Target Corp. is dumping projects and tightening their belts as they reevaluate their “growth strategy.”
After sales and traffic continued to slide during the holidays, Target Corp. is scaling back big portions of its innovation agenda to double down on its core business.
The Minneapolis-based retailer has killed Goldfish, a secretive e-commerce start-up it green-lighted a year ago, and has shelved a prototype for a robot-infused store of the future that was slated to soon be built, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Other smaller projects from the innovation team also have been eliminated or reduced in recent weeks.
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“At Target, we regularly pause to evaluate our business and have to make tough choices about where our company is best served to invest our time and resources,” Dustee Jenkins, Target’s senior vice president of communications, said in a statement.
But no pause about letting men use the ladies changing rooms or restrooms? Not one word about that. I guess they are committed to making women in a majority of the country uncomfortable about shopping there.
Women don’t just buy clothes they shop, browse, try on, and it is often an essential feature of their shopping experience even if they never purchase any of those items. Having said that I know a lot of women who would publicly say that the trans-thing is no big deal, but at the same time, you won’t see them embracing that experience at Target because they do not want to face the discomfort of finding a man in their changing room or restroom.
If they have daughters, I suspect they are even less likely.
So Target’s past appeal as a slightly upscale Wal-Mart has lost traction.
Every local story about a peeper in a Target changing room puts another nail in that coffin. A national story, though I doubt the media would participate in such a drubbing, could prove a significant PR nightmare.
Will Target pause to evaluate that part of their business?
They’ve made decisions that make a huge chunk of America uncomfortable in those stores. It may be costing them resources for innovation crucial to competing in retailing and e-tailing in the 21st Century.
And while Target is too young of an enterprise to be listing with the likes of Macy’s J.C. Penney, and Sears, refusing to admit that what you’ve done to appease left-wing narratives and less than a fraction of a percent of the potential customers will keep you headed in that direction.
People will stop shopping there for clothes and then just stop shopping there altogether.
If I were an investor interested in this segment, I’d be looking at competitors who understand human nature and can capitalize on that.
