TUESDAY January 20, 2015 Vol. 30 • No. 6 ••• $1.25 inc. G.S.T.
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Target closing its doors across the country As many as 150 local jobs affected Scott Stanfield
AAP halts Hornby Island fire hall ... Page 2
Toddler overcoming the odds every day ... Page 3 Community Foundation doles out funds..... Page 4
Gas prices dropped below 90 cents per litre in Courtenay over the weekend.
Despite the top-quality entertainment being offered, attendance at WinterJam concerts has been disappointing.
Record Staff
Target Corporation is pulling the plug on its Canadian stores because the U.S.-based retailer has been losing billions since venturing north of the border less than two years ago. The Courtenay Target and all other Canadian outlets are expected to close in 16 to 20 weeks, the company said Thursday. “We tried to do too much, much too fast,” Target spokesperson Molly Snyder said from headquarters in Minneapolis. “In doing so, we did face some significant operational challenges.” Since the start of 2011, she said Target has devoted about $7 billion in resources – $4.5 billion of capital investment and $2.5 billion in operating losses. There are 133 Target stores in Canada with about 17,600 employees. The Courtenay store opened in summer 2013 at the former Zellers location at Driftwood Mall. Pat McKenna is the store team leader. While officials would not respond to requests as to the number of jobs to be lost with the Courtenay closing, they did say, at the time of the opening, that the store would employ “about 150 team members”. Target also has outlets in Campbell River, Nanaimo and Victoria. The store was bustling Friday with customers scouring the shelves for discounted merchandise. “(We shop) here a little bit, about two or three times a month,” said customers Shane
The Courtenay Target store, which opened in summer 2013 at the former Zellers location at Driftwood Mall, is closing along with its 132 other locations across Canada. PHOTO BY ERIN HALUSCHAK and Stephanie outside the store Friday afternoon. “Now we’ll probably have to go to Walmart. (Target closing) will definitely kill the mall.” Another shopper said while she doesn’t shop at the store often, she noted “it’s a shame — it was just not a good business model for Canada.” Snyder notes the company faced challenges with in-stocks and out-of-stocks. “We launched a new distribution and supply-team model when we came to Canada, and we struggled with that,” she said, noting “issues of pricing perception. “The challenges were just too great to overcome, and they didn’t
inspire the guests to come back.” She said the company has seen some “renewed momentum” in the U.S. where it has 1,801 stores. Target launched in Canada in March, 2013. “It was our first international expansion,” Snyder said. “We absolutely came to Canada for all the right reasons. We knew guests had an affinity for the Target brand. We knew that our value proposition had a lot of great potential. What it came down to is, because of the real estate opportunity that we were able to seize upon in terms of requiring the lease holds in the dollar stores, we just moved too quickly. “While this has been an incredibly hard decision, this allows us
to focus our efforts domestically in the U.S.” Target Corporation has created a trust fund that will provide a minimum 16 weeks of compensation to most Canadian-based employees, including payments and benefit coverage for those not required for the full wind-down period. “That was something that was really important to our CEO,” Snyder said. “As we exit the country we wanted to make sure we were treating our teams fairly.” Stores will remain open during the liquidation process.
reporter@comoxvalleyrecord.com
-With a file from Erin Haluschak
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