh!t Up. After hearing from the American Family Association about their Disney boycott (is it still on?), you’d think that Walt’s frozen head is somewhere weeping. And the handful of men who call themselves One Million Moms insist that they are the reason that Playboy Club and GCB were not renewed for another season.
So why shouldn’t Brian follow suit?
Today, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) announced that their protest of Starbucks is achieving results. “Starbucks supported same-sex marriage, saw their support from Republicans dwindle, missed sales projections, and watched the company lose $4.4 billion overnight and over $10 billion from their 2012 high,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “While executives of publicly traded companies have had a wonderful time claiming that not supporting same-sex marriage hurts their employee recruitment and retention efforts, we now have a case study in how alienating millions of customers can directly affect the bottom line of a public company and damage shareholder value.”
Now I’m not exactly sure what Brian means. I think he is basing this claim on the publicly traded stock value on one day (I assume August 2); but if so it makes no sense to say that the company lost $4.4 billion or that this says anything about “the bottom line”. Of course, Brian could just be so astonishingly unaware of the difference between stock trading price and financial statements that he truly thinks that a drop in stock literally means that the company lost income.
Starbucks' stock price over the past year
As for Starbucks and the boycott, well there actually is some info on how that is going. Starbucks has released their quarter three results which pretty closely cover the period since NOM started their boycott:
Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) today reported financial results for its 13-week fiscal third quarter ended July 1, 2012.
Fiscal Third Quarter 2012 Highlights:
Total net revenues increased 13% to $3.3 billion
U.S. comparable store sales increased 7%; Global comparable store sales increased 6%
Channel Development revenues increased 45% to $316 million
Operating income increased 22% to $492 million; operating margin expanded 120 basis points to 14.9%
EPS increased 19% to $0.43 per share, compared to $0.36 per share in Q3 FY11
Starbucks opened 231 net new stores globally, including its 600th store in mainland China, and its first stores in Finland and Costa Rica.
If those results reflect NOM’s boycott, maybe Lowe’s should consider renaming itself The We-Love-Gay-Marriage Company and send NOM a press release.
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Lindoro Almaviva
August 20th, 2012
If those results reflect NOM’s boycott, maybe Lowe’s should consider renaming itself The We-Love-Gay-Marriage Company and send NOM a press release.
and Best Buy and Menards as well
Stephen
August 20th, 2012
See next post re NOM lies.
Richard Rush
August 20th, 2012
Here is a challenging question: When was the last time that NOM issued a statement that was actually true?
Robert
August 21st, 2012
I saw this earlier and it was thought that the claim of the loss is due to the projected growth of the comany and that it did not meet it’s growth expectation. Brown considers THAT a lss, even though they went up in sales by quite a bit.
Also most fast food chains didn’t meet expectations, and the drought and worries about how it will affect these companies is also reported to be part of the issue.
DN
August 22nd, 2012
Brian Brown’s numbers are entirely realistic:
$10,000,000,000 lost revenue divided by 50,000 supporters (roughly) = $200,000 lost revenue per customer.
I think it’s obvious that each of the people who signed NOM’s boycott pledge were spending $200,000 a year at Starbucks.
Why, it’s 6:42am here and I myself have already spent $800 at Starbucks today.
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