4 ms·

What’s favorable about announcing that you’re closing a store due to theft?

BoorishBears 3y ago
Which does the market respond better to: - We closed a store due to a miserable economic outlook: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2023/08/12/consumer-spending-slows-putting-the-rest-of-year-at-risk-for-retailers/?sh=4cc8042810e5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2023/08/12/consumer... - We closed a store due to crime Some people assume if you're denying the retailers' claims on theft, you're really just burying your head in the sand about crime... but no. Target is a corporation. A decision like this is not made so transparently and neatly that you can package up it up in a headline. Whatever ends up as the headline is what Target wants to signal, not just to the market, but to its own stores and employees.
- aydyn 3y ago
  Can we please stop being armchair experts? Go to the target stores in question, you can see people walking out with phat stacks every single day while staff can do nothing except watch. Pretending theft isnt a problem is naive at best but lets be honest its agenda pushing.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    Can you not project your own armchair tendencies onto others? At Target's scale any operational risk is large enough to be held up as justification for closing a store, and no single operational risk is why they'd close one, let alone 4. They could have thrown darts at a board and anything from consumer spending to labor to climate change would have applied without a single fabrication: their footprint is just that large. In the end Target framed this as closing stores for safety reasons: https://corporate.target.com/press/releases/2023/09/Target-Closes-Select-Stores-to-Prioritize-Team-Mem https://corporate.target.com/press/releases/2023/09/Target-C... Target did not choose to close stores for safety reasons. They're facing massive economic headwinds, a tepid outlook, and need to close cut costs. I shopped at one of the stores they're closing last week: people steal out of stores with infinitely worse margins than Target, and it's safer than stores down the block. They didn't just look at safety like the press release implies, they looked at a laundry list of factors: ones that the people who wrote that press release wouldn't even know exist, and decided on a strategy, then iterated on that strategy and the positioning until it came out like it did. _ I really thought I headed off the inevitable political soapbox speakers by stating as plainly as two letters that my comment wasn't political commentary but somehow you turned "n" and "o." into... "I think it's ok that they're stealing". Not all of us have had our brains so absolutely rotted out that everything is part of a political agenda. Maybe it's because I wasn't born here but at the end of the day I can't relate to the kind of animalistic governance-turned-team-sport sickness that some people seem stuck on.
    - aydyn 3y ago
      It is agenda pushing. It is very obvious from a boots-on-the-ground perspective that safety and crime is a HUGE issue at these particular stores. This lines up perfectly with the statements, narrative and statistics that Target and CNN are making. There is no reason to doubt the veracity of the story except ______. Fill in the blank, please. > Not all of us have had our brains so absolutely rotted out that everything is part of a political agenda. You are actively participating in a heavily politicized forum and are perfectly aware of the current cultural and political zeitgeist. I don't believe your holier-than-thou claim.
      - BoorishBears 3y ago
        "The press aligned with a press release" One Target accounts for half the shoplifting in the entire city of San Francisco. https://sfist.com/2021/11/24/half-of-all-reported-sf-shoplifting-incidents-in-one-month-came-from-the-metreon-target/ https://sfist.com/2021/11/24/half-of-all-reported-sf-shoplif... Things got worse since then and they're now robbed an average every 10 minutes: https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/09/every-10-minutes-downtown-san-francisco-target-sees-10-thefts-a-day/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/09/every-10-minutes-downtown-... It has more security than the store closing, and has more homeless people due to its central location: Target didn't close it because it makes more money. There's no agenda in not being deluded enough to think Target won't put profit over safety.
        aydyn 3y ago
        No. The press aligns with the lived experiences of literally any person who shops at those stores with any regularity. To think that Target stores in the heart of SF and Seattle couldn't have enough business to be profitable outside of theft is what is "deluded". The primary cause of these particular stores being unprofitable is clearly theft and crime. Whether you realize it or not, you are simply not making a serious argument. You have no evidence for your claims. You are pushing an agenda.

Which does the market respond better to: - We closed a store due to a miserable economic outlook: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2023/08/12/consumer-spending-slows-putting-the-rest-of-year-at-risk-for-retailers/?sh=4cc8042810e5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2023/08/12/consumer... - We closed a store due to crime Some people assume if you're denying the retailers' claims on theft, you're really just burying your head in the sand about crime... but no. Target is a corporation. A decision like this is not made so transparently and neatly that you can package up it up in a headline. Whatever ends up as the headline is what Target wants to signal, not just to the market, but to its own stores and employees.

aydyn 3y ago
Can we please stop being armchair experts? Go to the target stores in question, you can see people walking out with phat stacks every single day while staff can do nothing except watch. Pretending theft isnt a problem is naive at best but lets be honest its agenda pushing.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  Can you not project your own armchair tendencies onto others? At Target's scale any operational risk is large enough to be held up as justification for closing a store, and no single operational risk is why they'd close one, let alone 4. They could have thrown darts at a board and anything from consumer spending to labor to climate change would have applied without a single fabrication: their footprint is just that large. In the end Target framed this as closing stores for safety reasons: https://corporate.target.com/press/releases/2023/09/Target-Closes-Select-Stores-to-Prioritize-Team-Mem https://corporate.target.com/press/releases/2023/09/Target-C... Target did not choose to close stores for safety reasons. They're facing massive economic headwinds, a tepid outlook, and need to close cut costs. I shopped at one of the stores they're closing last week: people steal out of stores with infinitely worse margins than Target, and it's safer than stores down the block. They didn't just look at safety like the press release implies, they looked at a laundry list of factors: ones that the people who wrote that press release wouldn't even know exist, and decided on a strategy, then iterated on that strategy and the positioning until it came out like it did. _ I really thought I headed off the inevitable political soapbox speakers by stating as plainly as two letters that my comment wasn't political commentary but somehow you turned "n" and "o." into... "I think it's ok that they're stealing". Not all of us have had our brains so absolutely rotted out that everything is part of a political agenda. Maybe it's because I wasn't born here but at the end of the day I can't relate to the kind of animalistic governance-turned-team-sport sickness that some people seem stuck on.
  - aydyn 3y ago
    It is agenda pushing. It is very obvious from a boots-on-the-ground perspective that safety and crime is a HUGE issue at these particular stores. This lines up perfectly with the statements, narrative and statistics that Target and CNN are making. There is no reason to doubt the veracity of the story except ______. Fill in the blank, please. > Not all of us have had our brains so absolutely rotted out that everything is part of a political agenda. You are actively participating in a heavily politicized forum and are perfectly aware of the current cultural and political zeitgeist. I don't believe your holier-than-thou claim.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      "The press aligned with a press release" One Target accounts for half the shoplifting in the entire city of San Francisco. https://sfist.com/2021/11/24/half-of-all-reported-sf-shoplifting-incidents-in-one-month-came-from-the-metreon-target/ https://sfist.com/2021/11/24/half-of-all-reported-sf-shoplif... Things got worse since then and they're now robbed an average every 10 minutes: https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/09/every-10-minutes-downtown-san-francisco-target-sees-10-thefts-a-day/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/09/every-10-minutes-downtown-... It has more security than the store closing, and has more homeless people due to its central location: Target didn't close it because it makes more money. There's no agenda in not being deluded enough to think Target won't put profit over safety.
      - aydyn 3y ago
        No. The press aligns with the lived experiences of literally any person who shops at those stores with any regularity. To think that Target stores in the heart of SF and Seattle couldn't have enough business to be profitable outside of theft is what is "deluded". The primary cause of these particular stores being unprofitable is clearly theft and crime. Whether you realize it or not, you are simply not making a serious argument. You have no evidence for your claims. You are pushing an agenda.