They're the consulting company brought in to decide our fates. They're basically "The Bobs" of Office Space. Or blame the hiring managers who allowed Target to get bloated in the first place. It's not our fault they hire me too many people.
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Don't blame Alvarez, or Brian. He's doing what had to be done to make up for years of mistakes.
Face it, sales have sucked for along and time and yet, they kept adding more and more people.
They created organizations to take over pricing, assortment planning, segmentation, promotional planning, and on and on. With the promise that by adding more people and more systems and more processes sales would increase, margins would improve. and, at the end of the day, they took their eye of the guest. Sales were declining. Amazon was eating our lunch, during the recession we let massive numbers of people walk away from Target because Gregg, and the gang on Lake Minnetonka, didn't see that our guests were leaving. We were perceived as being too expensive, they felt that shopping at Target made them feel guilty, and the bailed, And they never came back.
We didn't attract the millenials because we weren't cool any more. Assortments were cut, Optimized sorry, and we became just another discounter, lost that special find experience that guests liked.
Our online strategy was years behind.
There's a ton of reason why this happened, at the end, bad strategies that we all lined up for and leadership that, after Bob left, wasn't interested in dissent or criticism.
That's why we got where were.
This isn't Brian's fault, this is Gregg's fault. If Gregg wouldn't have made so many terrible choices we wouldn't be in this position now.
It is the norm hire a consulting company who doesnt know the business and then the leaders hands are clean. I blame Brian his only strategy is to cut. He is a hack and slash artist. He may not have set Target on this path but he definetly wont be the one to right the revenue ship.
This is very incorrect. Alvarez & Marsal is just the sponsor for Target Canada's CCAA proceedings. You can argue don't blame Brian, because if he didn't do it...someone else would. It all starts with the board and Roxanne, dearest.