The “data” in question is reported theft, but the article completely ignores the possibility that theft goes unreported in these areas because the population is aware that reporting the theft will do nothing. It’s hard to take the article seriously when it doesn’t even acknowledge this possible flaw in their data.
The other data point mentioned is “shrink”, which isn’t up much. As far as I can tell, this number is a kind of national average, so I don’t see how it has any bearing on stores which were closed because they are outliers.
You raise some good points about the data and analysis here, but it seems curious you’re willing to accept Target’s claims without any data or analysis at all.
Certainly retail theft is a big problem, and Target is strongly incentivized to put pressure on government to do something. So I would expect them to blame theft for any store closure, even if was for orthogonal reasons like low sales, problems with building systems, demographic trends, whatever.
The Seattle Times compared stores closing with stores remaining open and found that (1) the stores closing had fewer calls to the police than the stores remaining open, and (2) the stores closing just happen to be Target's new smaller-format stores, which have been seriously underperforming nationally.
Retail "shrink" includes inventory losses from all causes -- breakage, spoilage, customer theft, employee theft, paperwork theft from fake invoices and receiving errors, and even unknown causes. It's the difference between the inventory they pay for, and the inventory they sell and physically count.
Total shrink as a percentage of sales hasn't changed much over the years, so a skeptical mind might wonder why there's suddenly this coordinated, nationwide, nonstop, pervasive hyperventilating over retail theft. A skeptical mind might wonder if there's a hidden agenda driving this messaging.
Total shrink data in the article was taken from national average not specific stores. There is no specific shrink data from these stores, so while total shrink on a national level hasn't changed much in years, they have no evidence that total shrink at these specific stores has or hasn't changed.
I'm not really for or against Target. I just feel that the quality of using some tangentially associated data while interesting really isn't enough to make assertions that "the data tells a different story" or that Target is covering up internal problems. It's bad journalism to just do some analysis on some data you happen to have and then claim someone who has the data's assertion is totally false.
Other potential obvious flaws in methodology:
1. Analyzing the quantity of reported theft calls probably only means thefts where the police were able to make an arrest. Not th
2. Different thefts might result in different dollar amounts and quantity of thefts is probably less important to target than total value of theft.
3. Smaller stores may experience less quantity or value of theft, but have higher levels of overall theft, because they are smaller and have less sales and less traffic.
If total shrink as a percentage of sales has remained within a narrow band for many years, then it's natural to wonder why there's suddenly wall-to-wall coverage of the ostensible crisis of retail theft.
From the panicked noises made by this CEO and his media amplifiers, you'd think losses must be up by a factor of ten.
The fact that total losses are relatively constant gives the lie to the entire narrative.
If total shrink hasn't changed, then total shrink hasn't changed.
The end.
If total shrink hasn't changed, then neither has any of it's components, of if any has, then something else got better by the same amount, and so what's the problem? If theft losses went up but something else got better by the same amount, then npthing changed, and so why are they closing again?
Target is specifically being targetted? Suffering theft no one else is suffering? Walmart did something new to protect itself better and drove all the theft to Target? There is no reasonable way to have a stable total and yet Taget has some new drastically increased problem.
Total shrinkage not changing means there is no new or increased theft problem.
Shrink is not evenly distributed throughout a chain or evenly across all inventory. Some stores experience sub-1% shrink. The stores that get closed are more like >5% for multiple years.
> Suffering theft no one else is suffering?
Other major retailers are experiencing the same problem and have closed stores for the same reasons.
And yet the average has not increased, and so you must be suggesting that Target and 'other major retailers' have had increased theft, and some equal number of others have apparently been gifted with negative theft.
I'm saying that Target closes stores with high shrink and thus total shrink hasn't changed, because when shrink increases companies take action and close the stores with high shrink. I'm suggesting that a store with above average shrink in a portfolio of many stores will not meaningfully move the overall average in a statistic of all the stores in the entire country or target's entire portfolio.
But I'm not trying to write a defense of Target. You may be correct. You may be incorrect. There simply isn't enough data to accurately draw a conclusion and I'm just offended that journalists inflate stories that give extreme results but very weak foundations instead of you know... doing journalism correctly based on actual real data not suppositions based on a bunch of national averages as though they are accurately depicting actual shrink in a specific store in a specific market.
But then there is no new increased theft problem, there is a bad store or a store in a bad area (which other commenters have said both are the case here). The criticism is exactly that they tried to make business as usual look like some new general problem they suddenly have that they didn't have yesterday.
> so I don’t see how it has any bearing on stores which were closed because they are outliers.
So we have flawed data and a corporate press release with no data and motivation to avoid any conversation about closing stores for any reason that could reflect poorly on the company's fundamentals.
(hard to take a comment seriously when it doesn’t even acknowledge this possible flaw in their premise?)
Is there any reason to believe that the degree of unreported theft in one store is any different than unreported theft at another? If unreported theft is similar across stores then it would seem to be essentially noise in the statistics.
It's odd that by closing their brick and mortar stores they're essentially rolling up their business and conceding Amazon all those customers.
Yes. I grew up in a grocery store basically, shrink could vary 30% or more between stores. Stores with liquor in the back corners could easily be 10% more.
Theft is only reported if you caught somebody, which you basically don’t try to do anymore
You could be right — about uneven distribution of theft (shrink?).
Nonetheless, with the aggressive inventory practices of retailers these days, whether a theft is reported or not should be of little issue — Target already knows how much stuff is missing.
From where I've been sitting, big box retailers have been running on the zeal of expansionism for decades now.
No profit? Then by all means they can sit back and let Dollar General come in and capture the retail of a town.
In the past this has generally been bad news for an entrenched retailer and the first signs of fracturing. It's hard for me to care too much though what happens to these big chains.
I think you are mixing up cause and effect. It might be a bad sign for a retailer if it has unprofitable stores, but that doesn’t mean keeping them open is going to help.
> While crime data doesn't capture all incidents of theft, as some go unreported, it does provide a reliable way to measure relative levels of theft among stores.
On what basis do you make the assumption that a multinational retailer, specifically one with some of the most aggressive loss prevention policies in the first world, would not keep track of theft in some stores?
It's not the same assumption. Target might not know theft has occurred at the time. It will show up later when doing inventory as a discrepancy and be recorded as shrinkage. Target in such a case has nothing to report to the police.
There may also be reasons not to report known cases of theft. Lack of evidence, uncooperative police and/or prosecutor, or small enough value so that the effort isn't worth it, for example.
The article is BS, just look at the SF map where it states that there's barely any shoplifting in SF because only ~80 reports where made on a particular area.
Anyone from the Bay Area will tell you that there is much more rampant shoplifting, than what is reported because everyone knows there is no point in reporting it
I'm from the Bay Area and I have little first-hand data about shoplifting or the ineffectiveness of reporting it. I do know that some Walgreens stores have more merchandise under lock and key than others.
I live in Seattle, so I feel somewhat qualified to chime in. The article makes a good point that the Targets being closed here are the new smaller urban ones. The few times I have been in them, they are grossly understocked and give off a very unwelcoming feeling compared to the normal Targets like the one in Northgate.
Not to say that’s the reason for closing, because they are certainly in high crime areas that the article’s data fails to represent. Also worth noting that the Northgate one is at the top of a multi level mall structure so crime is much less likely to happen there despite it being a much worse area.
I live right by Portland and have visited the three stores that are closing there. Every target in this area is hit hard by theft because there are many unhoused people who need things, or addicted people who need things to sell, and word got out that target wasn’t going to let their security people touch anybody.
The three stores closing here are some of the hardest to drive to, so it’s no surprise to me that the average payment size would be smaller and result in way slimmer margins there.
This is also following all Walmarts in town closing, likely for theft as well, Nikes employee store downtown closing due to theft and employee unsafety, and countless local businesses packing up shop and moving to other areas or shutting their doors.
It’s a shame but it’s so common in the area that the news didn’t surprise me in the slightest.
That target used to be the closest one to me, and I NEVER went there. That store was awful in every way, I don’t doubt theft was bad, but I doubt that if theft went away it would have kept the store alive.
If you've ever dealt with NYC cops, you know they loathe to accept crime reports. I'm not sure the reason, maybe they want to keep the reported crime rate down, maybe they just don't want to do the desk work of writing the report, but they may gaslight you to stop you from reporting a crime.
Example: a neighborhood acquaintance (pizza shop operator in the UWS) was unloading supplies from his car. A dude jumped in the car and tried to take off with it. Revved the engine but wasn't able to get it into gear. He was wrestled out and the cops came. The cops kept asking questions like "are you sure he wasn't just taking a seat and relaxing?", "How do we know you didn't say he could sit there?", "Are all your restaurant licenses up to date?", "He could sue you for holding him down like that", etc, ultimately leading the victim to tell the cops to just fuck off and they let the dude just walk away.
Target publishes quarterly reports with the SEC. It lists the losses due to theft.
There is a strange wish in progressive circles that crime isn't the cause of things and that crime isn't rising. "I was wrong and my ideas are dangerous" is a very difficult thing for people to admit.
I took a look at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/27419/00000274192100... and searched for theft, and found this text as the only hit: "data loss or theft [...] could [...] adversely affect our results of operations. We continually invest to maintain and update our computer systems."
What are you finding in the SEC reports about theft? I'm not an expert at reading them.
When I tried that, it didn't show a lot of detail. It seems they blend shrinkage generally into the cost of goods sold, and the original article in the thread discusses the idea that shrinkage is mostly caused by employees, not non-employee theft. I consider employee theft to be not the kind retail theft that news articles are really about. I can't find what you're saying, losses due to theft generally, nor can I find something specific about non-employee theft. Let me know if you can find something else I can search for, since I am quite new to this.
This. Everyone agrees that retail theft is a problem, the dispute is whether to address it by looking at root causes or just to yell at people to get a third job and stop criming.
I read the article and perhaps I missed it, but does the author propose a reason other than theft why these stores are closing? Is there an implied reason that I’m just too obtuse to catch?
The other data point mentioned is “shrink”, which isn’t up much. As far as I can tell, this number is a kind of national average, so I don’t see how it has any bearing on stores which were closed because they are outliers.