Archived Beware

[Not My Name]

Spot needs to get much better at local stocking. We have several staples in our local diet that are either not at Spot or there's only one variety of something, which is typically not the best variety. Or even just where's the whole bean coffee from local roasters? Where's the fresh fruit and veggies from local farmers? I mean I know I'm not at a Super Target, but can we at least get some freaking cabbage? We don't even sell caraway seed. How the hell am I supposed to make bierocks without cabbage and caraway seed?

This is why I can't shop for my dinner in market. It's down the road to the grocery store that knows how to stock to local taste.

The funniest example I have that I can relate to with this is... living in Florida... my Targets would receive a ton of winter clothes that we were never going to sell and inevitably resulted in large amounts of clearance because we get like 2 months of cold season tops and then it's back to 80+ degrees the rest of the year.

But eh... the markups on clothing are so high, probably better to be overstocked than under.

 

[seasonaldude]

The funniest example I have that I can relate to with this is... living in Florida... my Targets would receive a ton of winter clothes that we were never going to sell and inevitably resulted in large amounts of clearance because we get like 2 months of cold season tops and then it's back to 80+ degrees the rest of the year.

But eh... the markups on clothing are so high, probably better to be overstocked than under.

Maybe my store can swap for your winter clothes for the shorts that softlines was replacing the winter clothes with today. It's freaking below freezing. Those shorts ain't going to sell for awhile.

 

[balthrop]

Maybe my store can swap for your winter clothes for the shorts that softlines was replacing the winter clothes with today. It's freaking below freezing. Those shorts ain't going to sell for awhile.

we have swimsuits…… it's January even if for a little while longer but it is still winter the warm months are a several wee…… months away

 

[GlobalTL123]

Target's lack of logistics will be its downfall. Prioritizing task over service too. Wal mart and amazon invest millions into their logistics and customer research. Target does not.

 

[CleanMyBackRoOm]

1) How long have you been with Target?
2) Do you have eyeballs?

If you haven't noticed a drastic shift in employee morale, not very long.
If you haven't noticed a drastic shift in store brand, not very long.

A ton of lazy people work at Target, and that's retail in general... but Target's goal is to strip payroll to the point where they *only* have a bunch of "O" rated TMs running around... and guess what? That's not going to happen. I worked with Target for 10.5 years and you know how many legit Os I met that deserved to get that score based on work ethic/accuracy/speed? 2. 2 people, arguably 3 or 4, in 10.5 years worked that hard. And I worked with probably a couple thousand people total in that time frame across multiple stores. And I wasn't one of them. I was always a high EX and it was always a fair rating.

The sky isn't falling as in the place is shutting down overnight. Dude... most major corporations with deep pockets like this don't just fail overnight. Sometimes it takes literal decades... look at Sears. How long were they going down the tubes? 20 years at least? Maybe 30? lol...

Target is failing. The amount of total stores company wide has largely remained flat for years, and they no longer have mostly happy employees. That sound like a company that's doing well? It might take 20 years even but Target has already peaked. It peaked about 15 years ago if not a little before that, in case you were wondering.

I've been around about half as long as you...
Shift in brand? What exactly do you mean by that? The softlines side of things is 10x better now than when I first started... Hardlines has pretty much stayed the same... Made by Design is the same shit as RE... We still have Threshold and we've got the Hearth & Hand which is wildly popular... so what examples of failing brand do you have?

As far as the Os thing goes... I don't really care what my team's "rating' is as long as I know they're working hard and not standing around chatting all day. If they work as hard as they do on a 1200 piece truck as they do on a 3000 piece truck it's going to be a good day. However most TM's dont' do that and that's a problem... There's things to be done and people don't want to do them... the people that want to achieve milestones are out there.. maybe not for 12$ an hour but when we hit 15$ you can guarantee they will come. $15 to pick something up and put it back and handle guests... the jobs not hard...

 

[CleanMyBackRoOm]

Tell us more, this sounds interesting!

Lots of small businesses in our region anything from snacks to coffee are allowed to sell their merchandise in our store. I would post pictures but obvious reasons... People seem to really like these products and they have multiple endcaps and coolers specifically allotted to them for their own sets and displays.

 

[CleanMyBackRoOm]

The biggest problem is they don't want to invest the payroll to properly run it and that's almost always been the case... it's not a matter of "not working out the kinks" or not figuring it out, or being too stupid, or whatever... the problem is they don't want to staff it.

Compare the staffing on the grocery side of any super target to an actual grocery store... haha... what a joke.

If I walk into a Publix, while not counting cashiers and service desk, I'm likely to see 15-20 employees if I walk around... on the floor, behind the counters, it's usually not hard to find someone... if I walk around the grocery side of a super target I might see 5 and they're almost all behind a counter... Target flat out doesn't want to staff their stores... they're trying to run grocery like they run regular hardlines, but the problem lies with the fact that there's a way higher workload in grocery, if you want to do it correctly, that is, and not treat the product as if it never expires.

Target wants the rewards of having grocery without enduring any of the pain of having grocery. I honestly think they staff their grocery even less than Wal-Mart does... and Wal-Mart has an even easier time while neglecting grocery because their volume in food is so much higher... people around the country associate cheap grocery bills with Wal-Mart... so as the food flies off the shelves, they don't need super effective processes to ensure freshness.

Grocery is not what Target wants to be effective in... Market is there to bring people in... The reason most TL's in that area are let go is because they don't hold vendors accountable causing the store to lose sales. The entire point to Market is to have essentials to bring ppl in... milk, bread whatever. This is in the hopes that they walk in grab that stuff and walk the rest of the store and pick up other things.

 

[Black Sheep 214]

The sky isn't falling as in the place is shutting down overnight. Dude... most major corporations with deep pockets like this don't just fail overnight. Sometimes it takes literal decades... look at Sears. How long were they going down the tubes? 20 years at least? Maybe 30? lol...

Target is failing. The amount of total stores company wide has largely remained flat for years, and they no longer have mostly happy employees. That sound like a company that's doing well? It might take 20 years even but Target has already peaked. It peaked about 15 years ago if not a little before that, in case you were wondering.

The death blows have been struck- Target Canada, the data breach, and now the desperate expense reduction at any cost of Modernization. Without a rapid course correction, and it may be too late even for that, it’s just a matter time before Spot bleeds out...

 

[Times Up]

The death blows have been struck- Target Canada, the data breach, and now the desperate expense reduction at any cost of Modernization. Without a rapid course correction, and it may be too late even for that, it’s just a matter time before Spot bleeds out...

We will see in a few weeks (early March).
Right now Spot is in uncharted territory by trying to still do the B&M thing and add in the digital store. However, any retailer that is going to be here in another 15 years is trying to figure that out too. It's not even a matter of who figures it out first. It's more a matter of who can do both profitably and have products that consumers want (be relevant).

 

[HRZone]

Grocery is not what Target wants to be effective in... Market is there to bring people in... The reason most TL's in that area are let go is because they don't hold vendors accountable causing the store to lose sales. The entire point to Market is to have essentials to bring ppl in... milk, bread whatever. This is in the hopes that they walk in grab that stuff and walk the rest of the store and pick up other things.

I strongly disagree, they poached Wal-Mart's grocery lead and spent millions of dollars remodeling grocery aisles at all our stores.

The problem is, rather than spending money on bodies at the store level to keep us stocked they are spending it on fancy fixtures and admin.

 

[balthrop]

the same work load. that is what the new and improved E2E/modernization has to deal with. the same work load. they have double the people to get the same work load finished. they can not get it done by any measure. no matter what excuses that people come up with none go them can explain why they can not get the same work load done with double the people.

Amazon is out maneuvering every one because they are a logistics company that happens to sell stuff. logistics before everything else.

 

[GlobalTL123]

the same work load. that is what the new and improved E2E/modernization has to deal with. the same work load. they have double the people to get the same work load finished. they can not get it done by any measure. no matter what excuses that people come up with none go them can explain why they can not get the same work load done with double the people.

Amazon is out maneuvering every one because they are a logistics company that happens to sell stuff. logistics before everything else.

The process is just another failure. It is similar to sears business model. Minus their trucks are smaller and they detrash freight. It is all rolled into one. Pogs pricing freight etc

 

[skrepo1977]

Grocery is not what Target wants to be effective in... Market is there to bring people in... The reason most TL's in that area are let go is because they don't hold vendors accountable causing the store to lose sales. The entire point to Market is to have essentials to bring ppl in... milk, bread whatever. This is in the hopes that they walk in grab that stuff and walk the rest of the store and pick up other things.

Holding vendors accountable is not the problem it is the reduction of space in receiving and backroom, with depending on your store, an idiotic fascination with the incremental space guide along with an ever constant need for vendors to jump through hoops for even the most marginal of gains that is the problem. At my store I had difficulty trying to convince my idiotic leadership to expand out for the Super Bowl various opportunities with vendors that would increase our sales. No they were more worried about having to move a pallet or two and the pending inventory that would come a week after the Super Bowl. 4th of July, a great time to expand sales, amongst bread, chip and soda vendors right. Nope my management was more worried about asthetics. Take note for both Super Bowl and 4th of July I never met my quota for pallet drops not because of the vendors but because my idiot store refused deliveries. Hell in my district we got notices from our food director that told the executives in stores to stop doing this. When confronted my executive team said they were more concerned about what the DTL thinks than what the food director thinks. My question back was what is the point of the quota if you do not meet it.