MEGATHREAD Target shares tumble as retailer picks new CEO, says sales fell again

[jackandcat]

Our company is in trouble. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/20/target-tgt-q2-2025-earnings.html

 

[jackandcat]

Our company is in trouble. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/20/target-tgt-q2-2025-earnings.html

From today's Wall Street Journal -- article is behind a paywall -- https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/target-new-ceo-michael-fiddelke-969cb13f

Here are a few excerpts from the "most liked" reader comments to the WSJ article. User comments can be highly insightful.

Stores are messy and understocked, which is noted in the article but not featured. It's a huge issue, because neat, fully stocked stores are table stakes in retail. (Target feels like it's becoming Lampert-era Sears lately.) Stores are understaffed or poorly staffed and employee morale is nonexistent. 5% of the employees are happy to help, and 95% are annoyed you're there. Bad experience. Never enough checkout lanes open - and it's brutal. The last 2 Sundays, at mid-day in Chicago suburban locations, there have been exactly 2 checkout lanes open. It took me as long to checkout as it did to do our family's shopping for the week. Yikes.

Online pickup is an unmitigated disaster. You'll sit in your car for 20 minutes to get your order - even with no perishables in your purchase. It's often faster to shop in-store (until you need to checkout and there's no lanes open). Every other retailer has mastered this, without issue. Target's online pickup is unusable.

Notwithstanding that online pickup is unusable, at several locations, Target has stunningly reserved all parking **in front of the store** for online pickup. So, now in-store shoppers need to cross an empty football field of pavement to enter and exit the store... It's such a misunderstanding of the customer experience, you need to see it to believe it.

"Stylish items" wouldn't make my top 10 immediate concerns, fwiw.

When businesses weigh into complex, controversial political and social issues, they make what had been a commercial decision (I'm shopping for what I need or want) into a decision about supporting a political or cultural stance. That practice is going to alienate a portion of their market. Retracting that stance, after discovering that it alienates a portion of their market, alienates another portion of their market. No matter what the business does next, short of wholesale and well publicized leadership change, the business will struggle to get either alienated portion back.

Target is a horrible shopping experience. They have 50 cash registers, two of which might be open with long lines

Abandon political activism, focus on the reasons your company exists. When you pander to differing special interest groups you risk satisfying none and angering all.

Sell stylish items at decent prices in an edgy, uncluttered, and clean store, staffed by helpful folks.

I avoid going to Target. The mess is horrible, the checkout takes forever: only 1 [checkout register] is usually open, out of 7 or 8 [registers], and the self-checkout also takes forever. Why is that?

Look up an item online to see if they have it. Go to the store to buy it ( Target is only 1.5 miles from my house). Get there and it is 40% more to buy it in the store.

.stopped shopping at Target a while back...started when I noticed they actually gamed you and charged higher prices when you bought something in the store vs sitting in your car and ordering on line and having them bring it out to you in the parking lot...

 

[HRZone]

I've been gone for a few years now but I was always surprised Cornell was in charge for as long as he was. Most CEO's don't stay that long and while I think he did a lot to modernize the experience he was completely clueless to the experience of team members. He did a visit to our store back in 2018 and he looked disgusted to be with the common folk.

I also think politically they alienated both sides. First with the bathroom of your choosing and then eliminating DEI.

I know we struggled to staff my store when I was an ETL HR and I imagine it's only gotten worse.

 

[jackandcat]

Here's a very useful quote from the WSJ story itself:

He [CEO-designate Fiddelke] acknowledged that the shopper experience has degraded, with products too often out of stock and stores strained by the need to act both as e-commerce shipping hubs and as in-person shopping destinations.

In a Chicago-area test, Target is limiting which stores serve e-commerce orders, fulfilling those orders through stores that serve fewer in-person shoppers, he said. The company is also using new metrics to gauge out-of-stock levels better at peak shopping times on weekday afternoons and weekends, he said....“We’ve got some work to do to untangle that complexity because what we can’t have is any hiccups in the store experience,” he said. A faster embrace of new technology will also be important for Target’s turnaround, Fiddelke said.

Methinks this has been a huge problem that is seldom discussed. Drive-up orders sometimes arrive without advance notification, leading to a frantic scramble by a TM to pull the items from various shelves (and sometimes at a remote location for oversized merchandise like furniture, cribs and TVs), get everything scanned into the cart, and race everything out to the guest's vehicle amidst the guests who are entering and exiting the store -- or who want to ask questions -- and complete all of this within 3 minutes or receive a derogatory "Red" rating for not being fast enough. God help the drive-up TM whose guest included a Starbucks beverage in their pick-up order.......

Even when the Drive-Up Order guest sends the signal on the app that they are a few minutes away, allowing us to prep their order before their arrival, we are so understaffed at checkout lanes, self checkout and at the service desk that the designated Drive-Up TM ends up being pulled away for these tasks, hence missing time to prep orders when all of a sudden three Drive Up Order guests arrive at literally the same time plus there's a Pick-Up guest standing right in front of you.

Fulfillment TMs have to navigate through the store to pull items for Order Pickup or Drive Up Orders, sometimes unintentionally "getting in the way" of guests coming around the corner to find the correct flavor of Bush's Baked Beans at the shelf location. Compounding all of this is Target's increased willingness to fill our once-renowned open racetrack with clumsy in-walkway displays, sometimes with goods piled up on wooden pallets. Our stores are harder to navigate than they were pre-COVID because those "racetrack" walkways are now obstructed by merchandising displays and kiosks. This not only affects our in-store guests directly, creating a mental stress which could be motivating some guests to finish their shopping ASAP and get the shell outta there because of claustrophobic-like stress. That reduces the sales we would have made if the guest felt comfortable "lingering longer" in a less-cluttered store.

These things all impair the guest experience. With the frantic pressure to complete some in-store tasks in a minimal amount of time (or be slapped with a punitive Red rating), something has to give.

 

[Ringwraith917]

Sell stylish items at decent prices in an edgy, uncluttered, and clean store, staffed by helpful folks.

THIS!!

"racetrack" walkways are now obstructed by merchandising displays and kiosks

Oh I hate the in-aisle displays so much! It completely ruins the "wide bright aisles" asthetic.

 

[buliSBI]

saw the announcement that the ceo will leave in Feb 2026

 

[Stocker]

saw the announcement that the ceo will leave in Feb 2026

Yet the Minneapolis-based retailer pointed toward the future – and its focus on getting back to growth – by naming its next CEO. Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke, who has also served as Target’s CFO, will step into the role on Feb. 1. He will succeed CEO Brian Cornell, 66, who will become executive chair of Target’s board of directors. Fiddelke is a 20-year Target veteran.

Translated this basically means nothing will change that much, at least for the better.