An entrepreneur on the front lines of the corporate culture wars told Fox New Digital that “elitist jerks and hypocrites” at brands like Harley Davidson and Bud Light are to blame for the woke destruction suffered by some of America's biggest companies in recent years.
“This is business fundamentals: You can't neglect your core consumers and alienate or abandon them in order to grow and expand elsewhere,” said Jennifer Say, a former senior marketing executive at Levi Strauss & Co.
Harley-Davidson's German-born CEO and chairman of the board, Jochen Zeitz, has been lambasted by longtime loyal customers for trying to remake the bike's strong American image and critics accuse him of embracing progressive policies that clash with the values of his most loyal customers.
“We are challenging traditional capitalism and redefining it,” Zeitz told world leaders at a conference in Switzerland in 2020, the same year he took over at Harley.
In the same speech, Zeitz compared himself to the Taliban and voiced his commitment to “sustainability.”
Simmering discontent among Harley-Davidson's loyal customers exploded into open rebellion against the brand after Zeitz's internal plans were exposed by corporate watchdog Lobby Starbuck.
“They killed Harley. It breaks my heart,” Vinnie Terranova, owner of Pappy's Vintage Cycles in Sturgis, South Dakota, and a former Harley-Davidson dealership owner, told Fox News Digital.
Say, a former Levi's executive, has seen the corporate culture wars from the front lines on the boardroom battlefield.
She became a C-suite level celebrity in 2020, tasked with managing, polishing and growing the iconic Levi's brand.
Founded in San Francisco in 1853 by German immigrant Levi Strauss, Levi's jeans have become famous worldwide as a symbol of American culture and opportunity.
But then the “lifelong Democrat” was shaken from his corporate comforts by speaking out against the city, the state of California and his own employer's harsh response to COVID-19.
“I was a community leader and I was criticized for simply speaking out against school closures,” Say said.
“I was demonized because I cared about keeping the school open. It had become a difficult place for me to live.”
Say is set to retire from Levi's in 2022 after a 23-year career with the company.
“San Francisco is the most aggressively conformist place you can imagine,” she said.
“It's not comprehensive. It's not logical. And it's not progressive.”
She claims she was “canceled” by corporate America and denied executive-level positions that would reflect her superior qualifications.
Say moved to Colorado and founded performance apparel company XX-XY Athletics in March.
She is now a warrior against wokeism.
The name of her company itself is an act of rebellion against the notion that femininity exists on some kind of spectrum.
“The message is that there is empirical truth. Biology is truth,” Say said.
“It's actually quite simple: there's XX and XY. You can distort the truth with words all you want, but at the end of the day, the truth is that gender is binary.”
She believes a confluence of factors has led to the distortion of long-held truths and the embrace of extremist ideologies that pushed her out of Levi's and alienated customers from respected American brands like Harley-Davidson and Bud Light.
“Elites take on these crazy, far-left positions to assuage their guilt for having so much money and privilege,” she said.
For example, corporate executives pay lip service to public education, but “they all send their kids to $60,000-a-year private schools.”
“The other thing is, these companies now have a Gen Z workforce that comes from woke education systems and woke universities who have grown up in safe environments and who want people to know their pronouns,” she added.
Executives fear clashing with the mob around them, stoking their anger on social media, and jeopardizing the wealth, privileges and perks they pretend to reject.
“In corporate America, prisoners run the psychiatric hospitals,” Say said.
Say's career within the “woke bubble” of powerful corporate culture, and his current struggle against it, gives him unique insight into Harley-Davidson's recent problems.
Hurley's CEO, Mr. Zeitz, has become a global celebrity by turning discount Puma sneakers into a global fashion brand, mingling with the rich and famous, starting a sailing racing team, opening a museum named after himself in South Africa and counting the likes of Richard Branson as friends.
Critics charged that he had little in common with Harley-Davidson customers and seemed to lose touch with the Americana that is key to the motorcycle brand's global popularity.
Levi's has likewise gained worldwide fame.
“People value these brands because they represent the best of American values,” Say says. “They represent freedom, individualism, progress and democracy.”
She believes that Harley Davidson represents “rugged masculinity, individualism and living life on your own terms.”
Say competed in the world gymnastics championships at the 1986 Goodwill Games in Moscow, where she saw the power of the American brand.
She bought 20 pairs of jeans at Macy's and brought them home to trade with athletes from the Soviet Union and other countries. She says that on the black market in Moscow in the 1980s, Levi's classic 501 jeans could sell for $1,000 a pair.
“Levi's jeans represent freedom and progress,” she said.
Today's “progressive” politics, she said, is progressive in name only.
“What they call progressive is actually very regressive,” she said.
“This is being driven by elitist hypocrites. I can't even stand to be around them anymore.”
Harley-Davidson did not respond to a request for comment.
