Inside Levi’s Stand Against Gun Violence

When a customer walked into a dressing room at a Levi Strauss store in Georgia with a loaded gun in late 2016 and accidentally shot himself in the foot, the company decided to publish an open letter asking its customers not to carry guns while they shop. “That bullet could have hit one of my employees,” says Chip Bergh, the company’s CEO. “It could have hit a customer in the store.” It was a step that many other retailers–from Target to Starbucks–had already taken. But when the Parkland shooting happened in 2018, killing 17 students and teachers, Levi’s decided to go further. Bergh published a letter about the country’s epidemic of gun violence and the company set up a $1 million fund to support organizations that are working to put in place “common sense regulations or laws that would prevent guns being in the hands of people who shouldn’t own a gun,” he says. Read more at Fast Company.