DIY giant Wickes is facing a furious boycott campaign and tumbling share price after its chief operating officer said shoppers with trans-critical views are ‘bigots’ who ‘are not welcome in our stores anyway’.
Wickes, one of Britain’s largest suppliers of home improvement products, controversially carried a float at Brighton Pride last year with the slogan ‘No LGB without the T’.
Yesterday, Fraser Longden, the firm’s chief operating officer, took part in an online trans summit hosted by Pink News and sponsored by EY.
Mr Longden said: ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to change some of the bigots minds, I’m never going to win that argument with them, so we were doing [the Pride float] to show support to the community’.
His comment provoked a furious backlash online and Wickes’ share price is currently down five points – 4.25 per cent today.
I have used Wickes for supplies over the years. However, there are other providers who don’t ram their bigotry down my throat. So, simple solution, I will never use Wickes again. That’s never, as in never ever. As for Fraser Longden, the nasty bigot who thinks we are all bigots (you, Fraser, not us, you are the bigot here), he can take his alphabet soup and stick it where the sun don’t shine along with his rainbow flag. I am not the only consumer who doesn’t take kindly to being told what opinions I should have by a retail outlet.
Thanks for raising that, Wickes joins a growing list of businesses/products that will never have to worry about my darkening their doorstep or receiving my hard earned again.
Completely agree.
I cancelled Spotify when they signed the Harkles.
I will never drink Bud Light.
I stopped shopping at John Lewis and Waitrose
There are plenty more that can be added. As a consumer, I simply want to take that bigot up on his offer of not shopping in his ratty DIY store.
Me too !
B&Q are cheaper and have a wider selection of stuff. I’ve used Wickes occasionally as they are closer and were also on my route from work. Retired now so the route from work no longer applies. I won’t be going there again. There seems to be an interesting level of blinkered ignorance and stupidity on display here. Is the guy totally oblivious to the fact that lots of other companies have gone down this route and lived to regret it?
I go in a shop, buy what I want and leave, how do they know what I think or feel. More to the point it’s not their business and if you are going to be all inclusive then you need to welcome bigots as well.
Dead right
I was going to Wickes for drainpipesand fittings tomorrow. I will now go to B&Q even though Wickes is a 5 minute drive, but B&Q is 20 mins away.
Is this Wickes’ Ratner moment?
It was one of the most infamous speeches in corporate history. On April 23, 1991, Gerald Ratner stood up in front of 6,000 of the great and good and sank his jewellery empire in a matter of seconds.
~ This Is Money
Wickes doing a BudLight
Wickes has joined Anhauser-Busch on the list of companies I will no longer patron.
Please note Toolstation is part of Wickes. No obvious way to cancel the account online so I messaged them and told them to fuck off. I can play this game all day.
Apparently it isn’t any more. I don’t know the details, but I’ve just come from another site where someone commenting on this thought it was but discovered it had been hived off a few years ago.
(That said, it doesn’t hurt for word to get around that association with this garbage is bad news for business.)
I’m not sure who is correct but this comment appeared on Tim Worstal’s blog:
“I read somewhere online that Wickes own Toolstation, which would have been a bit of a problem for me, as I use them all the time. Fortunately its not true, Toolstation is owned by Travis Perkins, who did also own Wickes, but Wickes was demerged into a separate business in 2021.”
I wonder if there is anyone in the senior management of Wickes who has the bottle to say to this man quietly “do you think this might be a mistake?”. Or are they all sycophants who nod along as their market share goes down the toilet?
Presumably they think we are all bigots. Morons such as Longden are too dense to understand what the word actually means, but they use it anyway. It does not mean ‘holds a different opinion to me.’
It is a slightly baffling trend that the management of big companies think that it’s a great idea to involve themselves in politics. They seem to be very bad at judging public opinion on whatever issue they decide to hitch their wagon to. Even if they were picking winners I don’t really see how it would help their sales, I’ve never bought a product just because those selling it might agree with my political opinions. I wouldn’t necessarily refrain from buying from those whose political opinions I disagree with either. But the current trend of getting totally in my face about it and hurling insults at me, now that is a different matter.
This is what I struggle with. Wickes are a hardware store and they should just offer what people want at the best prices and they’ll do fine.
A drill is a drill, whether you want it for some DIY or you want to attach a bit of monkey puzzle to the end and shove it up your arse. What you are doing with it is (or should be!) irrelevant to the supplier.
Every moment is a Ratner moment these days, but at least he was off his tits and realised the mistake he’d made about a Planck time after he’d said it.
I cannot think what possible gain they think they are getting by mindlessly parroting this shite, apart from approval from certain quarters. That those certain quarters are perhaps the most disgusting, vicious, hate filled and bigotted human refuse on the face of this planet they don’t seem to care.
And said refuse are in actuality just so irrelevant, and simply ignoring them has no downsides whatsoever. Why can’t they see that?
I only hope that Screwfix don’t do the same thing, otherwise I’ll really be buggered
ESG (Economic, Social & Governance), the philosophy behind all this public kowtowing to alphabet soup activists, is growing more and more unpopular in the corporate sphere. Companies have been blackmailed into it using the false premise that a high ESG score will boost investment. More are quietly walking away because the investor cash inflow does not match the promises.
As a mid range investor I refuse to put my money anywhere near companies with, or aspiring to a high ESG rating. Anyone who vociferously ‘follows the pink’ and alienates their customer base like Wickes deserves to go bankrupt.
I’ve never used Wicks as it’s not local and we have a B&Q. I was disappointed at the weekend though, to see the B&Q app is now rainbow coloured
A bit of rainbow, we support diversity nonsense doesn’t really bother me.
I did find it amusing that some were bashing Pink Floyd for having rainbows in their 50th anniversary Dark Side Of The Moon merch.
Being of an age that I became aware of music in the late sixties and early seventies I like a bit of Prog Rock. Dark side is excellent but Trilogy by ELP is still my favourite.