Target said earlier this year that they didn’t want to get the Bud Light treatment after a backlash began over their line of transgender clothing for kids. But it looks like that is what happened, at least to some degree.
For the first time in six years Target said their sales dropped after the pride month backlash:
NY POST – Target’s said its quarterly sales fell for the first time in six years — a result of customers’ “negative reaction” to its spring “Pride” clothing collection that featured “tuck-friendly” swimwear and LGBTQ-friendly gear for infants and children.
Target’s CFO Michael Fiddelke addressed Target’s disastrous rainbow-clad collection in an earnings call on Wednesday, saying: “Traffic and top line trends were affected by the reaction to our Pride assortment.”
Sales at stores and digital channels open for at least a year were off 5.4% from a year earlier, according to Target’s Q2 earnings report released Wednesday, while digital sales slipped 10.5%.
Fiddelke said on the call that the retailer couldn’t quantify the impact the Pride collection alone had on comparable sales.
Brian Cornell, who’s been Target’s CEO since 2014, chimed in, adding that “the impact of inflation” contributed to the quarter’s losses.
The hefty losses were the result of a boycott that lasted over two weeks — triggered by Target’s release of “PRIDE” in May — an LGBTQ-friendly line that includes clothing for children and “tuck-friendly” women’s swimwear with “extra crotch coverage.”
Customers accused Target of grooming children with the items — including alt-right rapper Forgiato Blow who topped iTunes charts with his rap song, “Boycott Target” that addressed an LGBTQ “agenda” that the rapper sings has gone “too far.”
The fierce backlash from conservative consumers, including reactions that turned aggressive in some stores, pushed Target to yank some of its Pride merchandise from shelves in select locations and move displays farther back in others.
Has Target learned a valuable lesson? I hope so but I suspect it’s unlikely. They’ve been on the corporate forefront pushing LGBT crap for years. But the latest boycott may have been the most significant they’ve had to content with, so perhaps they will think twice before doing something like this again.