So long, Target

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/02/2015 (3996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’ll admit it: I was excited for Target’s Canadian arrival.

I’m sure big-city folks — or Americans — would think it rather quaint and small-town to be excited for a store, but I was. In my early 20s, I made many a trip south of the border to fill my closet with cheap treasures from Target, that bastion of fast-fashion. I never thought much about how these trendy, one-season pieces — a silky elephant-print crop top comes to mind — could be so cheap; I was focused on how much I could get for how little.

More than that, though, Target — and other fast-fashion retailers such as Forever 21 and H&M, two other stores we didn’t have at the time — allowed me to actually participate in fashion, something I loved (and still love) yet always felt exclusive, aspirational and just out of reach, on a freelance writer’s budget. I still wear some of my Target purchases; others languished in my closet, tags on, until I eventually gave them away. It didn’t matter. Everything was so cheap.

I am not proud of that admission. I was a product of the frenzied consumer culture in which we live, where everything is increasingly disposable, and shopping is now a recreational activity, a way to de-stress and to celebrate. Bad day at work? Break out the Visa. Good day at work? Break out the Visa. Ours is a culture in which it’s encouraged to, in the words of Parks and Recreation’s Tom and Donna, “treat yo self” on luxury goods. More and more Canadians are living beyond their means. Our national median net worth is growing — the average Canadian household was worth $232,200 in the third quarter of 2014 — but so, too, is our debt. In 2014, Canadians owed $1.63 for every dollar of disposable income. Forget the Joneses; we’re trying to keep up with the Americans.

It should have been a sign that no one exactly broke out the confetti canons for Target’s Canadian debut. When IKEA opened its Winnipeg location in 2012, it was a splashy and hyped event — which supported, in many ways, the rather noxious idea the addition of an IKEA (or any popular chain) somehow gave our mid-sized Canadian metropolis a sort of ‘we-have-arrived’ legitimacy. Target’s Canadian expansion, by comparison, was met with an indifferent shrug. People were underwhelmed by the merchandise, shelves were chronically under-stocked and the prices were too high. Target fell way short of everyone’s expectations — including its own.

While my own spending tendencies have been kept in check — having a mortgage to pay will do that — I shopped at Target when it was here, and I will be sad to see it go. But it just wasn’t the same. Canadian Target was inferior to American Target in too may ways and, just 22 months after they opened, Target announced in January it was shutting all 133 of its Canadian stores. Target’s 17,600 Canadian workers were summarily laid off, while ex-CEO Gregg Steinhafel walked away with $61 million last May. Target Canada was, by anyone’s account, a spectacular failure.

I went to my Target at Grant Park Shopping Centre Thursday morning. It was depressing and kind of gross in the way all everything-must-go sales are depressing and kind of gross, but it was busy. The mood among shoppers toggled between we’re-all-in-this together camaraderie and barely concealed disappointment; from what I overheard, many people were put off by the fact most items were only marked down by 10 to 30 per cent at most. Kudos to the workers, who were nothing but professional despite the fact they were on a sinking ship.

By mid-morning, a line was snaking through the back of the store, but people’s carts weren’t exactly bursting with merchandise. One man braved the impossibly long line to purchase a single fake potted orchid. I admired his commitment. I wondered if he, like so many other people, was buying something –anything — simply because it was on sale.

Gary, a 52-year-old Winnipegger, was never really a Target shopper, but was seduced by the promise of discounts. “I’m looking around trying to find something, and I can’t find anything I really want,” he said. “I came in here to see what they had, but even before the sale, I found the prices were too high.” Gary’s cart was empty.

“This is basically an overpriced Walmart,” he said. “Walmart had the market already.”

That was a sentiment echoed by Megan Grolla, 22, who was stocking up on household goods for her new home. I ask her if she was a Target fan. “Yeah?” she responded. “I was really excited when it was coming, but when it got here, it was more expensive than the other big stores, like Walmart.”

There will not be a Target-shaped hole left in Megan’s heart. “There’s other big stores all around everywhere where I can get good prices on little necessities that I need, and there are local stores I can shop at,” she said.

As for me, I left Target without buying anything.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca