"Uncertainty clouds holiday shopping season after mixed forecasts from Walmart, Target," Reuters reported Wednesday. "Target sounds the alarm bell on holiday shopping," CNN reported Wednesday afternoon. "Target sounds the alarm on holiday shopping after 3rd quarter struggles," USA Today published.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Target isn't doing so well, so the mainstream media assumes the holiday shopping season won't be too great, either. I'll admit, it got me down. The economy has had a fairly negative impact on my life this year, as I'm sure it has many of you, and I was hoping the red wave we saw on Election Day may give people enough hope to get things going again.
But then I took a deeper dive. The CNN article goes on to explain the doom and gloom that Target is experiencing. "The company forecast Wednesday that sales during the final quarter of the year will be flat, and Target lowered its profit forecast. Target also reported a sluggish sales increase of just 0.3% during its latest quarter. Shares of Target (TGT) plunged 22% Wednesday. It was Target’s worst trading day in more than two years."
Buried at the bottom of the article is a paragraph on just how well Walmart is doing (sales at stores open for at least a year grew 5.3% last quarter compared to last year, and its overall profit grew 8.2% last quarter). Because of this, Walmart expects a strong holiday shopping season, and so does TJX, the company that owns brands like Marshall's, HomeGoods, and TJ Maxx.
In other words, most major retailers seem to be feeling pretty good about the holiday shopping season. Everyone but Target. And I can't help but wonder if it's more a sign of the times rather than some kind of major economic indicator.
"Target is a bellwether for consumers’ spending habits and the retail sector as a whole," the CNN article states. But is it still?
It's no secret that Target has gone woke in recent years, pandering to a very small percentage of the population. In 2016, the company announced on its website that it would allow transgender employees and customers to use the bathroom associated with the gender they identified with, sparking backlash. The retailer is also a big supporter of Pride Month, but last summer, it went a bit overboard, advertising and selling items like a trans woman's "tuck wear" bathing suits with a pouch so men could tuck their genitals out of sight, as well as gay pride and trans pride clothing for children and adults.
I've had friends and family members tell me for years that they will no longer shop at Target. Some of it has to do with prices and some of the aesthetic changes the store has made. I don't shop there often myself, but the last time I was in a Target store, it seemed almost like it was having an identity crisis, like it was trying to look like some trendy boutique rather than a big box store where I can run in on the day before a summer trip and grab a cheap sundress and a bottle of sunscreen.
But most of the people I know personally who won't shop at Target anymore do so because they're tired of the woke stuff. And it seems like most of the rest of the country is, too, if Election Day was any indication. But let's face it: Before Donald Trump and the Republicans won big on Nov. 5, the media was falling all over itself to tell you how great the Biden/Harris economy was. Now that Trump is returning to office, they're probably gearing up to point out every little thing that goes wrong.
As for this holiday shopping season, I'm far from an expert on the matter and could be totally wrong, but it seems to me like Target should no longer be the "bellwether for consumers' spending habits."
