As part of the re-emphasis on core businesses announced days earlier, Vista Outdoor Inc. plans to sell Bell, Giro and Blackburn and its Savage and Stevens firearms brands and return its focus to ammunition sales. The company also said it will sell the Copilot bike baby carrier brand, Raskullz and Krashco child helmet brands and the Jimmy Styks paddleboard brand but retain CamelBak, Camp Chef and Bushnell, as well as its ammo’ brands.
The company announced last year that it planned to sell its Bollé eyewear and helmet brand. Vista Outdoor CEO Chris Metz said Tuesday that he expects to complete that sale, which also includes the Cebe and Serengetti eyewear brands, in the next fiscal first quarter. He said the company hopes to complete the sale of the other brands by the end of its 2020 fiscal year, 24 months from now.
Vista bought Bell, Giro, Blackburn and C-Preme　from BRG Sports in 2016 for $400 million.
Vista’s firearms and ammunition sales have been soft for several quarters, and on March 1, REI, MEC and some independent retailers said they would stop ordering Vista products because of Vista’s lack of response following the Parkland High　School shooting in February. Although REI and MEC don’t sell firearms, they sold Bell, Giro, Blackburn and other Vista Outdoor outdoor cooking and water sports brands.
In an investor conference call Tuesday, Metz said the canceled orders had little effect on the company. Answering an investor question, Metz noted that REI represents less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales.
“As we look at the rest of it, there’s been some puts and takes: So we’ve had some small independent dealers that sided with the REI side and we’ve had some independent dealers, frankly, that stepped up and said, ‘We want to take advantage of this market opportunity and replace that volume.’ In total it’s built into our guidance and expectations, and fortunately we have been on this path of strategically determining where we wanted to guide the company way before any of the noise came about eight weeks ago.”
