• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

The Last Days of Target (Canada)

eastman23

eastman23

Admiral
Admiral
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-canada/

The grand opening of Target Canada was set to begin in one month, and Tony Fisher needed to know whether the company was actually ready. In February 2013, about a dozen senior-level employees gathered at the company’s Mississauga, Ont., headquarters to offer updates on the state of their departments. Fisher, Target Canada’s president, was holding these meetings every day as the launch date crept closer. The news was rarely good.
Click to expand...

Roughly two years from that date, Target Canada filed for creditor protection, marking the end of its first international foray and one of the most confounding sagas in Canadian corporate history. The debacle cost the parent company billions of dollars, sullied its reputation and put roughly 17,600 people out of work.
Click to expand...

Why Target Canada collapsed has been endlessly dissected by analysts, pundits and journalists. But the people who know what happened best are the employees who lived through the experience. On the first anniversary of the company’s bankruptcy filing, Canadian Business spoke to close to 30 former employees in Canada and the U.S. to find out how Target, one of the best retailers in North America, got it so wrong in Canada. (Target declined to comment on specific issues, pointing to previous statements it has made on its Canadian venture. The former employees interviewed for this story requested anonymity to preserve relationships in the industry.) Even those employees remain baffled by how Target Canada collapsed. But what emerged is a story of a company trapped by an overly ambitious launch schedule, an inexperienced leadership team expected to deal with the biggest crisis in the firm’s history, and a sophisticated retail giant felled by the most mundane, basic and embarrassing of errors.
Click to expand...

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-canada/

It's a fascinating read and most of it is already familiar to Canadians who witnessed the epic fail. They tried to go too big too fast and completely botched the first impression by giving us a look at stores with empty shelves on their first day. It's pretty interesting to read that while their store shelves were empty, their distribution centres were overflowing with stuff to the point where they needed temporary warehouses.

The article doesn't touch on one point that many consumers brought up - that the prices and products didn't match the US Targets, but that was never going to happen. It may have played a factor in declining traffic in their stores, but I think empty shelves is a bigger factor. Oh, and the lack of a website where you could actually search for products and order online was a big negative.

Personally, the only things I bought at Target before the liquidation sale was eshop cards when they were on sale. We had 3 Targets here in Winnipeg created from Zellers locations which were in decent places and a 4th Target moved into a brand new building where they were supposed to the centre of a new shopping block. 3 months after it opened, the bankruptcy was announced. They still had the "grand opening" banner hanging up when they put up the "liquidation sale" banner. The building itself is still empty to this day. Same with one of the old Zellers locations attached to the mall near where I live.

So - anyone else want to reminiscence about Target Canada?
 
Thanks for the link! :techman:

Steven said:
The article doesn't touch on one point that many consumers brought up - that the prices and products didn't match the US Targets, but that was never going to happen.
Click to expand...

It may have never been going to happen, but that was the biggest complaint I heard about Target at the time. People expected American selection and American prices, and they didn't get them. Ultimately, there didn't really seem to be *that* much that differentiated them from Zellers before them. It's funny, because I remember people being really excited about Target coming before the launch... but once they actually opened and people were able to shop there, the reaction was a resounding "meh".

I went in Target three times, I think. I actually bought something once. Their prices never seemed to be better than Wal-Mart, and there's a Wal-Mart much closer to me, so... :shrug:

And I didn't know this before, but reading that SAP played a part in their demise surprises me... not at all, really. :lol:
 
Yeah, definitely an interesting read. They bit off more than they could chew and the problems they had only got intensified because of it. My closest store was open for less than a year. Open in October , closed by April.

They had some really nice unique carts that must have been rather expensive. But problem is, at least here, they would end up in different neighbourhoods when carts in general aren't supposed to leave the store boundaries. We have a local company that offers a service to stores to return their carts if reported found, but we called once and it was never picked up, instead ending up in a neighbour's yard. We live on a corner with a big ditch, and it tends to be a popular spot for dumping carts.
 
Great read. What a series of fuck ups.

I really wish Target had succeeded up here. Competition is a good thing, and after so much consolidation, there are fewer and fewer players very year.

London Drugs is next, I bet. But who'd buy them: Sobeys? Canadian Tire Group? Rexall? Some American player? Interesting--and depressing--times.
 
I remember going to the US Target website and seeing some great bookshelves (which I desperately needed as I have several hundred books too many for the available shelf space and the managers of the building I live in won't let me put shelves on the walls). So I tried to find them on the Canadian website and discovered that online ordering wasn't available for Canadians. When I contacted customer service I got some airhead who kept babbling about how they wanted to concentrate on opening the rest of their stores first, and I could just go to the local store. So I explained that there are people who either don't drive, or are disabled and can't drive, and therefore prefer to shop online. I got more vagueness, so I told her, "Congratulations. You have just convinced me that your company is useless, and I'm going to purchase from Walmart."

Which I did. And the shelves are functional, pleasing to the eye, and most importantly, hold all of my many hundreds of Star Trek books with room to spare.
 
I never actually went into a Target but like others have said, I had heard that they didn't have the really nice stuff like in the U.S. Wal-Mart was so much closer.
 
I went in an Ontario Target a few times, and I've been in US Targets many times. It was night and day.

In my three visits to the Target just east of Toronto, I bought only coasters and orange juice (so it wasn't a completely wasted trip), so I only spent a few dollars for things I could have bought elsewhere. I went looking for things either that they didn't have or that they couldn't even tell me whether they had. The customer service was pretty unprofessional.

Canadian Tire, Walmart, and No-Frills had our department store and grocery store needs covered, both before and after Canada Target (err, Target Canada).
 
Last edited:
It was a glorious example of American arrogance, thinking their model would apply in a different country and everyone would automatically take to it.
 
In the US, Target is more up-scale than Wal-Mart.... when it comes to both products and clientele. :lol:

Kor
 
Mr. Laser Beam said:
Your basic abandoned junkyard would be more upscale than Walmart.
Click to expand...
Pretty much. I find it fascinating when I visit areas that have more than just Walmart and Target to pick from. In Michigan, where my wife's family lives, they have Target, Walmart, and Meijers, the latter of which is more like Target in terms of quality. In Iowa, we don't have much to chose from other than Target and Walmart. There are still a few K-Marts around, but I avoid them if possible.
 
We have a decent WalMart in my area. I don't go often because it is out of my way. When I go, it is usually clean and neat looking.
 
I loved Target in the US, I'd shop there all the time while on business in the US so I was one of the people who were very excited about the store opening up in Canada. It was an enormous disappointment, I never saw any empty shelves, but in general their selection was poor and their prices were bad. Now, Target is upscale from Walmart (where I refuse to shop), so I didn't expect bargain basement prices, but in the US is has good value and a fantastic selection - in Canada it had neither.
 
On top of that, Walmart is actually pretty decent in Canada and I don't think it's as bad as what it's like in the U.S.
 
^ Just out of curiosity... what *is* Walmart like in the U.S.? You see posts slamming Walmart shoppers (such as Kor's, above)... but yeah, I shop at Walmart all the time, because a) it's really close to where I live, and b) the prices are good, and money isn't infinite.

MLB above compared Walmart to a "junkyard", but honestly, to me Walmart looks just like any other store. The stores are always clean, and seem well-kept. Even the washrooms are kept much nicer than some of the places I've been in. As far as clientele goes, the Walmart shoppers don't seem any different than people you would see at Zellers or Canadian Tire or wherever.

So where does all the Walmart hate come from?
 
U.S. WalMarts vary a great deal depending where they are.
I have 4 within 20 minutes of my home. The one in the predominately Mexican area is, unsurprisingly, a dump with merchandise strewn everywhere, overall dirty.
The other 3 are anywhere from OK to pretty good as far as being clean and organized.
I think the hate for WalMart is more from them putting smaller businesses out of business.
The Targets we have around have much less selection than WalMarts, but have different brand names, so they can provide an alternate option for certain items.
I do weekly grocery shopping at WalMart, but go to a Woodmans when I really need to stock up.
WalMart & Target have pretty slim selections of CD's & DVD's/blu-ray's, so going to one of these stores with something specific in mind is usually a waste of time. ebay or Amazon is the way to go for that kind of thing.
I buy some basic clothing from WalMart, jeans, socks, shirts, etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top