This Store Owner’s Anti-Kaepernick Boycott Cost Him His Entire Business

Colin Kaepernick’s Nike ad ignited a shitstorm among conservatives when it aired last September, leading right-wingers to launch boycotts against the company and set fire to their Nike gear in another one of those misguided, self-owning protests. Even Trump, as he is wont to do, weighed in with an aggressively capitalized tweet. It looks like at least one sporting goods store’s attempt at ditching Nike didn’t exactly play out in its favor: It wound up losing so much money that it’s going out of business.

Colorado’s Prime Time Sporting Goods Store announced this week that, after pulling Nike products from its shelves, it can’t afford its lease anymore and will have to shut its doors for good, NBC affiliate KOAA reports.

“Thank You for 21 mostly good years,” the store’s owner, Stephen Martin, wrote in a Facebook post announcing the news. “For everybody that has offered help and support through the ‘Honor The Flag’ memorial wall and NIKE boycott, now is your time to help me liquidate.”

Apparently, the “help and support” Martin got from his conservative supporters didn’t involve buying enough shit to keep him afloat. His Nike boycott really took a bite out of his bottom line, he told KOAA.

“Being a sports store without Nike is kind of like being a milk store without milk or a gas station without gas,” he said.

The anti-Kaepernick thing wasn’t the first time Martin used his store for a political protest, either. Back in 2016, he booted linebacker Brandon Marshall from an in-store appearance after Marshall chose to kneel during the national anthem. The move reportedly backfired on him, too.

“As much as I hate to admit this, perhaps there are more Brandon Marshall and Colin Kaepernick supporters out there than I realized,” Martin told KOAA.

Martin said the fact that his boycott cost him his entire shop, after two decades in business, isn’t enough to make him rethink what he did.

“That part of the military respect that’s in me just cannot be sacrificed or compromised, as I believe Brandon Marshall and Colin Kaepernick both did,” he told KOAA. “I don’t like losing a business over it, but I would rather be able to live with myself.”

The store is currently liquidating its entire stock at 40 percent off and plans to shut down for good in the next few months. In retrospect, maybe Martin should’ve kept selling Nike gear and just marketed it as kindling for a big ol’ MAGA barbecue.

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