EzLounging

we all still lost our jobs. maybe a dozen people carried forward with Camping World. mostly people from our tech/dev team and some CS, plus our main buyer and IPP Pete to run the in-house brands.

but everyone who worked in our warehouses and hustled to get every order shipped out before the end of March, our receiving team who made sure everything from Amer & Rossi got pulled off the shelves to be sent back to them rather than be sold under cost, the logistics guys who did all the leg work to make sure the leftover inventory made it to the correct Camping World warehouse (), our marketing team, the database team, all of our retail kids who had to deal with customers face to face about why a successful local business was going under, our customer service leads who dealt with the brunt of dissatisfied customers, all of them lost their jobs after working even harder those last two months with zero direction from our Camping World overlords.

just need to be clear that it is 100% Fuck Camping World, and The House by association there.
hopefully anybody who stayed is getting paid well or continuing to look for other work.

from the deals thread:

coleslawed wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2023 5:03 pm yeah, two weeks from the end they had the bright idea that maybe they shouldn’t just abandon an independently successful business, so they closed our Minnesota facilities under the “Active Sports” name and transferred “The House” domain to be direct under Camping World instead. then the very last week we started shipping things to a different Camping World warehouse.

a couple of higher level IT/Data people stayed on to run the backend, along with a small handful of CS reps. everyone else who actually worked under “The House” banner got the boot on May 1, anything sold off TheHouse.com will ship out of Camping World locations and go straight into Marcus Lemonis’ pocket.

who knows how inventory will look next season, CW is gonna try to reestablish relationships with all the vendors they had pissed off. they’ll all still want to sell more of their product so I’m sure most will get back in, but it’d be some sweet justice if some bigger brands held firm in a “fuck you” to Marcus and just upped their orders with other retailers instead. I know I saw Johan call out Marcus early on after the initial news.

pow_hnd wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 6:18 pm Well, if they are able to keep it open, that’s great and glad you’re not losing your job.

I was just making an observation.

I am gonna assume though there might be some hard conversations to be had with suppliers after stuff was discounted so hard, like I said, things could have changed but I know for sure two vendors that had, in my time, super hard clauses in their dealer agreements that their products were on fire sale… lol

sorry if i’m coming across harsh. still a little heated thinking about it a few weeks after the fact. any anger is directed towards CW, not anyone here.

but, yeah, I’m sure those clauses were there, but like I said above, they were signed by Active Sports, which no longer exists, and new contracts will be with Camping World. so, technically, CW did no wrong with the brands. will they want to get back in bed with them? probably not, but money talks and these were all pretty big accounts the brands may not want to fully lose. plus, they’ll still be dealing with our buyer, who has built relationships with all of them.

coleslawed wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 8:31 pm

pow_hnd wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 6:18 pm Well, if they are able to keep it open, that’s great and glad you’re not losing your job.

I was just making an observation.

I am gonna assume though there might be some hard conversations to be had with suppliers after stuff was discounted so hard, like I said, things could have changed but I know for sure two vendors that had, in my time, super hard clauses in their dealer agreements that their products were on fire sale… lol

sorry if i’m coming across harsh. still a little heated thinking about it a few weeks after the fact. any anger is directed towards CW, not anyone here.

but, yeah, I’m sure those clauses were there, but like I said above, they were signed by Active Sports, which no longer exists, and new contracts will be with Camping World. so, technically, CW did no wrong with the brands. will they want to get back in bed with them? probably not, but money talks and these were all pretty big accounts the brands may not want to fully lose. plus, they’ll still be dealing with our buyer, who has built relationships with all of them.

Obviously, time has passed and things change, but I saw B kill huge fucking accounts with no recourse for a multitude of dealer agreement violations. Shipping out of country, grey market sales, selling below cost ( from close out stock buys ) and once a mid level account for just discounting items prior to Xmas…

TNF is so corporate and VC owned, it wouldn’t surprise me if they said yea let’s dance again… But, B, that might be a much different outcome, contrary to a lot of peoples opinions, while they have changed, as all businesses do, they still care a shit load, and have the luxury of still being privately owned and don’t need to cow to anyone or investors.

coleslawed wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 1:13 pmFramed

Total side note, but my Framed Basswood Carbon is crazy legit for the price. Got it right when they first came out in the Apex 1x11 version for just over a grand… I hope they keep making bikes.

Framed will most likely just be box-build budget bikes going forward, can’t see CW reinvesting into a full “pro build” program again, which is where the Basswood and all the nicer bikes came out of.

pow_hnd wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 8:56 pm

coleslawed wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 8:31 pm

pow_hnd wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 6:18 pm Well, if they are able to keep it open, that’s great and glad you’re not losing your job.

I was just making an observation.

I am gonna assume though there might be some hard conversations to be had with suppliers after stuff was discounted so hard, like I said, things could have changed but I know for sure two vendors that had, in my time, super hard clauses in their dealer agreements that their products were on fire sale… lol

sorry if i’m coming across harsh. still a little heated thinking about it a few weeks after the fact. any anger is directed towards CW, not anyone here.

but, yeah, I’m sure those clauses were there, but like I said above, they were signed by Active Sports, which no longer exists, and new contracts will be with Camping World. so, technically, CW did no wrong with the brands. will they want to get back in bed with them? probably not, but money talks and these were all pretty big accounts the brands may not want to fully lose. plus, they’ll still be dealing with our buyer, who has built relationships with all of them.

Obviously, time has passed and things change, but I saw B kill huge fucking accounts with no recourse for a multitude of dealer agreement violations. Shipping out of country, grey market sales, selling below cost ( from close out stock buys ) and once a mid level account for just discounting items prior to Xmas…

Not sure which time period you're referring to, but we had some weird experiences with B related to that, but kinda opposite. They were doing some nonsense on their end that made it hard for their core shops to sell their gear without closeout pricing. Their response was the bullshit "support local snowboarding" campaign. I called it out and they thought I was a dick for a while.

coleslawed wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 8:10 pm we all still lost our jobs. maybe a dozen people carried forward with Camping World. mostly people from our tech/dev team and some CS, plus our main buyer and IPP Pete to run the in-house brands.

but everyone who worked in our warehouses and hustled to get every order shipped out before the end of March, our receiving team who made sure everything from Amer & Rossi got pulled off the shelves to be sent back to them rather than be sold under cost, the logistics guys who did all the leg work to make sure the leftover inventory made it to the correct Camping World warehouse (), our marketing team, the database team, all of our retail kids who had to deal with customers face to face about why a successful local business was going under, our customer service leads who dealt with the brunt of dissatisfied customers, all of them lost their jobs after working even harder those last two months with zero direction from our Camping World overlords.

just need to be clear that it is 100% Fuck Camping World, and The House by association there.
hopefully anybody who stayed is getting paid well or continuing to look for other work.

To my understanding businesses have no human qualities of their own and are in their essence sociopathic as their purpose is only to maximize value for shareholders. Their obligation to maximize shareholder value is written into the laws governing them, so even when brass has a moral compass, often when confronted with decisions they're legally bound to do the money thing and that's often morally questionable and sometimes reprehensible. One of the reasons sociopathic people rise to the heads of these institutions is because they're able to make these decisions that align with the organizations (investors) goals to the detriment of our sensibilities of right and wrong, in a way that most others aren't. As an aside, giving corporations the same legal rights and protections of persons is one of the biggest problems we face as a democracy in part because of this. But I digress.

The issue is that we as normal people (if healthy) are not solely motivated by money, but take our personal value from internal things like 'being of service to others', 'individual purpose' and 'being good to our word'. These qualities that make us good in a tribe, or society, don't align with business beyond a point and are exploitable weaknesses in a human/corporation relationship. (also in similar personal relationships, but I digress again)

For instance, these team members that put in maximum effort above and beyond (driven by internal values) was probably largely due to loyalty to their coworkers first, and second to the customers. We may hope that it means something to the business and we'll be rewarded for this effort, but it doesn't and it can't as it has no feelings of it's own. It's a unthinking, unfeeling machine only driven by external value.

Unfortunately, despite the injustices done and our sensibilities of right and wrong, since on a whole they'll be rewarded much more for prioritizing external values over internal values, these brands & corporations will make the "correct" business decision for their shareholders and as money from sales are the goal, they'll likely just continue to sell goods to major buyers despite their bad actions.

The worst of it is that in turn we may begin to see our humanity as a weakness and we may start to reason ourselves out of it only to become what harmed us in retaliation to 'give back what has been done to us'. In this way we may internalize an "injured" identity with a vengeance to the injustices we perceive.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

.

But I digress. AgainAgain. Sometimes I just get caught up in my own thinking.

C.Fuzzy wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2023 9:39 am In this way we may internalize an "injured" identity with a vengeance to the injustices we perceive.

Kind of parallels with The Batman (2022).

bksdds wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2023 7:06 pm

C.Fuzzy wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2023 9:39 am In this way we may internalize an "injured" identity with a vengeance to the injustices we perceive.

Kind of parallels with The Batman (2022).

I know I'm off in the weeds, so despite my inclinations i'll refrain from going farther.