It was one of the biggest retail-related stories in Canada back in 2015. I remember first hearing about it and being shocked. It was final. Target Canada was closing down all of its’ stores after a mere 2 years in business. For such a large retail chain, why did it fail, and how did it fail?
In January 2015, it was announced that all 133 of its stores across
Canada would slowly close down, with over 17,000 employees being effected by the result. In 2014, Target Canada was met with mediocre to poor sales, giving them the only option of hoping for a massive change in their holiday sales. Unfortunately, this was not the case, giving no surprise as to why they had to close down all their stores. How did Target Canada go from an optimistic idea to a failure in the span of 2 years?
First of all, Target Canada had lots of trouble having an influx of inventory products. This could be in part of poor management and
cooperation between Target and its inventory-specific countercompanies. Not only this, but the prices in Target were also exceptionally higher than those in the US, as well as having little to no online presence and competition with other similar department stores.
All of these reasons could have been fixed with proper communication and structure. It seemed as if during these two years, Target was in ‘Storming’ in the group development process. By doing this, Target was unable to perform at expectations that were initially needed. Group development is a very important process, and must be completed in the following steps, those being forming, storming, norming, and performing. Unfortunately, Target was stuck in this storming process, as previously mentioned. Many of its problems that lead to its initial destruction was because there was no proper structure, possibly due to insufficient management strategies.
With proper help, Target could have fixed these errors and gone straight to norming, possibly even performing. If the case, Target could have matched the success that other major retailers have done, such as Walmart, Winners, and Nordstrom (despite their different offerings). When it comes to any company or workplace, proper group development is vital to ensuring a successful implementation, especially when its a massive company adapting to a new country. It looks like Target missed its mark with this one.
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