K-Mart vs Wal Mart vs Target vs Sears vs whatever your local highmarket department store is.

there is an old Sears in Brooklyn. I may go there tom'w morning for a doorbuster New Balance sale.

I remember these Sears that were these huge castle like buildings. Like this one in Memphis or this one in Minneapolis.

At Sears, Eddie Lampert's Warring Divisions Model Adds to the Troubles

Once you get to this sentence:

"Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.

the rest of the story writes itself.

Sears brings you...Elegant Moments.

Like this.

Not *exactly* SFW.

http://www.businessinsider.com/target-shuts-down-canada-operations-2015-1

Target closing all 133 Canadian stores after being in the market for only two years.

yeah that's been a colossal shitshow. just for local economic health reasons i hope they figure their shit out (same with best buy, god)

It sucks that 17,000 people are about to be laid off.

What happened? There can't be that much of a cultural difference.

Though to add to this:

While the move is not a surprise, it sends a stark reminder to American retailers who think that brands between the U.S. and Canada face no real consumer borders. Burger King, which recently acquired the Canadian brand Tim Hortons, could face its own obstacles trying to get American consumers to embrace the Canadian coffee shop chain.

I will be the first in line at the Little Rock Tim Hortons.

What happened?

They opened all 130 stores (at once instead of rolling it out slowly) and had no real plan for distribution to those 130 stores. Shelves were often empty and they were almost always sold out of everything that was on sale/advertised in their flyers. We have one very close and I have really liked it (at minimum it is SO MUCH cleaner and visually appealing than the gross old Zellers it replaced), so I am bummed it's going, but it definitely had stocking problems that they could not seem to sort out.

Also just realising this means the only Starbucks nearby is probably closing too and omg NO

wow, my 23-year-old self just read my comments in this thread and killed herself

this article from last year goes into what went wrong : http://gawker.com/why-was-target-canada-such-a-disaster-1579554288

I remember going into a Target several months after it opened and there were still many empty shelves. I think most people just stopped going to Target, because you often didn't find what you needed. Things may have improved, but Target was still stuck with a bad reputation.

They opened all 130 stores (at once instead of rolling it out slowly)

well that's insane.

Sounds like they... missed their target

I feel like if you asked 100 people at random, "What do you think would happen if (insert retail chain) simultaneously opened 130 stores in a new and untested market?", you would probably receive 100 variations of the same correct answer.

Not unhappy this didn't turn out well, but unhappy for all the people laid off. Can we just go back to it being Zellers and keep the employees?

well that's insane.

Yeah it felt insane even when they started doing it. Until then, Target was viewed here like "oooh fancy! but cheap! you can only get this shit in the States!" and everyone took weekend trips to Buffalo just to shop there. People were excited it was coming...so don't open one in, like, Chatham, Ontario. If they had opened one or two big flagship stores in the Greater Toronto Area and made them awesome, they could have maintained the appeal.

Yeah, in Vancouver, Walmart is in such a suburbany area. Superstore was/is usually closer.

There's a Costco downtown, though. But I can never see myself buying from it unless it was to split it with friends.

I am curious to see what, if anything, takes their place. What else is there to fill those anchor spots in malls and large retail park units? Presumably some of them will be taken up by other big box retailers but 100+ units?

If it's anything like what happened in the US, expect an eventual spike in Churches and/or Fitness Clubs/Membership Gyms.

Were the stores put into existing locations? Tell me they didn't build 130 Targets all at once.

No, they took over a really shitty chain called Zellers which were mostly dim, filthy and empty and no-one liked going there - maybe another problem? I see that they had problems with distribution and so on but another thing is that may we don't need any more stores selling crap. All the urban areas of Canada already have more of that than they need thanks.

Haha, I think I saw this episode of Hoarders.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Zellers_Walmart_comparison.jpg/800px-Zellers_Walmart_comparison.jpg

We had a Sears at our local mall since the mall began in the late sixties. Just a few years ago, it closed. After forty some years. They're putting an athletic facility in its place.

I've learned it doesn't pay to lash out at "the invisible hand", but replacing an institution with a sports facility is, like a lot of these big box replacements, a comment on what corporate America thinks of certain demographics.

We lost our Target, too, but to be frank, they didn't try very hard at that location to win people's love. It was nowhere near as nice as the one five miles east.

Something has to change wrt the values that inform urban planning but I've been told I am a fool.

Target in AU must be an entirely different company. Its not fancy in the slightest, and has no chance of going out of business any time soon. I dont mind it's clothes tbh, if I can get past the whole "this was made in a sweatshop in bangladesh for 10 cents" guilt.

(I just googled it - it is a diff company. Started the same year!)

Some Zellers were dingy, but some were okay. It was a good place to find remaindered DVDs, sometimes highly unlikely ones like Aparajito. I rarely went to the Target close to me.

Target's reputation as an "upscale" mass retail store is a little overblown. A lot of the things they sell are a step or two up from Walmart, and it's nice that they don't have music playing over the store PA (though I don't think many stores do that anymore, following the model started by Target), but it's kind of like getting Romaine lettuce on your Whopper instead of Iceberg.

With Target, I think it depends on the store. Stores in affluent neighborhoods will stock the funky crockery and yuppie foodstuffs many of us have come to love.

They do have a decent food selection, for example, I got samosas there.

For food, Meijer can't be beat, although I try to stay away because they discriminate against gays.

http://www.theprovince.com/business/worked+Target+here+what/10733048/story.html

The closest Zellers to me was in Oakridge Centre and I rarely went there. Oakridge Centre itself always felt kind of weird to go to. Going there specifically to shop at Target would feel even more strange (I never went).

The Targets in the US are marginally better, but really, I'm not a fan. I've noticed most big box stores in the US vary greatly in quality depending on your area, which, I don't know why, I still find weird. In my experience, I don't think quality varies that greatly between stores in Canada, but I could be wrong. Like, going to a Ralph's in an LA suburb is quite different from going to one in Koreatown or on the Westside, and different people shop there, of course. They really, really cater to their demographic, so if I go to a Ralph's in a predominantly Hispanic/'international'(?) neighbourhood, they sell more international/ethnic foods, but if I go to one in West Hollywood or the Westside they sell more generic things and not a lot of variety, or more boutique-y style teas and stuff. It's kind of a weird comment on your demographics maybe?

Also, I can't get ham/'Canadian Bacon' in some Ralph's/big box stores but yes in other ones.

Thinking about what I wrote, it feels like the US truly works on the concept of 'Can this scale?' because everything (good and bad) is amplified. So they really have to micromanage.

It sounds bizarre how poorly managed Target was in Canada and really feel for those laid off.

Clem otm about the DVDs - Zellers is where I found King Vidor's Hallelujah! and the complete '72 Canada-Soviet series

fwiw, I don't think opening 130 stores with empty shelves at once would exactly take off in the U.S. either.

Target in AU must be an entirely different company. Its not fancy in the slightest, and has no chance of going out of business any time soon. I dont mind it's clothes tbh, if I can get past the whole "this was made in a sweatshop in bangladesh for 10 cents" guilt.

― I checked Snoops , and it is for real (Trayce), Thursday, January 15, 2015 9:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(I just googled it - it is a diff company. Started the same year!)

― I checked Snoops , and it is for real (Trayce), Thursday, January 15, 2015 9:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have been to the Target at Rundle Mall in Adelaide. That's my Australia story.

Our local Target that closed, leaving a big ugly empty box, actually had the problem of RUNNING OUT OF STUFF. Especially stuff for kids - clothes, toys, furniture...then people would come in, see the empty shelves, and drive somewhere else. Also empty shelves are UGLY and make people feel that they are shopping in a low-quality place. Every move they made screamed "ghetto" - no wonder their store shut.

So you have to close because you didn't re-stock enough?? I'm guessing they could have stayed open if they had a better sense of demographics.

It's very NYC that we have multiple Targets but it would be absolutely unconscionable for there to be a Wal-Mart.

This is what a Target in Australia looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/hnWsuh0.jpg

and Woolworth's is a grocery store, so I don't know what's going on there.

Looks like the only difference between Australian Target and North American Target is uppercase letters.

Well, among other things.

http://i.imgur.com/Zq5PqTR.jpg

I think NA Target has a few smaller mall/downtown locations—but not too many.

Both the NYC targets I know are mall targets, albeit multi-floor and fairly large.

We used to go more before we started just buying everything online. They're good for certain things, like cheap houseware and cheap articles of clothing where you don't care a ton about the quality (like a pack of tees or some swim trunks)

There are bigbox Targets in AU if you go out into the burbs. Prob not *as* big, though.

And we have KMart here and apparently *that* has nothing to do with the US one either. In fact the only thing that does afaik is Costco.

(I'm not counting more global things like Ikea, Aldi, etc)