JerryStritzke

Hi /u/annonemp, My team gave me a heads up that I missed an important question earlier so I'm jumping back on quickly to acknowledge that I've seen it. First of all, I promise I wasn't avoiding your question. This was my first AMA and I covered as many questions as I could (actually spent twice as long as I had planned). I logged off earlier and just saw this. It’s late here in Seattle so I appreciate your understanding.

I'm sorry to read about your experience. Our members are important, but your experience really doesn't sound usual so I want to look into this more. I'll get back on in the morning and provide a more in-depth answer about our membership sales, but I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you.

UPDATE: As promised, here’s my in-depth answer.

Annonemp - First, I want to reiterate that I wasn't avoiding your question. This was my first AMA and I answered as many questions as I could in the time I was online – clearly the conversation kept on after that.

I'm certainly concerned about your experience and to hear others express the same. Our members and customers are our first priority and providing them with knowledgeable insights is the most important thing we do. I believe that this expertise and a shared passion for the outdoors are our overwhelming strengths as an organization and am very proud of the men and women wearing green vests in our stores.

I have to admit the emphasis on membership sales was a surprise to me when I joined the co-op two years ago. Given that I was new, I wanted to have a better understanding of the co-op structure and some of the whys behind our actions. There is no doubt that the co-op structure is focused on the concept of membership and there is long institutional memory reinforcing the idea that we should encourage as many people to join the co-op as possible – we believe in the mission and purpose of the co-op.

Having said that, we may have lost sight of the bigger picture. The truth is that we should have been doing a better job sharing what makes the co-op special. We should have a "pull" model (people want to join because they believe in our mission and they love the experience), not a "push" model when it comes to the co-op. And the most important thing is that our employees in our stores know that their skill, deep outdoor knowledge and customer service are the things that matter above everything. To be clear, that is how our people should be measured.

I feel like your story represents a measure of individual performance taken to an extreme and I am committed to understanding what happened. I appreciate you sharing your story and I assure you that we are looking into how we are using this measure. Good conversation.

Love your idea. Really like that we are thinking about how we can make an impact that will make a difference in 100 years. I am torn between something that effectively gets our young people into the outdoors - I also like the idea of an REI trail across the United States. I fear that we will need to solve how to effectively operate our public places - what we are doing is under pressure.

As promised, here’s a question from /r/CampingAndHiking:

“Hi there. Lifelong member here! Love your store. My question is this: Were folks really being so abusive of the old return policy that it had to be changed? Or what was the reason? It was one of my favorite things about REI because I hate returning items and you made it easy enough for me to do. These days, I get hassled when trying to return an item to REI, and it kinda bums me out.”

We had a small number of people that aggressively took advantage of the policy - use one season return it - do it again next year. We will keep trying to make it easier.

We hoped that we would have a platform to talk about our passion for getting people outside - what better way to do so than enable our employees to spend the day outside with their loved ones. By the way, it was not free - huge retail day and we will pay all our associates.

I have to start with the Black Diamond Ice axe!! I think I would also go with crampons.