15 January 2015 (17:04 UTC-07 Tango)/24 Rab al’Awwal 1436/25 Dey 1393/25 Yi-Chou 4712

“The losses were just too great.”-Brian Cornell, ceo

Less than one year after officially opening its first stores in Canada, U.S. based (Minnesota) retailer Target threw in the towel, basically saying the Canadian economy sucks ass!  All 133 stores to shutdown and 17-thousand 6-hundred Canadians will become jobless!

In 2011 Target took over Canadian retailer Zellers (to the tune of $1.83-billion CAD).  It took two years to convert all the stores into the Target format, and the official “soft” opening for many of the Canuck Targets was in 2013.  March of 2014 saw the last “milestone” grand opening of a new Canadian Target store.

Target Canada administrators say the economy is so bad in Canada that there was no way they could make a profit until 2021, and investors can’t wait that long.  However, they also blamed a dysfunctional supply system that left many Canadian Targets without merchandise.

Administrators also blamed Canadian government price regulations, reports say shoppers complained that prices at Target were too high as a result.  An Associated Press report quoted one shopper blaming Target for high prices, adding “They think we’re idiots or something.” (well, yes you guys are idiots because the U.S. doesn’t impose price regulations like your Canadian government does)

Competition with other companies, both U.S. and Canadian, was also blamed.

Target expects a $5.4-billion USD loss for its 4th quarter 2014!  The lesson learned; it’s not a good idea to do business in Canada.  Target employees were quoted as saying “No one was happy about it.”  However, that’s not true as investors were very happy about the exit from Canada, because they drove the price of Target stocks up 2% upon hearing the news!

Massive retail exodus from Canada underway