Gun store owner rips Staples office supply store

News Press – by Melanie Payne and Dick Hogan

Gun store owner W. Alec Dean says he was badly treated at a Staples store in Fort Myers because of the company logo on his shirt and what he calls the office supply company’s anti-gun policy. And, he said, a social media backlash against Staples supports his claim.

Experts say retail stores are often the scene of culture war flare-ups that don’t go away quickly these days – rather, they’re sometimes magnified into national stories by pervasive social media.   

Sometimes the result isn’t pretty, said Connie Ramos Williams, CEO of Conric PR & Marketing and Publishing in Fort Myers.

“Social media can be so damaging to an individual person and a company,” she said. “And it can put a blemish on someone’s reputation that will never go away.”

Dean, president of International Firearm Safety Inc. in Fort Myers, said he was shopping at the Forum Boulevard Staples wearing a shirt with his company’s name imprinted. An employee was rude and, when Dean complained, the manager at the store refused to ring up $400 in office products.

Because he had $50 in Staples coupons, Dean went to the store on Cypress Lake Drive, and made the purchase there and the employees couldn’t have been more helpful, Dean said. So he thought maybe a few gun-hating employees were responsible for his earlier poor treatment.

That was before he checked online and found a Facebook firestorm over rules in a Staples contest. Now Dean is convinced, “It’s a corporate policy” to be anti-gun.

A small business contest promotion, “Push It Forward,” sponsored by Staples, prohibited certain business entries, including religious or faith-based business, adult entertainment, gambling, liquor sales, illegal business and businesses engaged in “firearms/weapons sales.”

“It’s not just the contest, they don’t want firearms businesses,” to patronize their stores, Dean said. Owners of gun-related businesses are discriminated against, Dean said, often lumped into categories with illegal and unsavory businesses.

“We experience this kind of thing a lot,” Dean said.

Staples spokeswoman Carrie McElwee won’t comment on the specifics but said in an email to The News-Press that “we have no such policy regarding clothing. We respect all our customers.”

McElwee said in the email that the contest ended last month and that, “We now realize the rules of our Push It Forward contest were too restrictive and kept out legitimate businesses. Unfortunately, we can’t change the rules once the contest is under way. But we will revise our rules to make sure future contests are more inclusive and reflect our commitment to helping all small businesses.”

Still, Dean said he’s done with Staples, a sentiment shared by business owners and others who weighed in on Staples’ Facebook page after a story posted about a gun business in Nebraska whose Staples’ contest entry was rejected.

Bill Jackson, co-owner of Maple Creek Gunsmithing near Omaha, said his wife Holly entered the gun shop into Staples’ Push It Forward contest to try to win $50,000 in digital marketing. A few days later Jackson received an email stating the entry had been rejected for the following reasons:

“Entry contains content that promotes alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco, firearms/weapons (or the use of any of the foregoing); promotes any activities that may appear unsafe or dangerous; promotes any particular political agenda or message; is obscene or offensive; or endorses any form of hate or hate group.”

“That was irritating,” Jackson said. He runs a legal business and felt he shouldn’t be lumped in with extremists.

Jackson posted the email on his Facebook page. “I wanted to let our customers know how Staples viewed gun owners and people in the industry,” Jackson said.

Williams said disputes like this, carried out in the arena of social media, can go on for years and all the company can do is to provide its point of view each time the issue pops up.

“Usually it’s not ‘Fight fire with fire,’” that’s the best response, she said. “You have to address the situation carefully because you can make it worse.”

Mark Provost, co-founder of Occupy the NRA, said it’s not unusual for retailers on both sides of the gun issue to have an incident that flares up nationally on social media.

“It’s very common and recurring,” said Provost, whose group advocates stronger gun laws. “It’s usually a media story in and of itself each time. The movement acts as a megaphone for what would otherwise have been isolated incidents.”

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