“Unwoke…”
Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Multiple brands touting conservative values have been launching and gaining market share amid the current economic climate where an increasing number of consumers are reacting harshly to—even boycotting—companies promoting progressive ideologies, especially transgenderism.
NBA player Jonathan Isaac, for example, announced the launch of his UNITUS apparel brand in a tweet on June 2. Pitched as an “alternative” to retail brands that are going woke, UNITUS is scheduled to launch in August. “UNITUS is a sports and apparel company, and the basis of it for me is freedom. You have companies that are in that field who have made a conscious decision to either attack or undermine Christian values, conservative values, and things like that,” Isaac told Prager U’s Amala Ekpunobi for the documentary “Unwoke Inc.”
“And I think they have the free choice to do so, as much as I disagree. But I feel that we also have the freedom to create what we want to create,” the NBA star sadi to make his position clear.
Isaac said that the UNITUS brand is aimed at giving parents who want to buy their kids sneakers and clothes the option to give their money to a company that “they know is going to work toward bolstering their values.”
“We can be proud of what we believe in. We don’t have to hide or be ashamed of it … As the day continues to get darker and darker and crazier and crazier, you standing up for what you believe in is only going to get harder. But it’s only going to become more and more necessary,” Isaac said.
Conservative Beer
A business looking to capitalize on conservative anger against woke companies is beer brand “Ultra Right.” The brand was launched in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding Bud Light hiring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a promotion campaign.
Ultra Right began selling its beer around mid-April, and was on its way to exceeding $1 million in sales in just 12 days, according to an April 26 report by Fox News. By that time, the business had garnered more than 10,000 customers.
In an April 25 video posted to Twitter, Ultra Right CEO Seth Weathers said that “we’re a movement of people that are speaking up and saying no to the woke nonsense. Ultra Right beer and this movement will never be stopped, no matter what they throw at us.”
Back in April, Anheuser-Busch, the company which owns Bud Light, sent beer cans to Mulvaney featuring the trans-activist’s face—a move criticized as pushing transgenderism. People began boycotting the beer brand and sales numbers subsequently crashed.
Between April 3 and May 30, the market capitalization of Anheuser-Busch fell from $132.06 billion to $108.19 billion—a decrease of over 18 percent.
New Firms and Some Old
The Daily Wire team launched a new razor company in March called Jeremy’s Razors after razor firm Harry’s pulled out ads from the media outlet in 2021.
“After we said that boys are boys and girls are girls, they [Harry’s] publicly condemned our views as ‘inexcusable’ and dropped their ads because of what they called ‘values misalignment,’” stated the Jeremy’s Razors website.
“You’re damn right our values are misaligned. We embrace masculinity and the courage to uphold it. And since no other razors out there did … we built our own.”
Jeremy’s Razors notched up 15 million views for its first ad across social media platforms by the end of March, selling 45,000 razor subscriptions as well.
While companies like Bud Light advocate for leftist agendas, other firms have existed for years without having to resort to such measures.
For instance, Black Rifle Coffee Company, which promotes support for law enforcement, veterans, and first responders, saw a 29 percent revenue growth in 2022.
Mixed martial arts promotion company UFC has been doing far better than competitors like Bellator and Professional Fighters League. Goya Foods is the biggest Hispanic-owned food company in America. Goya’s CEO is a Trump supporter, and has insisted that the results of the 2020 presidential election were not legitimate.
The company has supported initiatives to end child trafficking, showing that there are multiple other avenues for brands to give back to the public instead of relying on LGBT causes. However, the primary reason for many companies to support such causes is to align with the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) framework.
ESG principles make companies look beyond making market demand and profits, and focus on taking actions related to issues like climate change, racism, and sexual identity, among others. It is adopted by firms mainly to appease large investors like BlackRock that use these metrics to evaluate whether to invest or not.
With many companies increasingly pushing woke ideologies, shoppers are shifting more toward brands that align with their traditional values, choosing not to remain passive in an increasingly politically charged climate. More brands are expected to hit the marketplace in the near future.
In the end, companies need to make profits, boycotts hurt, and competitors catering to market demand will take up market share.
