Off Target?

I love 塔吉特百货 as a retailer. There's so much to admire and my store visits are often about taking pictures of the good for our clients around the world.

Like many other families; my family also love Target. There's something for everyone and the current seasonal events like Halloween and Christmas are strong across the store.

A "Target run" in the US always ends up with a full trolley, way beyond what we went in for (if there is such a thing as a "limited shopping list" at Target).

There aren't many better in the mass market retail as driving that "extra item" mentality and growing sales. Their expansion in to Grocery has seen more of their own brands developed and many of their products stand out well on shelf versus leading brands.

Their approach to the various "brands" they develop and stock is admirable and their general tone of voice and brand are both effective and unmistakable.

There aren't many retailers I can think of who make their "brand" so iconic that people are happy to wear it and interact with it; like they do at Target.

Bullseye; their iconic Dog mascot is seen across the store in various guises, alongside appearing on the side of the delivery trucks....

Their Halloween collection sees costumes featuring a "Target shopping basket", a kids "Bullseye dog" onesie alongside various other Target themed "merch."

Our haul yesterday included a Polly Pocket Target themed toy alongside a "Little People" Target store as well.

Haribo "special edition" sweets were noted at the checkouts.

As Walter Holbrook often points out in his excellent posts. Target can be found wanting as seasonal events change, with empty fixtures aplenty as they cut across from Back to School to Halloween to Christmas and all the events after that!

It's unclear when this happened.

When it became acceptable to not "trade space?" based on incoming events.

Was it was always the case?

On my visit today it was apparent that there really isn't a plan when merchandise starts to sell down, or perhaps there is a plan, but no one executes on it.

Ideally, as Walter points out, Target should be condensing the space for #halloween and getting the #christmas stock out to start selling.

This never happens for any event I have seen, sales are strong in Target and everything in seasonal sells at differing rates for one reason or another.

Especially when social media is involved.

The challenge here is that it's completely unclear whether the Christmas merchandise has arrived in store, whether the lack of seasonal "follow on" is labour related.

Or whether it's store leadership decision making (IE they have to make the call to go off plan and reduce facings for products aligned to what they have left).

This is harder when you leave the decision making to local teams, you get a variable result. But equally, we know experience in retail isn't what it once was. Nor is training.

Clear principles are needed then the store teams will act on it. But they need clarity and someone who will stand up and hold the line. Stoically.

Our work with one UK retailer has store teams reciting the principles we set down to any visitor, whoever they were.

I was very proud.

We get a better result on the end to end that way...

From a store perspective at least; the seasonal area felt relatively well controlled. Whilst the cutover wasn't as strong as it could be, there were greater concerns further in to the store.

It was odd to see an aisle feature more Halloween merchandise when the seasonal area was starting to break, surely consolidating all this together and starting to roll the Christmas stock out would make more sense?

It's hard to believe that there are so few Christmas Trees in the warehouse, that the festive area couldn't be set up (for example).

It would help with markdowns by featuring the Halloween range together, but also making it easier for customers to shop the event.

Last but not least - easier for associates to manage the event as it sells through.

Value is always hard to discern in the US; everything is bigger, family size, the stores, the rest of it. However, its important to drive perception of value for money.

Otherwise you're just flagging yourself as expensive.

Therefore, is this really a "low price?"

Indeed this is setting price perception for Target customers, $35.99 for a giant tub of Snickers!

What else is a "low price?"

Food still feels like a brave new world for Target; as it did for Walmart relatively recently.

However, with their newly modelled stores; Walmart are far more cohesive now than they ever were.

Whereas Target feel like they have some way to go, certainly based on this store.

Whereas Target have lovely newly modelled stores but still feel like they're not firing on all cylinders at all.

Availability can go from strong, to poor with all the stages in between.

Merchandising can equally be inconsistent.

There's easily a few percentage points in the like for like by getting the stores on a process, driving better standards, availability, reducing stock file error and getting the control back in the hands of the associates.

Not easy to do and it's a hard, unpredictable road to travel down. As it is, most retailers just elect to put the latest tech in (perhaps a robot) and then hope that it solves the issue.

Produce is another area that's littered in risk for any retailer; every single turnaround of any retailer has put Produce front and centre.

It's a barometer for freshness, for abundance, for quality and for value too.

Therefore Target have made some good strides in to this area with remodelled stores featuring new kit, softer lighting and wooden display units too.

The newer stores look great! This is an older store that has had some remodelling but nothing major. New signage and a bit of new kit.

The space for both is small; Chilled and Produce are perhaps 1-2% of the entire store footprint.

However, for this store yesterday; well, it was more brand damaging than brand building.

The general level of fill (6pm, Wednesday) was really poor, non existent in some places, of course some areas of Florida are still recovering post the Hurricanes.

Whilst this is an explanation for Water being low; there's no excuse for what we are about to see.

Especially given Publix just down the road on an earlier visit was like a different universe.

Quality is a given for customers.

You can't afford to have anything on sale that falls below anyone's acceptable level of quality. The damage it does to the rest of the range (and by definition, brand) is huge.

When you're in the Target realm of developing own label brands and the associated quality that goes with Target.

These retail sins must be stamped out and things must be fixed, and quickly.

That was Produce which had comfortably the worst examples of quality I have seen for quite some time. Hugely damaging for the store and the wider company to boot.

How can it be so bad?

Chilled was arguably worse given the size of the area, even in comparison to Produce.

The door for the Milk chiller told its own story......... Where's the pride here?

It's hard to see any associate just leaving this, especially as Milk is filled more than once a day (you'd hope).

But what are they doing instead? Who should be doing this job?

A tiny area of the store but the lasting effect of this visit wasn't the excellence in brands or the quality of the non-food ranges. It was these basics across Produce and Chilled.

Cleanliness and Hygiene are so obvious, whether you're a "world class operator" like me (not my words!) Or someone who has a pair of eyes and can see.

How can anyone miss this? It's in Milk which is a key line that sells every day too! Plus Fruit and Vegetables which we all know "goes bad" eventually.

Forget the rest of the work in store; it's lost in this relatively tiny area of the store.

Customers are inferring everything as they travel the store, forming perceptions on value, quality, the state of the store or whether they're coming back.

They're not giving 28 days notice, or giving you one more chance. They leave and the chances are, you don't find out why they don't shop in your store any longer.

Then if they do depart for another retailer, you're spending margin through vouchers and the Circle app to get them back in store.

The stores must be better if you do tempt them back in, otherwise you're giving margin up to show them, you've changed nothing.

The definition of a fools errand.

Online customers are fickle in any case, competition is rife too, but the poor quality and availability here will not see any customer rushing back to Target for Groceries.

Associates were noted in store on this visit but they were either picking for online orders or putting stock back on shelves from Checkouts. No one was filling, or tidying.

What is the root cause?

It can't be associates just giving up, there's too much wrong.

Leadership have to answer for this, but equally, the priorities are hectic at this time of year. Resource was questionable, there weren't enough people around to fix these issues.

Despite these challenges, it's all fixable.

Availability in Target is such that sales growth could be relatively easily achieved (both online and in store) by driving availability and landing basic retail disciplines.

Whether that's re-affirming what's already in stores, or bringing a new perspective to things. It's all about control for store teams; this store was out of control.

Every retailer has an execution problem; that's the hazard of retail. But we can get you the execution through our proprietary, tailored retail process, communication and "how to" documentation.

This alongside our unique "feet on the floor" approach, working with the executives and the store teams means it all fits together nicely. Indeed our work has propelled one leading UK retailer to even greater success in recent years.

Whether you're Target, or another retailer reading this and wondering if your stores could be the same. Please reach out and we'd be happy to talk about what we've done so far.

Crucially, how we could prevent your customers experiencing this in your stores?

PS - we don't just drop tech in, give you a dashboard and ask for a testimonial.

That's cheating!

It's a long, hard road to develop and embed discipline and process.

But it's the only way to greatness.

More from Target in the coming weeks from my trip, alongside some excellence from Publix too.