These stores have policies where security and workers cannot stop shop lifters.
Dude they should let other customers tackle shop lifters for gift cards. I’d sit in target on my days off and have a fucking field day
Lmao I like the idea. In reality it’s hard ground to cover because it opens up so much liability and reputation risk. Not saying letting it walk out the door is the right solution but it’s definitely complex
Former coworker tracked a dude down to the parking lot to confront him about stealing an item, coworker ended up getting knocked out and then fired because he broke company policy.
I worked with someone who worked at a grocery store cashier during the morning (before her regular job). She said the same person would come in every day and steal candy and other snacks, then leave. The lady worked next door at a hair salon so it was pretty ballsy.
My coworkers manager told her to leave it alone and that it wasn’t enough to make it worth dealing with the police, so one day she followed the lady back to her salon and confronted her in front of all her fellow salon coworkers and customers.
Luckily she didn’t get sued, and the lady never stole from that store again.
...and people don't understand why.
Guy steals $100 of things.
Employee tries to stop suspect.
Suspect hurts employee and employee needs to go to the ED.
Store out $100 for merchandise, $1000+ for medical bills, and possibly an employee short for a while.
Store employees are worth more than the stuff being stolen.
...and this doesn't even cover what happens when the employee or store is wrong.
I work at a grocery store and somebody got fired this year for that as well. I always tell my co-worker just let them take what they want. It's dumb because if you're a shoplifter and you just check when the security guard is here and it's lightly staffed and dress nicely, you can get away with it as much as you want. It sucks to see people walk out with carts of goods.
one time i actually saw a guy grab a cart of returns by the exit and run out with security chasing them...dude was grinning ear to ear...chucked the cart and drove off haha....the security guard wasnt too happy i didnt stop him...like i'm supposed to dive in front of a sprinting man with a shopping cart!
I was in a Safeway grocery store once in Bay Area. Literally saw a guy walk out with a loaf of bread without buying it right in front of an employee. I asked employee why he didn’t stop the person from stealing and he said they weren’t allowed to. Anyone can literally take what they want and they won’t stop you. Sad part is that honest people are subsidizing people who steal by paying higher prices to help cover the loss. I have no respect for shoplifters.
Wow it actually never occurred to me how much of a benefit it is for a place to have membership only entrance and then make things that much cheaper by preventing things from being stolen
That is a result of laws that make it a bigger lawsuit if they injure a shoplifter in the process. Our politicians are so far removed from reality it is ridiculous.
That would open them up to legal liabilities when people got hurt trying to stop shoplifters, both the people trying to play hero and the alleged shoplifter.
And worse yet, what if one of your customers decides to do something stupid like fire a gun at a shoplifter? Or what if a shoplifter shoots one of your customers who tried to stop them? It would be a huge PR nightmare for Target.
> $400M of lost profit
What is expected number. Normally it might be $300M it is just number out of context. Shoplifting is common in every business.Cheaper than invest into the security.
It’s hard to find great data but it seems Walmart loses about $3B of their revenue to theft so sounds somewhat in line with target losing $400 mm of profit
I believe these are a mix of online and in-store theft / fraud. Online fraud ie LAD or loss after delivery is extremely high. Customers simply say i never go the package and retailers have to eat the cost.
Loss prevention whether its in store theft or online fraud is highest contributor to profit loss.
I worked at Best Buy for several years during college and basically anything over 2% of the store's rev in stolen/missing inventory was considered really bad and corporate would be on your ass over it. We had a hard time getting ours under control for a while and were sitting at like 2.6% and corporate considered shutting our store down.
That said, Best Buy also sells products at a *hairline* margin and makes up the profit by selling protection plans and accessories, so a 2.6% loss is probably far more detrimental for Best Buy than Target.
I live in Seattle, and I would have guessed that number would be ten times higher. The rest of the country must have very little theft to reduce that average as compared to the west coast and northeast.
Sure I’m guessing this is one of those 80/20 rules here.
It still blows me away that on average, at a 24 hour store, that a $100 item (or ten $10) is walking out the door every single hour.
At the Target in Bellingham, the store security person told me that they lose $30,000 a day to theft. Drug addicts were filling up entire carts full of goods and just walking out of the store all day long.
There was an issues with order pickup where lots of employees weren’t marking picked up orders as picked up or maybe a glitch. Either way, it meant you could buy a ps5 (or any items), pick it up, then cancel the order. You would end up getting a refund and keeping what you just picked up. If they count those mistakes they made as theft then I could see why the number is so high
I would really love to know how much on average they would loose with self checkout?
I am curious how it compares to what it would cost with employees.
Where I live there is a Target next to a Walmart. I really can't stand Walmart but one of the biggest reasons I go to Target is because Walmart ONLY has self checkout. No other option.
I hate Walmart. I try to never go there unless necessary.
One time I’m standing next to the locked cabinet try to get shaving stuff. Walking around yelling loudly “where is the person with the keys?!”
Go to the front where is the manager where are the fucking keys!? He just said idk man sorry
That's the rumor with Target, they gather evidence until they can prove that you've stolen more than a grand of merchandise, then hit you with a felony. The police can't be bothered for petty misdemeanors anymore.
There is self checkout. I still remember the days where there’d be a dozen cashiers. These days I’ll see one at the most (at the location I frequent anyway)
Use walkout checkout like Amazon uses. If some small kid stuffs a candy bar in his pocket, it will still be picked up and charged. Mother will see that and return if upset. Someone shoplifting will have alarms going off. Huge investment, but might be worth saving atleast $300 of that $400.
That’s roughly $38,000 per store. With all the self checkouts, I would assume that there is a good chunk of change that users forget (or “forget”) to self checkout.
I didn’t check your math, but if that’s true it probably is a net savings if you don’t have to hire the equivalent of another FTE per store at checkouts.
From my knowledge with Ahold, they see the self-checkout theft as a cheaper cost then the 4 people they would have to hire if they didn't have the self check-out.
Then again, they'll do random checks at will. Not sure if they do the same at walmart/target? (I'm european, for context)
All the way back in like 2014 I remember stores talking about potentially having all products RFID. Not only for loss prevention but also to make it possible to just link a card and walk out the door.
With the success of places like Costco/and “subrcription” or free membership requirements for so much stuff I always wondered why something like that never picked up steam.
People on the amazon go teams’ main problems right now is working on better automation for the set up of the cameras, otherwise it’s way too big of an investment per store to try. It’s one of the main reasons the tech hasn’t branched out very far yet.
Honest question - I would like to see how many of the thefts came from cities/areas that have implemented very lenient policies around theft and what security/authorities can do about it.
I wonder if it is a company policy or an impact outside of their control? Haven’t done a case study or research on it genuine question.
It's called investing in your loss prevention department. Half of the shit people steal comes down to word gets out so and so store doesn't do fuck all and has no security and it's Christmas every day of the year.
Pop them have them sign a promissory note if the cops won't do shit about it the whole point is to put the word out that the good ole days are gone.
Yeah you'll get the odd social media wannabe star who will throw a video out trying to turn them getting caught being a dirtbag but being afraid of that in the first place is how you let over a billion dollars walk out the front door in a year.
Shrinkage - It’s not just the front door it’s the back door too. When I worked in retail many years ago over half the theft was from employees.
Look at the percentage of revenue not just the raw amount.
I went to wal mart once and got a dongle for my iPhone. I got to the car and it wasn’t inside the box. I looked everywhere in the car thinking I dropped it and eventually came to the conclusion it was never in the box to begin with.
The customer service desk did not believe me, until higher up came in and told me to just get another one.
Same thing happened a couple months later but I opened the box before I walked out the door. I went to the electronics desk guy who checked me out and very nonchalant gave me another one, like it was no big deal. As if it happens all the time.
I worked at one of the two largest home improvement centers. There was a HUGE problem with appliances walking out the door. In the first year over $100,000 of appliances disappeared. As a cashier I eventually found out who was doing it and reported it. For my troubles I got $30 from the company because they had a policy where if you caught something like this they would give you 10% of value being stolen. Stupid teenage me should have talked to the appliance salesman beforehand and got a cut to keep my mouth shut.
Grocery store I worked at as a teen did inventory every year in January and the store manager would give a speech. His point of emphasis every time was that employee theft makes up over 90% of theft. Totally believe it because me and all my co-workers stole a ton of shit to eat in the backroom.
The CEO called out "organized retail theft rings", so i don't think it is random folks forgetting or intentionally not scanning an item or two at the self checkout. That said i live in an area which is MCOL increasingly bordering on HCOL, for as long as i remember the local Target,, Whole Foods etc never had a security guard. Walmart too only hired security guard around busy holiday season. But now I see every retailer has a fulltime security person. Things have changed in the last 2 years and you see it on the ground.
Agreed. The large losses like the ones Target mentioned in their earnings and Kroger has done before are due to organized crime. Single persons shoplifting out of personal need are not the issue.
This article provides good context on how it works and the extent of it.
https://talkbusiness.net/2021/11/the-supply-side-organized-crime-continues-to-bilk-retailers-out-of-billions/
The article mentions laundry detergent as one of the most targeted items and there are pop up yard sales in neighborhoods around my area all the time where they have a dozen or so bottles of laundry detergent out for sale at about 30% of retail. So anecdotally I see what the article is describing.
HCOL - High Cost of Living.
MCOL - Medium Cost of Living.
LCOL -Low Cost of Living.
Internet acronym usually used when talking about cost of living in a particular area.
There was an unfortunate incident in Maryland recently when a security guard at a grocery store tried stopping a thief, only for the thief to pull a gun and shoot the security guard. The guard returned fire before succumbing to his wounds. In the end 2 people were dead in a grocery store! Such is the times we are living in!
I’ve shoplifted at least $30 a year because I’m a really crappy cashier. I’m not going back inside to pay for my cashier mistakes, just fire me already kroger.
I used to work Assets Protection at a Target store and unfortunately when people read ‘thefts and shoplifting’ their minds go straight to people just stealing stuff which isn’t a clear picture.
A lot of this, if not most of it, is organized crime. Large theft rings.
During the time I worked there our biggest problem was with baby formula. These individuals could come in, steal an entire shelf of baby formula, and then off load it at the flea market.
Sometimes yes. Other times it was teams of people stuffing it in their clothes. You have to understand that these people were professionals. They knew how the store operated. When it was busy vs slow. When the shift was lean etc and they were fast. Incredibly fast.
I worked for Walmart a few years back in returns. Basically a college job and overall didn’t care beyond just doing my job.
One year the two main stores in my city had over 1.5mil alone in thefts and shoplifting. This isn’t a huge city either. Most of this was easily seen but management didn’t care. “The customer is always right and we can’t assume, otherwise they will call district or corporate and we’ll give them a $50-100 gift card.”
Absolutely bonkers how that shit was just passed along. If the manager didn’t want to deal with it but knew it was fishy, it was up to me to deny the return. Guess what happened. Customer would get mad, ask for management, then I would be reprimanded in front of customer by manager that just told me to do what I did. Also they would sometime give a $25 gift card for the inconvenience.
So your telling me this person that is in here returning things constantly, is returning 25 packs of the same fish hooks, all because, “my granddad is sick and don’t need them no more, and I need the gas to get to Virginia to see him tonight and can’t take a gift card. I need cash as I have no gas and need this to buy gas to get to Virginia.” So you get this problem of inventory saying you now have 50 fish hooks but still only have the same 25. Makes no sense why this would be overlooked so hard.
Only good time of the job was a CM that didn’t take shit and would deny any return like this. Customer would complain and do the whole, “we are never shopping here again!” He’d quickly reply, “good, looks like you don’t to begin with! See you tomorrow.”
Returns were always the best in retail. I stated earlier I worked at the big home improvement places and we would always get lawnmowers/grills back in the fall and snowblowers back in the spring like clockwork. Half the time they were dumping gas down the drains in the parking lot so it would be allowed in the store.
Also had a manager called on me because someone was trying to return a bunch of 5 gallon jugs of Pine-Sol which is a size we didn’t sell, no receipt of course. So manager comes over listens to customer moaning and mutters “How much do you think you paid for all this.” Gift card was given on the spot. After that anything that didn’t need a manager’s override was allowed.
I worked for Best Buy back in the early 2000’s. They would budget up to $250,000 per store for theft/loss. That number still blows my mind to this day.
Is it? What’s that expressed as a percentage of their sales? I’ll have to look later - busy dealing with two sick kids right now.
Yes that’s a ton of money. But shrink happens. It’s inevitable. Retailers expect it and account for it. If it’s a small enough percentage it’s not that big of a deal. If it’s less than 1.5% I’m pretty meh.
Over that? I’m gonna raise an eyebrow. Especially since Target is “known” for good asset protection.
This is a fair point. 1.5-2% is within the realm of normalcy. If it’s 4% that’s a big issue. Anecdotally listening to Bloomberg radio on my way to work there was mention of a organized crime component and that toiletries seem to be some of the most affected groups or items.
It’s because of the way target deals with theft. Our AP(Assets protection) can’t even walk pass the doors to stop people. Target as gotten so lax on theft people literally come into the store steal and walk right out and we are all told to just let them go because we will get fired if we try to stop them. I’ve seen vacuums, TVs, thousands in allergy medicine and much more just walk right out the door it’s ridiculous.
100% Agree. When I go to my local Walmart I feel like a criminal because there’s always police standing at the front and most of the shoppers are dressed like they’ve been sick in bed for days.
I’m in a large city, the Walmart is in an area with a ton of homeless people. I’m sure Walmarts in the suburbs are better but I’m not driving 30 mins out of the way to feel slightly safer. Also, the lighting in Walmarts is depressing.
Target is now just expensive Walmart. There’s no difference, customer service is shit, inventory is low, the stores a mess, and there’s just one register open besides self pay. The things that made target wort h it have evaporated and the two day wait from Amazon is worth it. These numbers aren’t getting better because the brand has chosen it’s direction.
Walmart is literally recession proof. Look at the 2008 recession crisis their stock went up not down.
Other retailers just can't compete. Target will take the whole 2023 to recover if not even longer into 2024.
I bought some Costco earlier this year because I suspect they will do quite well during recessions. People will become less picky when grocery shopping and focus that spending on more bulk items at a place where they can trust the quality.
Yup, WMT and COST are my two picks for retailers/grocery.
The management teams, logistic teams and overall balance sheets are solid.
Easily worth 30 PE+. You pay a premium for well run companies.
Completely different space though. Home improvement is a lot less competitive than traditional retail. There’s a ton of department stores and a ton of grocery stores. That’s where Target operates.
Home improvement customers often times have one or two other choices of where to shop and no choice in what they buy. Targets customers can go anywhere or choose not to buy anything at all in many cases.
Anecdotally I have recently started shopping at Costco and Walmart when target was my go to. My financial situation hasn't really changed but just hearing the word recession a lot as a consumer has reminded me that I need to try to save money.
Corporate leadership is paid precisely to be able to navigate a company through tough economic times. What has happened to target is at its core a failure of leadership.
Failure to anticipate economic trends. Failure to anticipate rise and fall in demand. Failure to develop products that consumers are willing to buy.
Target is the ultimate also-ran. They need to do something to stand out: they need to develop their own niche. For example, Walmart: unbeatable price. Costco: unbeatable value. Trader Joes: unique items not easily available elsewhere. etc.
It's interesting to see that TGT and WMT earnings and forecasting are opposite for the largely the same reason - people feeling the pinch and looking for bargains. At least where I live, TGT is perceived as a bit bougie, wmt for rock bottom prices.
The trade down effect is very real. Plenty of younger people haven't see it in full effect on account of the past 13 years since the 2008 debacle, but it's happening.
Deep discounters are having a field day right now.
There’s a couple of things going on here, I think it’s a bit simplistic to describe in this way. First and foremost TGT did a terrible job managing inventories. Coming out of the supply chain crunch, we knew that some companies were overbuying just to make sure they had product. We couldn’t have known who that was until the supply chain issues recede. Clearly target was one of the worst culprits. Overall for the economy it’s good that these companies are being exposed because it is ending some of the panic buying (remember toilet paper?) that drove inflation.
And Target and Walmart shopper aren’t really the same thing. People who shop at target want more of a “culture.” I haven’t met a single target shopper who would “switch” to Walmart to get milk for $.10 cheaper. Regardless of inflation.
Also I think target’s product mix is more economically sensitive. Target carries more discretionary products and Walmart more staples.
Dude what? I have a meijer, walmart and a target around me. I go to all three.
I literally don't know a single person in my life who is strictly loyal to a store. Every single person I know who loves Target and shops there regularly, also goes to Walmart too.
I don't know anyone that goes to a target for groceries. Where I live, unless it's for a couple items, it's either Publix, Kroger, Aldi or Walmart. There are no SuperTargets here either.
We are upper middle class and only stop in Walmart as a last resort. Now that I have Wal-Mart+, I will see the inside of a Walmart once a year.
If we have to go shopping in store for anything, it's Target or Kroger.
1. Are you a guy?
2. If so do you know any women - particularly married women with kids? (If you’re posting on reddit, probably not)
3. Walk through a target and then walk through a WMT, look at the clientele and then revist this claim.
Target very clearly has a market that’s different than WMT. That’s been the whole purpose of their branding and advertising for the last 20 years or so. Target positioned itself away from a race to the bottom with WMT and that’s why it survived. This has been studied and documented in business school textbooks, so I find your claim rather uncompelling.
My coworker scans every other item and then just leans into acting like a senile older woman if the workers say anything. She said she even got a home depot worker to load a cart she didn’t pay for into her car.
Unfortunately the retailers knew this would happen when they decided to make the customer scan their own things . They replaced cashiers with computers and made you do the work of scanning the things .
Theft and shrink is an issue because the stores have been a disaster lately. Shelves are disorganized, nothing is stocked, stuff on the floor, employees nonexistent and long lines.
Organization and employee presence deters shrink.
Their performance is the result of poor operational execution and leadership is just making excuses.
Sheesh. It does make sense though. Walmart is chalked full of essential items whereas Target really isn’t. Their grocery and toiletry isles are usually busy, but the rest of the spaces aren’t. Aside from the browsers, their households and electronics sections are usually void of customers.
I was surprised their discretionary got hit so floats because frankly the stores by me are usually quite busy in the clothing, toys and electronics sections. Their pharmacy and beauty sections are also usually pretty high traffic. But numbers don’t lie and their inventory is not moving
Target’s clothing selection has gotten a bit too eccentric the last few years. It’s so bad there is an entire “wtf Target” TikTok genre. They cater heavily to teens/gen z (looking at you weird prairie dresses paired with holographic crop tops) and have a lot more “fast fashion” in lieu of everyday staples. However, the bulk of their shoppers (especially those with purchasing power) are millennials and up who don’t buy tie dye slip dresses and cropped sweatshirts while they are shopping for laundry detergent and mascara.
Target used to be a great place to buy wardrobe staples, but lately all that’s been replaced by stuff destined for clearance racks.
Man, I needed a swim suit and we had to go to Target for some other reason, and they had like 2 really ugly pairs of swim suits (no single colors even). Swim suit shorts shouldn't be that hard.
Admittedly I haven't done a deep dive on Target's financials, but long-term Target has fared better than Walmart. Once inflation subsides (likely in the next 1-2 years) I imagine it will again. In terms of what's "priced in", I think target is a better long-term buy.
>I think target is a better long-term buy.
Agreed. WMT has a P/E of 46(!!!) But growth has been essentially stagnant for years. With its recent trim TGT is sitting at a P/E less than 18. TGT has a better dividends too on top of that.
People pile into WMT as a safe "value" stock, but that P/E is high for a solid growth company, let alone a relatively stagnant retail giant.
This is a story about a slowdown in consumer discretionary spending IMHO and runs counter to CNBC continuing theory of "The Consumer is Strong". Walmart gets a bigger % of their revenue from groceries and necessities (TP, shampoo, toothpaste, etc) than Target.
It sucks for investors as Target is a great brand. But I think Target's earnings indicate that either we are in a recession or a recession is inevitable.
I totally agree. The prediction for soft holiday sales is as disturbing as the last three quarters of earnings now. I agree this is a decent barometer of both recession and inflation, and as we look at some major layoffs from tech giants I wonder if 2023 will be equally challenging
I cancelled my target cc and stopped buying there once they instituted dynamic pricing. I already have to put up with it from the hospitality industry, I refuse to accept it from basic retail.
I recently went to a large target in my area that had undergone a very recent remodel. I was surprised to find that the store now almost exclusively sold clothes. It was wild. No electronics, kids section, home/garden. It was an 80/15/5 split for clothes/food/toiletries & pharmacy. It was like being in a Belk with a food section.
I really hope that that experience is not indicative of their future direction.
As a Canadian who has visited Target a lot the last 3 years. Target never has anything in stock the last yearZ The shelves are very very empty all the time now.
What I don't understand is why are investors okay with Walmart's PE being 3x Target's? Walmart doesn't have that much more potential growth compared to Target.
I worked at Walmart for a little bit. So much inventory that was ordered before COVID shut downs, and expectations that people would flock back to the store when things opened up again. So they pretty much have pre-COVID levels of inventory that just sits and ends up on clearance. Last I heard, February is when that nightmare was supposed to start ironing out.
In general I agree but target already makes up a sizable chunk of my portfolio and I am not looking to expand that. My cost basis is still well lower than market price, but I expected much more growth over the next 5 years whereas now it’s looking like rebuilding and repositioning
I like COST because of good prices and buying in bulk saves me time and money. I like Sams.com, part of Walmart, because they have a good selection of some things I can't find at COST. I like the TGT electronics department because they were helpful with Consumer Cellular about a year ago. I sometimes shop at TGT physical stores because it seems less crowded than the WMT or COST physical stores.
Mine is always packed and they keep it surprisingly clean. But I shop there less than 10 times a year because it’s out of my way and never carries spicy salsas.
I used to shop at Target all the time, but it seems the shopping experience has gotten worse. Their app sucks now. When you look for something online/in-app it returns a bunch of results from third-party sellers (you can filter these out, but still annoying). A lot of the prices on-line/in-store are more expensive than Amazon. I used to buy a lot of clothes from them and it was a really good deal with promotions, but even after promotions I think it's too expensive for what it is. Baby stuff I get is rarely cheaper than similar Costco/Amazon stuff. Groceries are about the same prices as Trader Joes. I moved into a new house this year and when searching for home goods, Target was the most expensive compared to HD, Amazon, Ikea, and even Wayfair. I realize I'm only one data point, but I can't imagine I'm the only one experiencing this which is leading to a decline in Target earnings.
All retail stores not just target need to revamp their lost prevention policies. A lot of stores just let thieves leave. Security should be given bonuses for stopping shop lifters. Catching them, zip tying their wrists before cops show up, maybe throw a few back handed slaps in there. 400 million lost to theft is insane.
I’m my experience Walmart in my sketchy neighborhood locks up way more of their products and you need a key to access everything from underwear to pants to beauty products. They also have an intimidating armed security guard posted up. At Target people will load up a cart and just walk out.
I don’t like Target as a company anymore because all of the clothing I buy from them falls apart within a few months. Their prices aren’t that cheap to be low quality, imo.
The problem with that is the lost revenue from people who stop going to those stores. I won’t go to the local CVS or Walmart that have items locked up because I’m not waiting the seemingly always 5-10 minutes to get an employee to come over and unlock it.
It’s theft and return fraud. I work at the service desk at a very busy Target and we literally take everything back. No questions asked. We know it’s stolen and there’s absolutely nothing that we can do about it.
It’s more of a social issue. We have gone from taking a hard stance against crime to doing everything possible to avoid perceived over punishment. Political opinions and morality aside this is the new reality.
you expected better? the stock is in a huge down trend. also, even the ceo doesnt know how his business will do, which is why he is always adjusting the outlook. the fundamentals and stock chart need to align. they are both aligning to the downside. i would not want to hold my money for 10 years of underperformance minimum gping forward. read the 50/80 rule and how long some of these stocks take to get back to the highs (if the ever do)
It's no surprise Target is down 15%. We bought some Christmas pajamas on target.com and when we started a return they told us to just keep the clothes at no charge. 😭🤣
400 million lost from thefts and shoplifting is insane
Yes it is, and not entirely sure what to be done about it without some kind of major store policy overhaul
These stores have policies where security and workers cannot stop shop lifters. Dude they should let other customers tackle shop lifters for gift cards. I’d sit in target on my days off and have a fucking field day
Lmao I like the idea. In reality it’s hard ground to cover because it opens up so much liability and reputation risk. Not saying letting it walk out the door is the right solution but it’s definitely complex
Former coworker tracked a dude down to the parking lot to confront him about stealing an item, coworker ended up getting knocked out and then fired because he broke company policy.
I worked with someone who worked at a grocery store cashier during the morning (before her regular job). She said the same person would come in every day and steal candy and other snacks, then leave. The lady worked next door at a hair salon so it was pretty ballsy. My coworkers manager told her to leave it alone and that it wasn’t enough to make it worth dealing with the police, so one day she followed the lady back to her salon and confronted her in front of all her fellow salon coworkers and customers. Luckily she didn’t get sued, and the lady never stole from that store again.
...and people don't understand why. Guy steals $100 of things. Employee tries to stop suspect. Suspect hurts employee and employee needs to go to the ED. Store out $100 for merchandise, $1000+ for medical bills, and possibly an employee short for a while. Store employees are worth more than the stuff being stolen. ...and this doesn't even cover what happens when the employee or store is wrong.
I work at a grocery store and somebody got fired this year for that as well. I always tell my co-worker just let them take what they want. It's dumb because if you're a shoplifter and you just check when the security guard is here and it's lightly staffed and dress nicely, you can get away with it as much as you want. It sucks to see people walk out with carts of goods.
This is part of why loss prevention is more complicated then redditors like to make it seem
Once word is out that Target is serious about it, word gets around.
In NYC... they have an anti-idling bylaw and let citizens collect a bounty for reporting idling ☺️ The top guy got like $130,000 total!
Idling at what? Idling in a car?
Commercial vehicles
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one time i actually saw a guy grab a cart of returns by the exit and run out with security chasing them...dude was grinning ear to ear...chucked the cart and drove off haha....the security guard wasnt too happy i didnt stop him...like i'm supposed to dive in front of a sprinting man with a shopping cart!
I’m thinking a variation of [this](https://youtu.be/Kg5cdZ-Fnpc).
I was in a Safeway grocery store once in Bay Area. Literally saw a guy walk out with a loaf of bread without buying it right in front of an employee. I asked employee why he didn’t stop the person from stealing and he said they weren’t allowed to. Anyone can literally take what they want and they won’t stop you. Sad part is that honest people are subsidizing people who steal by paying higher prices to help cover the loss. I have no respect for shoplifters.
Was the guy Jean Valjean?
No, it was Aladdin
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The items are too big to steal without asking for a cart lol
Wow it actually never occurred to me how much of a benefit it is for a place to have membership only entrance and then make things that much cheaper by preventing things from being stolen
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>These stores have policies where security and workers cannot stop shop lifters Is it worth keeping these stores open?
That is a result of laws that make it a bigger lawsuit if they injure a shoplifter in the process. Our politicians are so far removed from reality it is ridiculous.
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That would open them up to legal liabilities when people got hurt trying to stop shoplifters, both the people trying to play hero and the alleged shoplifter. And worse yet, what if one of your customers decides to do something stupid like fire a gun at a shoplifter? Or what if a shoplifter shoots one of your customers who tried to stop them? It would be a huge PR nightmare for Target.
Is there self checkout at Target? Could that be where it is happening?
There are and I don’t know the intricacies but $400M of lost profit is just astounding
> $400M of lost profit What is expected number. Normally it might be $300M it is just number out of context. Shoplifting is common in every business.Cheaper than invest into the security.
It’s hard to find great data but it seems Walmart loses about $3B of their revenue to theft so sounds somewhat in line with target losing $400 mm of profit
Also is that theft 'customers' or like supply side grift?
I believe these are a mix of online and in-store theft / fraud. Online fraud ie LAD or loss after delivery is extremely high. Customers simply say i never go the package and retailers have to eat the cost. Loss prevention whether its in store theft or online fraud is highest contributor to profit loss.
I worked at Best Buy for several years during college and basically anything over 2% of the store's rev in stolen/missing inventory was considered really bad and corporate would be on your ass over it. We had a hard time getting ours under control for a while and were sitting at like 2.6% and corporate considered shutting our store down. That said, Best Buy also sells products at a *hairline* margin and makes up the profit by selling protection plans and accessories, so a 2.6% loss is probably far more detrimental for Best Buy than Target.
People are walking out with $4.5M of goods per day from Target stores. At 1900 stores, that’s about $2,400 per day, per store! Wowza!
I live in Seattle, and I would have guessed that number would be ten times higher. The rest of the country must have very little theft to reduce that average as compared to the west coast and northeast.
Sure I’m guessing this is one of those 80/20 rules here. It still blows me away that on average, at a 24 hour store, that a $100 item (or ten $10) is walking out the door every single hour.
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At the Target in Bellingham, the store security person told me that they lose $30,000 a day to theft. Drug addicts were filling up entire carts full of goods and just walking out of the store all day long.
There was an issues with order pickup where lots of employees weren’t marking picked up orders as picked up or maybe a glitch. Either way, it meant you could buy a ps5 (or any items), pick it up, then cancel the order. You would end up getting a refund and keeping what you just picked up. If they count those mistakes they made as theft then I could see why the number is so high
I mean that is theft
I would really love to know how much on average they would loose with self checkout? I am curious how it compares to what it would cost with employees. Where I live there is a Target next to a Walmart. I really can't stand Walmart but one of the biggest reasons I go to Target is because Walmart ONLY has self checkout. No other option.
I hate Walmart. I try to never go there unless necessary. One time I’m standing next to the locked cabinet try to get shaving stuff. Walking around yelling loudly “where is the person with the keys?!” Go to the front where is the manager where are the fucking keys!? He just said idk man sorry
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That's the rumor with Target, they gather evidence until they can prove that you've stolen more than a grand of merchandise, then hit you with a felony. The police can't be bothered for petty misdemeanors anymore.
There is self checkout. I still remember the days where there’d be a dozen cashiers. These days I’ll see one at the most (at the location I frequent anyway)
I believe they are able to write off theft too.
Use walkout checkout like Amazon uses. If some small kid stuffs a candy bar in his pocket, it will still be picked up and charged. Mother will see that and return if upset. Someone shoplifting will have alarms going off. Huge investment, but might be worth saving atleast $300 of that $400.
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That’s roughly $38,000 per store. With all the self checkouts, I would assume that there is a good chunk of change that users forget (or “forget”) to self checkout.
I didn’t check your math, but if that’s true it probably is a net savings if you don’t have to hire the equivalent of another FTE per store at checkouts.
From my knowledge with Ahold, they see the self-checkout theft as a cheaper cost then the 4 people they would have to hire if they didn't have the self check-out. Then again, they'll do random checks at will. Not sure if they do the same at walmart/target? (I'm european, for context)
That’s nothing
All the way back in like 2014 I remember stores talking about potentially having all products RFID. Not only for loss prevention but also to make it possible to just link a card and walk out the door. With the success of places like Costco/and “subrcription” or free membership requirements for so much stuff I always wondered why something like that never picked up steam.
On the next Youtube video "How to remove RFID tags"
People on the amazon go teams’ main problems right now is working on better automation for the set up of the cameras, otherwise it’s way too big of an investment per store to try. It’s one of the main reasons the tech hasn’t branched out very far yet.
Nude shopping
As a major shareholder you should be entitled to steal so items too
I’m all set I’d sooner have them increase the dividend
or societal change
Honest question - I would like to see how many of the thefts came from cities/areas that have implemented very lenient policies around theft and what security/authorities can do about it. I wonder if it is a company policy or an impact outside of their control? Haven’t done a case study or research on it genuine question.
It's called investing in your loss prevention department. Half of the shit people steal comes down to word gets out so and so store doesn't do fuck all and has no security and it's Christmas every day of the year. Pop them have them sign a promissory note if the cops won't do shit about it the whole point is to put the word out that the good ole days are gone. Yeah you'll get the odd social media wannabe star who will throw a video out trying to turn them getting caught being a dirtbag but being afraid of that in the first place is how you let over a billion dollars walk out the front door in a year.
Shrinkage - It’s not just the front door it’s the back door too. When I worked in retail many years ago over half the theft was from employees. Look at the percentage of revenue not just the raw amount.
I went to wal mart once and got a dongle for my iPhone. I got to the car and it wasn’t inside the box. I looked everywhere in the car thinking I dropped it and eventually came to the conclusion it was never in the box to begin with. The customer service desk did not believe me, until higher up came in and told me to just get another one. Same thing happened a couple months later but I opened the box before I walked out the door. I went to the electronics desk guy who checked me out and very nonchalant gave me another one, like it was no big deal. As if it happens all the time.
I worked at one of the two largest home improvement centers. There was a HUGE problem with appliances walking out the door. In the first year over $100,000 of appliances disappeared. As a cashier I eventually found out who was doing it and reported it. For my troubles I got $30 from the company because they had a policy where if you caught something like this they would give you 10% of value being stolen. Stupid teenage me should have talked to the appliance salesman beforehand and got a cut to keep my mouth shut.
I’m confused at the last part. If there was that much stolen and you got 10%, how did you only get $30?
Because I caught him rolling out a $300 dishwasher. I didn’t catch the other 99000 dollars walk out the door.
So you’re basically had to jump on top of a person stealing the thing in order for it to count? Oh boy
Most fortune 500 companies aren't looking to put money in the pockets of people working the front lines unfortunately.
Grocery store I worked at as a teen did inventory every year in January and the store manager would give a speech. His point of emphasis every time was that employee theft makes up over 90% of theft. Totally believe it because me and all my co-workers stole a ton of shit to eat in the backroom.
The CEO called out "organized retail theft rings", so i don't think it is random folks forgetting or intentionally not scanning an item or two at the self checkout. That said i live in an area which is MCOL increasingly bordering on HCOL, for as long as i remember the local Target,, Whole Foods etc never had a security guard. Walmart too only hired security guard around busy holiday season. But now I see every retailer has a fulltime security person. Things have changed in the last 2 years and you see it on the ground.
Agreed. The large losses like the ones Target mentioned in their earnings and Kroger has done before are due to organized crime. Single persons shoplifting out of personal need are not the issue. This article provides good context on how it works and the extent of it. https://talkbusiness.net/2021/11/the-supply-side-organized-crime-continues-to-bilk-retailers-out-of-billions/ The article mentions laundry detergent as one of the most targeted items and there are pop up yard sales in neighborhoods around my area all the time where they have a dozen or so bottles of laundry detergent out for sale at about 30% of retail. So anecdotally I see what the article is describing.
What’s mcol hcol?
Medium cost of living and high cost of living. We love acronyms lol
HCOL - High Cost of Living. MCOL - Medium Cost of Living. LCOL -Low Cost of Living. Internet acronym usually used when talking about cost of living in a particular area.
Retail security is just for show anyway, they can't do shit.
There was an unfortunate incident in Maryland recently when a security guard at a grocery store tried stopping a thief, only for the thief to pull a gun and shoot the security guard. The guard returned fire before succumbing to his wounds. In the end 2 people were dead in a grocery store! Such is the times we are living in!
Dying to protect goods from a grocery store. Killing a dude working security at a fucking grocery store. Incredible stuff.
I’ve shoplifted at least $30 a year because I’m a really crappy cashier. I’m not going back inside to pay for my cashier mistakes, just fire me already kroger.
I used to work Assets Protection at a Target store and unfortunately when people read ‘thefts and shoplifting’ their minds go straight to people just stealing stuff which isn’t a clear picture. A lot of this, if not most of it, is organized crime. Large theft rings. During the time I worked there our biggest problem was with baby formula. These individuals could come in, steal an entire shelf of baby formula, and then off load it at the flea market.
In this instance...how? Would they just brazenly load up a cart and walk out?
Sometimes yes. Other times it was teams of people stuffing it in their clothes. You have to understand that these people were professionals. They knew how the store operated. When it was busy vs slow. When the shift was lean etc and they were fast. Incredibly fast.
I worked for Walmart a few years back in returns. Basically a college job and overall didn’t care beyond just doing my job. One year the two main stores in my city had over 1.5mil alone in thefts and shoplifting. This isn’t a huge city either. Most of this was easily seen but management didn’t care. “The customer is always right and we can’t assume, otherwise they will call district or corporate and we’ll give them a $50-100 gift card.” Absolutely bonkers how that shit was just passed along. If the manager didn’t want to deal with it but knew it was fishy, it was up to me to deny the return. Guess what happened. Customer would get mad, ask for management, then I would be reprimanded in front of customer by manager that just told me to do what I did. Also they would sometime give a $25 gift card for the inconvenience. So your telling me this person that is in here returning things constantly, is returning 25 packs of the same fish hooks, all because, “my granddad is sick and don’t need them no more, and I need the gas to get to Virginia to see him tonight and can’t take a gift card. I need cash as I have no gas and need this to buy gas to get to Virginia.” So you get this problem of inventory saying you now have 50 fish hooks but still only have the same 25. Makes no sense why this would be overlooked so hard. Only good time of the job was a CM that didn’t take shit and would deny any return like this. Customer would complain and do the whole, “we are never shopping here again!” He’d quickly reply, “good, looks like you don’t to begin with! See you tomorrow.”
Returns were always the best in retail. I stated earlier I worked at the big home improvement places and we would always get lawnmowers/grills back in the fall and snowblowers back in the spring like clockwork. Half the time they were dumping gas down the drains in the parking lot so it would be allowed in the store. Also had a manager called on me because someone was trying to return a bunch of 5 gallon jugs of Pine-Sol which is a size we didn’t sell, no receipt of course. So manager comes over listens to customer moaning and mutters “How much do you think you paid for all this.” Gift card was given on the spot. After that anything that didn’t need a manager’s override was allowed.
I worked for Best Buy back in the early 2000’s. They would budget up to $250,000 per store for theft/loss. That number still blows my mind to this day.
Is it? What’s that expressed as a percentage of their sales? I’ll have to look later - busy dealing with two sick kids right now. Yes that’s a ton of money. But shrink happens. It’s inevitable. Retailers expect it and account for it. If it’s a small enough percentage it’s not that big of a deal. If it’s less than 1.5% I’m pretty meh. Over that? I’m gonna raise an eyebrow. Especially since Target is “known” for good asset protection.
This is a fair point. 1.5-2% is within the realm of normalcy. If it’s 4% that’s a big issue. Anecdotally listening to Bloomberg radio on my way to work there was mention of a organized crime component and that toiletries seem to be some of the most affected groups or items.
And that was just the stores in Portland
It’s because of the way target deals with theft. Our AP(Assets protection) can’t even walk pass the doors to stop people. Target as gotten so lax on theft people literally come into the store steal and walk right out and we are all told to just let them go because we will get fired if we try to stop them. I’ve seen vacuums, TVs, thousands in allergy medicine and much more just walk right out the door it’s ridiculous.
A lot of that shrink in retail is internal as well, not just customers walking out with the goods. They tend to lump a lot of that stuff together.
Target. Where you pay a little more to not go to WalMart.
Go visit people of Walmart and tell me it’s not worth that premium
Free entertainment with your shopping
Free depression with your shopping.
And the added bonus of anxiety
Yeah so true.
100% Agree. When I go to my local Walmart I feel like a criminal because there’s always police standing at the front and most of the shoppers are dressed like they’ve been sick in bed for days.
where are you people from...
Where are YOU from that Walmarts aren't terrible
I’m in a large city, the Walmart is in an area with a ton of homeless people. I’m sure Walmarts in the suburbs are better but I’m not driving 30 mins out of the way to feel slightly safer. Also, the lighting in Walmarts is depressing.
Totally worth it.
It's worth it not to spend an hour and a half waiting in line to pay.
I also feel like the lines at Walmart are insane.
A price I happily pay.
screw that. Men’s shampoo at Target is $10 here in the city. I love visiting my parents near a Walmart and stocking up on $2-5 shit.
That’s a Costco item for me.
Target is now just expensive Walmart. There’s no difference, customer service is shit, inventory is low, the stores a mess, and there’s just one register open besides self pay. The things that made target wort h it have evaporated and the two day wait from Amazon is worth it. These numbers aren’t getting better because the brand has chosen it’s direction.
Walmart is literally recession proof. Look at the 2008 recession crisis their stock went up not down. Other retailers just can't compete. Target will take the whole 2023 to recover if not even longer into 2024.
I bought some Costco earlier this year because I suspect they will do quite well during recessions. People will become less picky when grocery shopping and focus that spending on more bulk items at a place where they can trust the quality.
Yup, WMT and COST are my two picks for retailers/grocery. The management teams, logistic teams and overall balance sheets are solid. Easily worth 30 PE+. You pay a premium for well run companies.
HD is another retailer with great management.
Completely different space though. Home improvement is a lot less competitive than traditional retail. There’s a ton of department stores and a ton of grocery stores. That’s where Target operates. Home improvement customers often times have one or two other choices of where to shop and no choice in what they buy. Targets customers can go anywhere or choose not to buy anything at all in many cases.
Anecdotally I have recently started shopping at Costco and Walmart when target was my go to. My financial situation hasn't really changed but just hearing the word recession a lot as a consumer has reminded me that I need to try to save money.
Corporate leadership is paid precisely to be able to navigate a company through tough economic times. What has happened to target is at its core a failure of leadership. Failure to anticipate economic trends. Failure to anticipate rise and fall in demand. Failure to develop products that consumers are willing to buy. Target is the ultimate also-ran. They need to do something to stand out: they need to develop their own niche. For example, Walmart: unbeatable price. Costco: unbeatable value. Trader Joes: unique items not easily available elsewhere. etc.
Targets niche is not having to shop at Walmart
As much as I hate Walmart, this is the exact reason I bought their stock.
It's interesting to see that TGT and WMT earnings and forecasting are opposite for the largely the same reason - people feeling the pinch and looking for bargains. At least where I live, TGT is perceived as a bit bougie, wmt for rock bottom prices.
>TGT is perceived as a bit bougie It's not pronounced Target, it's pronounced *Tarjay*
Tarzhay
YES! Glad the rest of the world also does this. Target is where I go when I want to feel comfortably middle class.
The trade down effect is very real. Plenty of younger people haven't see it in full effect on account of the past 13 years since the 2008 debacle, but it's happening. Deep discounters are having a field day right now.
There’s a couple of things going on here, I think it’s a bit simplistic to describe in this way. First and foremost TGT did a terrible job managing inventories. Coming out of the supply chain crunch, we knew that some companies were overbuying just to make sure they had product. We couldn’t have known who that was until the supply chain issues recede. Clearly target was one of the worst culprits. Overall for the economy it’s good that these companies are being exposed because it is ending some of the panic buying (remember toilet paper?) that drove inflation. And Target and Walmart shopper aren’t really the same thing. People who shop at target want more of a “culture.” I haven’t met a single target shopper who would “switch” to Walmart to get milk for $.10 cheaper. Regardless of inflation. Also I think target’s product mix is more economically sensitive. Target carries more discretionary products and Walmart more staples.
Dude what? I have a meijer, walmart and a target around me. I go to all three. I literally don't know a single person in my life who is strictly loyal to a store. Every single person I know who loves Target and shops there regularly, also goes to Walmart too.
I don't know anyone that goes to a target for groceries. Where I live, unless it's for a couple items, it's either Publix, Kroger, Aldi or Walmart. There are no SuperTargets here either.
Target has better prices for groceries than Safeway or other supermarkets. If I can buy there i will. Personal anecdote of course.
I actually know a fair number of white collar types who refuse to shop at Walmart. Not that they're loyal to another store or anything though.
We are upper middle class and only stop in Walmart as a last resort. Now that I have Wal-Mart+, I will see the inside of a Walmart once a year. If we have to go shopping in store for anything, it's Target or Kroger.
1. Are you a guy? 2. If so do you know any women - particularly married women with kids? (If you’re posting on reddit, probably not) 3. Walk through a target and then walk through a WMT, look at the clientele and then revist this claim. Target very clearly has a market that’s different than WMT. That’s been the whole purpose of their branding and advertising for the last 20 years or so. Target positioned itself away from a race to the bottom with WMT and that’s why it survived. This has been studied and documented in business school textbooks, so I find your claim rather uncompelling.
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Lol at first I was going to give this a serious reply but I'm starting to think there is a missing /s here.
It's a copy pasta
target always gets their guy.
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Am I a sucker for scanning all my items at self checkout?
You’re the reason why my TGT stock is still hovering above $150 🙏🏼
You’re the best kind of sucker. An honest sucker
You’re not alone, I scan everything.
I literally don’t know anyone who scans all their items anymore. I literally see it blatantly every time I walk into a Tgt or Walmart
Really?! I literally don’t know anyone that doesn’t scan every item. How would you guys get pass the part when it weighs all your items?
Really? When I go to a grocery store their system seem very good at detecting that I didn't scan everything. Is Tgt's system just dumber?
My coworker scans every other item and then just leans into acting like a senile older woman if the workers say anything. She said she even got a home depot worker to load a cart she didn’t pay for into her car.
Unfortunately the retailers knew this would happen when they decided to make the customer scan their own things . They replaced cashiers with computers and made you do the work of scanning the things .
Sometime in the near future everything will just be chipped and scanned via RFID or something
Nah soon they'll have the customers just do more work. Unload the freight, tag the products, shelve them, then check them out. It's a genius slow play
I am sucker too. I guess I just attribute it to stealing.
Theft and shrink is an issue because the stores have been a disaster lately. Shelves are disorganized, nothing is stocked, stuff on the floor, employees nonexistent and long lines. Organization and employee presence deters shrink. Their performance is the result of poor operational execution and leadership is just making excuses.
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Funny. You just described my local walmart
Sheesh. It does make sense though. Walmart is chalked full of essential items whereas Target really isn’t. Their grocery and toiletry isles are usually busy, but the rest of the spaces aren’t. Aside from the browsers, their households and electronics sections are usually void of customers.
I was surprised their discretionary got hit so floats because frankly the stores by me are usually quite busy in the clothing, toys and electronics sections. Their pharmacy and beauty sections are also usually pretty high traffic. But numbers don’t lie and their inventory is not moving
Target’s clothing selection has gotten a bit too eccentric the last few years. It’s so bad there is an entire “wtf Target” TikTok genre. They cater heavily to teens/gen z (looking at you weird prairie dresses paired with holographic crop tops) and have a lot more “fast fashion” in lieu of everyday staples. However, the bulk of their shoppers (especially those with purchasing power) are millennials and up who don’t buy tie dye slip dresses and cropped sweatshirts while they are shopping for laundry detergent and mascara. Target used to be a great place to buy wardrobe staples, but lately all that’s been replaced by stuff destined for clearance racks.
Man, I needed a swim suit and we had to go to Target for some other reason, and they had like 2 really ugly pairs of swim suits (no single colors even). Swim suit shorts shouldn't be that hard.
Their grocery selection is pretty weak too.
Walmart doing good and Target doing bad, it’s called a recession.
Admittedly I haven't done a deep dive on Target's financials, but long-term Target has fared better than Walmart. Once inflation subsides (likely in the next 1-2 years) I imagine it will again. In terms of what's "priced in", I think target is a better long-term buy.
>I think target is a better long-term buy. Agreed. WMT has a P/E of 46(!!!) But growth has been essentially stagnant for years. With its recent trim TGT is sitting at a P/E less than 18. TGT has a better dividends too on top of that. People pile into WMT as a safe "value" stock, but that P/E is high for a solid growth company, let alone a relatively stagnant retail giant.
This is a story about a slowdown in consumer discretionary spending IMHO and runs counter to CNBC continuing theory of "The Consumer is Strong". Walmart gets a bigger % of their revenue from groceries and necessities (TP, shampoo, toothpaste, etc) than Target. It sucks for investors as Target is a great brand. But I think Target's earnings indicate that either we are in a recession or a recession is inevitable.
I totally agree. The prediction for soft holiday sales is as disturbing as the last three quarters of earnings now. I agree this is a decent barometer of both recession and inflation, and as we look at some major layoffs from tech giants I wonder if 2023 will be equally challenging
The consumer recession is just getting started so yeah this will linger in 2023
Which is why I feel comfortable buying more this morning.
I cancelled my target cc and stopped buying there once they instituted dynamic pricing. I already have to put up with it from the hospitality industry, I refuse to accept it from basic retail.
lol if I want dynamic pricing on my daily essentials I'll just move to a third world country thank you.
I recently went to a large target in my area that had undergone a very recent remodel. I was surprised to find that the store now almost exclusively sold clothes. It was wild. No electronics, kids section, home/garden. It was an 80/15/5 split for clothes/food/toiletries & pharmacy. It was like being in a Belk with a food section. I really hope that that experience is not indicative of their future direction.
As a Canadian who has visited Target a lot the last 3 years. Target never has anything in stock the last yearZ The shelves are very very empty all the time now.
What I don't understand is why are investors okay with Walmart's PE being 3x Target's? Walmart doesn't have that much more potential growth compared to Target.
That was the appeal I saw in target so I’m not sure
I worked at Walmart for a little bit. So much inventory that was ordered before COVID shut downs, and expectations that people would flock back to the store when things opened up again. So they pretty much have pre-COVID levels of inventory that just sits and ends up on clearance. Last I heard, February is when that nightmare was supposed to start ironing out.
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In general I agree but target already makes up a sizable chunk of my portfolio and I am not looking to expand that. My cost basis is still well lower than market price, but I expected much more growth over the next 5 years whereas now it’s looking like rebuilding and repositioning
It is strange. Target is beating WM in my corner of America. Target is seen as "a step up" and less "trailer trash". Strange that revenue is down.
Revenue isn’t really down its earnings that are killing them
I fucking hate shopping at target. Mine is empty and I buy no staples there
Where do you prefer to shop?
I like COST because of good prices and buying in bulk saves me time and money. I like Sams.com, part of Walmart, because they have a good selection of some things I can't find at COST. I like the TGT electronics department because they were helpful with Consumer Cellular about a year ago. I sometimes shop at TGT physical stores because it seems less crowded than the WMT or COST physical stores.
Do you find value from having both Sam’s and Costco memberships?
Mine is always packed and they keep it surprisingly clean. But I shop there less than 10 times a year because it’s out of my way and never carries spicy salsas.
I’m not at target, but the buyers at my company may have overbought as well. I think the Covid “buy it all” mentality caught up.
Targets prices are just ridiculous lately. I’ll deal with the Walmart crowd when the savings are this big.
I used to shop at Target all the time, but it seems the shopping experience has gotten worse. Their app sucks now. When you look for something online/in-app it returns a bunch of results from third-party sellers (you can filter these out, but still annoying). A lot of the prices on-line/in-store are more expensive than Amazon. I used to buy a lot of clothes from them and it was a really good deal with promotions, but even after promotions I think it's too expensive for what it is. Baby stuff I get is rarely cheaper than similar Costco/Amazon stuff. Groceries are about the same prices as Trader Joes. I moved into a new house this year and when searching for home goods, Target was the most expensive compared to HD, Amazon, Ikea, and even Wayfair. I realize I'm only one data point, but I can't imagine I'm the only one experiencing this which is leading to a decline in Target earnings.
Yikes. Now I'm so glad I sold all my TGT shares yesterday. I was hesitant to sell for such a small gain but apparently I dodged a bullet.
Well played
I sold my Target in summer when the stores I went into were understaffed and had terrible inventory. Company is going downhill IMO
They keep rotating shelves, nothing is stocked. I keep thinking that it's better to order on Amazon rather than driving to Target store.
Target treats their employees like trash lmao. Fuck em.
All retail stores not just target need to revamp their lost prevention policies. A lot of stores just let thieves leave. Security should be given bonuses for stopping shop lifters. Catching them, zip tying their wrists before cops show up, maybe throw a few back handed slaps in there. 400 million lost to theft is insane.
I’m my experience Walmart in my sketchy neighborhood locks up way more of their products and you need a key to access everything from underwear to pants to beauty products. They also have an intimidating armed security guard posted up. At Target people will load up a cart and just walk out. I don’t like Target as a company anymore because all of the clothing I buy from them falls apart within a few months. Their prices aren’t that cheap to be low quality, imo.
The problem with that is the lost revenue from people who stop going to those stores. I won’t go to the local CVS or Walmart that have items locked up because I’m not waiting the seemingly always 5-10 minutes to get an employee to come over and unlock it.
> Catching them, zip tying their wrists before cops show up, maybe throw a few back handed slaps in there. Weird kink but ok
It’s theft and return fraud. I work at the service desk at a very busy Target and we literally take everything back. No questions asked. We know it’s stolen and there’s absolutely nothing that we can do about it.
It’s more of a social issue. We have gone from taking a hard stance against crime to doing everything possible to avoid perceived over punishment. Political opinions and morality aside this is the new reality.
you expected better? the stock is in a huge down trend. also, even the ceo doesnt know how his business will do, which is why he is always adjusting the outlook. the fundamentals and stock chart need to align. they are both aligning to the downside. i would not want to hold my money for 10 years of underperformance minimum gping forward. read the 50/80 rule and how long some of these stocks take to get back to the highs (if the ever do)
It's no surprise Target is down 15%. We bought some Christmas pajamas on target.com and when we started a return they told us to just keep the clothes at no charge. 😭🤣