Good news. REI retaining the same legal firm that is representing Amazon, Trader Joe's and Tesla trying to have the NLRB unconditional made me never want to shop there again. In the last 20 years they have become nearly completely disconnected from their mission; they mostly sell overpriced stuff you can buy anywhere else and tried to pretend retail employees aren't the most valuable part of their store and brand. You have to be wealthy as fuck to shop at their stores.
They fought against unionization. They've now closed their Seattle flagship location, Portland downtown location...while retail is almost always a dying proposition since 1998(some companies are just now noticing) REI has a niche where it can work: build loyal shoppers who come for actually experienced employees who add value to their shopping decisions and education. It's the same point apple stores have; showroom with people that love the stuff that is being sold. Going down market on employee wages and skills when selling high margin stuff that can be bought elsewhere is always going to fail. It's a poor customer experience and eventually just conditions people to buy online.
Their pricing is outrageous. It's not like they're stuff completely full of local, small, high-quality sustainable Bcorp business products--they carry massive brand companies with products shipped from wherever wages are cheaper.
One of the few things they had was a lifetime product guarantee but they started whittling away at that 10 or so years ago as enshittifying practices took root.
All of these decisions were driven short-termism; a desire to increase profitability at the cost of their company and removed enviable business advantage their brand had. This is a failure of business management, the board, and long-term strategy. The bad news is brands can be built over decades(Boeing anyone?) and a few crappy ceos and boards or VC investors(Southwest airlines or late) can eviscerate it in just a few years so Lumbergs can get his 1/4 of a percent per share bump.
All corps with competent board members should write into bylaws long-term exec comp only that increases their comp compared to now but only long term. Pay them 300 million in stock--but only if the improvements are sustainable. This protects the business, board and investors, and employees from the current standard of fly-by-night chainsaw artists that cleave and value from companies they can and then leave the husk for bankruptcy, layoffs and investor ruin. We're 40 years into the "let's copy GE" BS and are at end times. It must end.