The woke CFO of Target retail stores is upset that organized retail theft is costing the corporation $millions thanks to the lax policies of liberal prosecutors who have increasingly made retail theft a non-prosecutable offense.
Target CFO Michael Fiddelke recently told Yahoo Finance that “inventory shrinkage” is still killing them. That is the euphemism that the retail industry has coined to mean shoplifting so that they don’t upset liberals by calling it… you know… shoplifting.
“It [inventory shrinkage] was certainly a headwind [last year],” Fiddelke told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday. “We know we’re not alone in seeing elevated levels of shrink and organized retail crime driving some of that theft.”
Fiddelke added that the company’s bottom line will be impacted this year.
Goods stolen from stores, which contributes to inventory shrinkage, led to $94.5 billion in losses in 2021, up from $90.8 billion in 2020, according to a late 2022 study by the National Retail Federation (NRF).
About 32.8% of retailers surveyed called out organized retail crime as becoming “much more” of a concern in the last five years.
The increased amount of theft has caused retailers to take additional measures, such as hiring more security guards and locking up easy-to-shoplift items, notably household essentials such as toothpaste.
“These highly sophisticated criminal rings jeopardize employee and customer safety and disrupt store operations,” Mark Mathews, NRF vice president for research development and industry analysis, wrote in the report. “Retailers are bolstering security efforts to counteract these increasingly dangerous and aggressive criminal activities.”
Target is one of the most woke retailers in the nation, and they support all the usual leftist suspects and policies.
So, to tell the truth, do they deserve the loss they are earning?
Cross-Posted with iPatriot
