신변잡기 (쓴맛) 150116

'미네소타주 미니애폴리스에 위치한 T사는 2015년 1월 15일 아침 캐나다 내 133개 매장의 운영을 전면 중단한다는 발표를 했다. 22개월 운영에 누적적자 5.6 billion 달러(한화 5조 6천억)를 감수하고 내린 결정이라 한다. 17,600명의 종업원이 일자리를 잃게 되었다.'

한국에서 캐나다에 이주해 온 지 2년째 되는 해였다. 젊은 나이에 마냥 쉬고 있기도 그랬다. 가게를 보러 다녔다. 두 개의 가게를 놓고 저울질했다. 그중 복권가게를 인수하기로 한다.

이스트 욕 타운 센터에 위치한 대형소매점 Z에 자리(space)를 얹어 복권을 판매하는 부스였다. 비교적 손쉽게 운영을 할 수 있는 장점이 있지만 Z가 요구할 경우 3개월 이내에 조건 없이 나가야 하는 위험도 도사리고 있었다. 위험은 가능성이 5%도 안 되는 천재지변에 가까운 수준이니 기꺼이 감내하기로 했다.

가게가 위치한 곳은 아파트가 밀집한 지역이라 정부 보조금에 의지하여 생활하는 사람들이 많았다. 손님의 반 이상은 월세에 살며 겨우 입에 풀칠이나 하는 이민자였다. 가게를 인수한 후 처음 6개월동안은 마음이 편치 않았다. 이런 분들에게 계속 복권을 팔아야 하느냐는 회의 때문이었다.

수입도 수입이려니와 팔지 않으면 가까이에 있는 다른 가게에 가 살 것이기 때문에 그럴 수도 없었다. (20 미터 반경에 비슷한 가게가 세 개나 있었고 몰 전체에는 여섯 개나 있었다.) 기왕 하는 장사인데 매상을 올려 권리금을 더 받고 팔자는 생각이 들었다. 삼사 년 안에 되팔겠다는 계획을 세웠다. 목표가 분명해지자 의욕이 넘쳐났다. 더 친절하고 더 성실하게 일했다.

손님이 몰리기 시작했다. 얼마 가지 않아 몰 내 여섯 개의 가게 중 가장 바쁜 가게가 되었다. 복권을 발행하는 회사(온타리오 정부가 운영하는 크라운 컴퍼니 중의 하나이다)의 감독관은 다른 가게들도 당신네처럼만 운영했으면 좋겠다는 이야기를 밥 먹듯 하고 다녔다. 인수 후 둘째 해에는 수익이 배나 올랐다. 투자한 권리금의 두 배 이상 받아내는 것은 시간문제였다.   

“그러면 그렇지 내가 누구던가. 한번 한다면 해내는 사람 아니던가.”

어깨에 잔뜩 힘이 들어갔다. 운영하던 가게를 팔아 다른 곳에 투자하면 더 벌 수도 있을 것 같았다. 무지개가 둥둥 떠다녔다.   

어느 날 뉴스를 듣다가 가슴이 철렁 내려앉았다. Z체인이 미국의 T사로 팔리게 되었다는 소식이었다. 귀를 의심했다.

'아, 이런 일이 나에게도 닥치는구나. 천재지변도 일어나는구나.'

아내는 인수한 회사가 기존의 계약자들에게 동일한 권리를 줄 것이니 걱정하지 말라고 태평스럽게 말했다. T사가 만성적자에 허덕이는 Z체인을 인수하는 이유나 전략을 이해할 수 없었다. 단 한마디 항변도 못해보고 고스란히 손들고 나와야 왔다. 꿈꾸고 기대하던 권리금은커녕 가게를 사는데 들어간 원금 한 푼 건지지 못했다.

‘세상은 이렇듯 엇박자 행진만 하는가.’

인수한 기업은 캐나다 내 133개 매장에 대한 대대적인 보수에 들어갔다. 짧게는 3개월 길게는 6개월 이상 걸리는 곳도 있었다. 보수에 들어간 비용은 얼마나 되었을까. 2013년 3월부터 일부 매장의 오픈을 필두로 133개 사업장을 순차적으로 열고 운영에 들어갔다.

2014년 말 영과 카빌에 있는 T 매장에 들렀다. 아내와 둘째가 살 것이 있다고 하여 따라간 것이다. 크리스마스를 앞두어 손님들이 길게 줄을 설 줄 알았다. 전혀 그렇지 않았다. 이렇게 운영을 해도 유지가 되려나 싶었다. 붉은색 로고와 잔뜩 쌓인 상품만 눈에 들어왔다.

어제 아침 T사는 캐나다에 있는 133개 매장의 운영을 중단한다는 발표를 했다. 규모와 정도의 차이일 뿐 위험을 예상하지 못한 건 나나 T사나 마찬가지다. 손실에서 얻은 교훈 또한 크게 다를 바 없을 것이다. 씁쓸하다.

 

* 2년도 안 되는 기간에 5조 6천억의 손실을 가져다 줄 Z 체인의 인수를 결정한 사람들은 누구였을까? <참고: 2014년 5월에 퇴직한 T사의 전 CEO 그레그 스타인해펄의 퇴직금은 자그마치 $61 million(한화 610억 가량)이었다고 한다.-제일 아랫 쪽 토론토 스타의 기사 참조.>

*의사결정을 주도한 사람은 누구였으며 의사결정에 참여한 사람들은 어떤 사람들일까? 

*  요가라니(요가)를 포함한 17,600명은 어디로 가야하며 어떻게 먹고 사나?

*  입주점들의 손실은 없는가?

*  캐나다 사업을 접었다고 주식이 더 오르는가?

*  인수하겠다는 의사결정을 할 때도 주식이 올랐었다. 손실을 보고 파는 데도 또 주식은 오른다.

* 가진 자들의 장난인가? 잔치인가?

*  누구에 의한 누구를 위한 의사결정인가?

<Target shot to pieces (Troubled retailer shutting Canuck stores, triggering $5.4B loss)>

Target Corp will exit the Canadian market after less than two years in a surprise retreat that will throw more than 17,000 employees out of work and trigger a $5.4 billion quarterly loss.

The company announced on Thursday it is shutting all of its 133 Canadian stores and said it expects to report about $5.4 billion in pretax losses for its fourth quarter, which finishes at the end of January.

Losses are mostly due to the writedown of the Canadian investment, along with exit costs and operating losses.

Minneapolis-based Target, the No. 2 discount chain in the United States, has struggled in Canada since its March 2013 launch.

It faced huge supply chain problems due to a myriad of problems at its warehouses, poor communication with headquarters and the use of inexperienced staff.

That left stores poorly stocked and selection limited, disappointing shoppers who had eagerly anticipated its arrival in a market where the discount space was long dominated by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Target had said in November it would review the future of the Canadian business after the holiday season.

Stores checked by Reuters in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa around Christmas showed only moderate traffic and Chief Executive Brian Cornell said he didn't see the "step-change" in performance required to justify staying the course.

No matter how Target crunched the numbers it could not envision making profits until 2021, Cornell said.

He told a conference call the company was "facing a decision to devote billions of dollars of additional resources for the Canadian segment without the realistic prospect of an appropriate return."

Before Thursday's decision Target had sunk roughly $6 billion into the market, including around $2.5 billion in capital expenditure and $1.7 billion of losses to-date, Fitch Ratings said.

"Anything you could have gotten wrong in the playbook, they got wrong," said Antony Karabus, CEO of retail consultant firm HRC Advisory.

Target said exiting Canada would allow it to focus resources on the U.S. market, where it is recovering from a massive data breach during the holiday quarter of 2013.

The failure in Canada raises serious doubts about the retailer's long-term growth prospects, said Jim Danahy, director of the Centre for Retail Leadership at York University's Schulich School of Business in Toronto.

"There isn't a bigger implosion and it needs to be really understood this is entirely their fault," Danahy said

-From The Toronto Sun / Friday, January 16, 2015 page News 4-

 

< ‘I’m really disappointed to see it closing’>

Few customers wandering the aisles of Toronto-based Target stores Thursday were surprised the American discount retailer is closing up shop in Canada.

The Target store inside East York Town Centre, in the Don Mills Rd. and Don Valley Pkwy. area, was quiet as of mid-morning Thursday, despite plenty of signs around the store offering items at big discounts and reduced-to-clear prices.

Demitra, a mother of two with another one on the way, shops at the East York location but wasn’t surprised when she awoke to reports Target was putting an end to its money-losing venture north of the border, a move that will shutter 133 stores from coast to coast.

“No, I come to this location quite often and it’s always quiet,” said Demitra, who didn’t want her last name published.

Shopper Maria Puopolo said the only shock she felt was around Target’s decision to pull out so soon after opening its first Canadian stores to much fanfare in March 2013.

She acknowledged that prices in Target’s Canadian stores turned out to be disappointingly higher than those in its stores south of the border, but said it was quality and selection that kept her coming back.

“I know not everyone was a big fan, but I loved it,” Puopolo said, adding that, for her, it is an alternative to the other big discount retailers. “I’m really disappointed to see it closing.”

Marilyn, a regular of Target’s Shoppers World location at Victoria Park Ave. and Danforth Ave., saw the closures coming a mile away.

“No, I’m not surprised at all. Even before Christmas (some of) the shelves were empty, and when they didn’t re-stock...”

As for Target’s employees at the two stores, all said they were under instructions to keep quiet on the closings, which will impact 17,600 jobs.

Some, however, said the general feeling was a combination of shock and disappointment. And few seemed to know about the reported 16-week severance package to be provided to employees.

“It’s not enough,” said one employee manning a checkout at the East York store. “We’re all looking for jobs.” 

-From The Toronto Sun/ Friday, January 16, 2015 page News 4-

 

<Tartget’s demise is not the end of retail: from TORONTO STAR published on Saturday, January 17, 2015. Page 2 by Rosie DiManno Columnist>

Know how much Gregg Stienhafel got when he was jettisoned as CEO of Target last year? A cool $61 million U.S., according to Fortune magazine, when factoring in equity, stock options and deferred compensation.

I just bet that Mrs. Stienhafel, if such a person exists, isn’t doing much of her shopping at the giant discount retailer these days.

The rest of you — some 17,600 employees who will lose their jobs in the next four or five months as the chain shutters its 133 stores in Canada — will get about 16 weeks’ severance pay. Don’t spend it all in one place.

Given that Target only ventured north of the 49th parallel two years ago, that’s probably a fair financial reckoning. These aren’t lifers we’re talking about. Still, that’s a whole whack of workers hitting the unemployment lines. Economic ripples will be felt.

Canadians just didn’t take to Target, the second-largest U.S. discount chain. Consumers were displeased by the higher prices here, compared to what they would pay cross-border shopping Target. Merchandise was scant on the shelves, as the company had immense difficulties keeping stores stocked. Many stores — particularly the 220 acquired through purchasing leases from Zellers Inc. — were poorly situated, although Target, like Walmart, has been making raid moves toward city centres.

That Zellers deal, by the way, resulted in pink-slipping 27,000 employees. So altogether Target has thrown nearly 35,000 Canadians out of work.

While I don’t begrudge Minneapolis-based Target for its great expansion experiment, and understand why shareholders paled over nearly $2 billion in losses, the venture was inexcusably mismanaged from the get-go.

Target Canada wasn’t cheap, its inventory wasn’t attractive and the entire shop-in-person retail industry was already in upheaval.

Me, I’ve never much grasped the attraction of department stores beyond their one-stop convenience, now overtaken by the uber-handiness of browse-friendly online shopping. If rivals such as Walmart have endured, it’s largely because they’ve incorporated groceries — food — as a retail category.

The big-elbow chains never much cared about the small retailers they put out of business. But department stores as we once knew them — the era of Simpson’s and Eaton’s, or “English people stores” as I, the daughter of immigrants, viewed them while growing up in downtown Toronto, staffed by ladies in twin-sets and pearls — are clearly a dying breed. These “bricks and mortar” behemoths have been undermined by cooler brand-specific vendors of dry goods (now there’s an archaic phrase) such as H&M and Banana Republic, which have increased their market share by driving down prices. Though I suspect the upstarts’ time will come too, in time, as it did for Jacob, Smart Set and the Montreal-based Mexx Canada, all of which have pulled the plug. Le Chateau, prom-dress central for two generations of Canadian teenagers, is on shaky legs too.

No doubt much of this retail convulsion has been brought on by the evolution of consumerism in a cyberworld universe, just as Amazon has knocked off independent booksellers, and big-box Best Buy — itself posting humongous losses in recent years — buried smaller electronics merchants such as Circuit City.

For many of us who are not so digitally smitten, shopping still means strolling on a Saturday morning, window shopping on Queen St. W., and patronizing stores where we feel welcome and well-served, eyeballing merchandise and seeking assurance from a real live salesperson to the universal query: Does my bum look big in this?

As with newspapers, I continue to have faith that a discriminating public will continue to value the hands-on experience of shopping in boutique or niche stores and the pleasures that come with human contact. We are still, I hope, social animals and shopping, like eating out, is intrinsic to that — just not shopping in antediluvian department-store temples which have increasingly catered to a lowbrow common denominator.

Young people have no nostalgic attachment to the department emporiums of old, just as my generation looked askance at the quaint five-and-dimes such as Woolworth’s. Yet, as a recent article in The Atlantic titled “The End of Retail is Overrated” revealed, much to my surprise, e-commerce still accounts for only about 6 per cent of total U.S. retail. While you can now shop till you don’t-drop on smartphone apps that have rendered even traditional online shopping obsolete, the hordes still walk the walk. Indeed, according to a recent Pew Research study, though nearly 80 per cent of teenagers shop on line, an equal number reported they would prefer to shop in stores.

Just not outdated department stores like . . . that bull’s-eye logo place.

So long. We hardly knew ya.