All Episodes

November 24, 2025 • 29 mins

As sales and profits continue to decline, the incoming CEO says the first order of business is to repair the vibe. By Jaewon Kang and Devin Leonard

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can Target be cool again? And would that be enough?
As sales and profits continue to decline, The incoming CEO says,
the first order of business is to repair the vibe.
By Jaiwan Kang and Devon Leonard read Aloud by Mark Leedorf.
Let us stipulate that Target knows how to throw a party.

(00:21):
On a Tuesday morning in September, the Target Center in
downtown Minneapolis is bathed in red and the seats are
filled with fourteen thousand crimson clad employees of the iconic
U S discount retailer. They're here to day for a
PEP rally that's part of Target Together, the company's annual
four day corporate jamboree. An eleven piece R and B

(00:42):
ensemble serves up a catalog of hits like Uptown Funk.
The screens above the stage flash with multiple choice questions,
reminding the crowd of the company's glory days in the aughts.
Who was Target's bedrock design partner during that era? Isaac
Msrati of course? Who played a Target employee on Saturday
Night Live? Why Kristin Wig there's a dance cam spotlighting

(01:06):
employee booty shaking. Previews of holiday gift items like Kendri
Scott branded Bow's earbuds with her signature sparkle, and a
reminder that the latest doorbusting Taylor Swift album, The Life
of a Showgirl, will soon be released in multiple versions,
each with a poster available only at Target. Later, there
will be an appearance by Chris Ka, the hunky, dim

(01:28):
witted hot Santa, who made his debut in Target's holiday
ad campaign last year. He'd gone viral, providing a welcome
dollop of good cheer at a company that's lately been
plagued by political controversy, employee dissatisfaction, and slumping sales. But first,
here comes Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell, striding out of

(01:48):
the audience and onto the stage like a game show host,
wearing a khaki suit, red T shirt, and bright red
leather shoes. If the suit seems a little tight, that's
because it's the same one he wore to the eleven
years ago after being named CEO. It still kind of fits,
he says, getting some chuckles. This year's rally, however, will

(02:09):
be Cornell's final one as CEO. He launches into a
retrospective of his time at Target, dwelling as you might expect.
On the high points his decision in twenty fifteen to
pull the company out of Canada, where it's one hundred
and thirty three stores were losing money. His seven billion
dollar commitment in twenty seventeen to refurbish hundreds of stores
even as doomsayers were forecasting wrongly the demise of physical retail.

(02:34):
We knew better, Cornell tells the audience. We talked to
the consumer, and they told us they still loved stores,
especially Target stores. The increase in the number of Target's
house brands, which now account for thirty billion dollars a
year in sales and reaching one hundred billion dollars in
annual revenue. That's still a very exclusive club, Cornell says,

(02:55):
with evident satisfaction. He neglects to mention a few notable
low lights, the conservative backlash that greeted Target's twenty twenty
three Pride collection, the progressive boycott earlier this year following
Target's abandonment of some of its diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
He doesn't bother to point out that much of the
company's revenue growth happened during the pandemic, when it had

(03:18):
the advantage of being allowed to remain open because it
sold groceries, and only fleetingly acknowledges that more recently its
sales have been in decline the last three years, we
haven't delivered the growth we wanted, he admits. Then Cornell
introduces the man who will replace him as CEO in February,
Chief Operating Officer, Michael Fadelki, a twenty two year Target veteran.

(03:41):
He's my choice, the board's choice. I know your choice,
Cornell says, perhaps that's true, but investors had made it
clear they would have preferred an outsider, with Target stock
dropping six percent the day the choice was announced in August.
Before turning over the stage to his successor, Cornell chokes up,
pats his chest, and starts to cry, his cheerful face

(04:03):
massive on the arena's five jumbotrons. No matter that he's
leaving behind unhappy investors, dissatisfied customers, and a disillusioned workforce.
This morning at the Target Center, at least he's the
object of affection. Plus he's not really going anywhere. When
Fidelki becomes CEO, Cornell will stay on as executive chairman,
meaning Fidelki will still answer to his long time boss,

(04:27):
Cornell probably could have relinquished the stage sooner, just as
some would argue he should hasten his departure from the
company and give his successor free reign. In many ways,
that epitomizes Target's problems. While its almost two thousand stores
still sell a ton of stuff and the company remains profitable,
some observers say it has long had a culture of

(04:47):
high self regard, which can be dangerous in an industry
as rapidly evolving as retail. Some would say this explains
what they have seen as a lack of urgency in
addressing its current difficulties. Target has always had had a
touch of arrogance about it, says Neil Saunders Retail Analystic
Global Data, a research and consulting firm. Target has always

(05:08):
been a company whose attitude is we know best, we
know what we're doing, which when it works is fine.
When it doesn't, it becomes a hindrance. Target not surprisingly
takes issue with this. In November, the company said in
a quarterly earnings call that sales and profits had fallen
yet again compared with the previous year. For investors, shareholders,

(05:29):
and employees too. The question is Stark Confidelki, a senior
member of the executive team that presided over the recent decline.
Make Target cool again. There's a weighty three hundred and
fifty one page coffee table book entitled Target Twenty Years
of Design for all that you can find in some
of the company's executive offices. It was published in twenty nineteen,

(05:51):
the twentieth anniversary of its celebrated partnership with the designer
Michael Graves. That relationship resulted in thousands of items, including
a famous thirty four dollars ninety nine cent tea kettle
that gave customers the satisfaction of getting a deal on
a piece of kitchenware that married price consciousness with style.
In addition to a loving portrait of the kettle, the

(06:12):
book has an image of Mizrahi from a TV ad
in which he declared, while frolicking through a cornfield with
a chikly clad model, it's a big country. You're gonna
need some great shoes. There are those fabulous zigzag Missoni dresses.
Customers craved so much that they crashed Target's website after
the collection was released in twenty eleven, and Philippe Stark

(06:33):
curling irons, Jason Wu canvas skirts, and Anna Sweet gossip
Girl inspired toats not shown in the book. Despite his
foresight in recognizing how important such collaborations would be to Target,
is Bob Ulrich, a lantern jawed Minnesotan. Ulrich became CEO
in nineteen eighty seven when Target was just a chain

(06:54):
of three hundred and seventeen discount stores owned by the
department store company Dayton Hudson by Phone in late August,
the once media a verse. Ulrich is chatty, and he's
clearly concerned about the state of his former company. Early
on in his tenure, he says he realized that Target
would never be able to compete with Walmart on price alone.

(07:14):
One way to distinguish itself was to ensure that its
stores were cleaner and had wider aisles and brighter lighting
than those of its rival. Shelves had to be stocked,
checkout lines needed to be short. Another way to differentiate
Target stores would be to offer higher quality products for
which customers would be willing to pay a bit more.
That meant Target buyers sometimes traveled overseas in search of

(07:36):
such goods, visiting night markets in Hong Kong, fashion shows
in Paris, toyfares in Nuremberg, Germany. Target executives knew that
when they bumped into Ulrich on the elevator, he'd buttonhole
them with what's new, which for him was a mantra.
Vendors visiting Target's headquarters knew they'd hear it too. Bob
would say what if you got there, says Greg Duppler,

(07:59):
a former senior vice president for Groceries, and you'd have
vendors hauling out samples showing Bob the newest, coolest thing.
By the late nineteen nineties, Target was approaching one thousand
stores and being celebrated for what some described as the
Promethean achievement of bringing fine design to the masses. Customers
flocked to Target to pick up witty, postmodern goods from

(08:20):
Graves and other designers, and while they were there to
load up on toothpaste and toilet paper. Mizrahi, who'd been
designing clothes sold at high end stores such as Bergdorf Goodman,
created a collection for Target in two thousand and three,
with prizes ranging from nine ninety nine to one hundred
and nine ninety nine. The five year long partnership became
a three hundred million dollars annual business. Customers showed their

(08:44):
appreciation for Target's stylishness by affectionately referring to it as Tarja,
a frenchified nickname. Its leadership teams scrupulously avoided using the
term themselves. When customers come up with a pet name
for you for crying out loud, you just say that's wonderful.
By gosh. Ulrich says, you don't act like it's a
company message. That's a classic marketing mistake. Although Target had

(09:08):
no stores in Manhattan, it concentrated much of its marketing
there To get national media attention, It opened pop ups
in various parts of New York City, hosted what it
described as the first vertical fashion show, with runway models
repelling down the walls of Rockefeller Center, and purchased all
the ad space in a two thousand and five issue
of The New Yorker, filling the pages with clever drawings

(09:30):
that happened to incorporate the Target bullseye by notable illustrators.
The glossy takeover was yet another example of an Ulrich
era highbrow middlebrow play. In two thousand and eight, Ulrich
stepped down, though not because he wanted to go. He'd
reached the company's mandatory retirement age of sixty five. He
believed he was leaving Target in good hands with Greg Steinhaevel,

(09:53):
a twenty nine year company veteran, and his handpicked successor.
He since had a change of heart. I thought the
guy was going to to do a hell of a job.
Ulrich says, it's just one of those weird things, probably
my worst decision in my goddamn life. Steinhael didn't respond
to requests for comment. According to other former executives, Steinhael,

(10:14):
once a collegial member of the leadership team, became an
imperial CEO with little interest in others. Council with the US.
In recession, Steinhaegel de emphasized style and slashed prices on
sundry such as laundry detergent, in a bid to make
Target more Walmart like. Some of those moves would eventually
pay off, most significantly his decision to push more aggressively

(10:35):
into groceries, which accounted for twenty three percent of the
company's sales last year. Target's long running relationship with Swift
also commenced on his watch with the release of her
two thousand and eight fearless album, Steinhagel wouldn't be around
long enough to reap the credit. He presided over the
disastrous opening of one hundred and thirty three Canadian stores

(10:55):
in twenty thirteen, after Target purchased leases to sites of
that country Zeller's chain. It was a deal Ulrich had spurned. God,
I mean, I had looked at that a couple times
over the years, and I said, look, I wouldn't take
these stores if they were given to us. Ulrich says,
a lot of these are too small, They're not in
the right areas. Target raised the hopes of Canadian shoppers

(11:17):
with its glamorous marketing, then it dashed their expectations when
stores opened with empty shelves because of supply chain issues
and with prices on some items steeper than those at
Target's US stores. Target says importing costs were among the
reasons for this. Ultimately, however, Steinhael's downfall came after an
even worse debacle. That same year, a hacker installed malware

(11:40):
in Target's payment system, making off with forty million credit
card numbers, seventy million addresses, and other personal information. The
board ousted Steinhegel in twenty fourteen. Having suffered through such
calamities under a company lifer, Target recruited an outsider to
replace him. Cornell will be right back with can Target

(12:01):
be cool again? And would that be enough? Welcome back
to can Target be cool again? And would that be enough?
It's the morning after the Target Together rally and Cornell
is basking in the glow of the reception to his
final appearance there as CEO. I think yesterday may go
down as my favorite day at Target, he says. The

(12:24):
personal warmth, the appreciation, the respect, and I'll use the
term love people showed for me my family. Cornell, who
has an intense gaze and a solemn manner, is sitting
in a conference room on the twenty sixth floor of
the corporate headquarters in downtown Minneapolis. In his blue quarter
zip pullover, gray slax and black sneakers. He looks very

(12:46):
much like the high school football coach he aspired to
be until he discovered while attending the University of California
and Los Angeles that there would be no money in it. Instead,
the Queen's New York born Cornell, who's now sixty six,
went into business. Over the years, he became CEO of
Michael's Stores and then Sam's Club, then moved to PepsiCo

(13:06):
to run its US foods business. He assumed PepsiCo would
be his final stop until a headhunter from Target called.
The day his hiring was announced, Cornell visited Target's headquarters,
meeting employees and shaking hands. Then he received a briefing
on the company's troubled Canadian stores. I asked a simple question,
he says, how many were cash flow positive? The answer

(13:29):
was zero. He'd been planning to leave for a vacation. Instead,
he called his wife, Martha and told her to FedEx
him some clothes he'd be staying awhile, Cornell acted decisively.
In early twenty fifteen, Target announced it was pulling out
of Canada and taking a four and a half billion
dollar right down. The company laid off seventeen hundred people,

(13:50):
including thirteen percent of its headquarters staff. Separately, Cornell embarked
on a plan to freshen up and expand Target's store brands. Still,
Target struggled to improve sales significantly. In twenty seventeen, Cornell
unveiled a plan to invest seven billion dollars to remodel
six hundred stores build new ones and bolster the company's

(14:11):
digital operation. Target stock tumbled twelve percent that day. I
don't understand why you think it will work going forward
if it hasn't worked so far, CNBC retail reporter Courtney
Reagan told him on air, At what point do you
say we have to start closing stores? Cornell had other ideas.

(14:31):
He pressed into urban areas, opening small format stores in
places including New York's Herald Square. At the same time,
Target refurbished its older stores so they could also serve
as digital fulfillment centers, essentially a way to do e
commerce less expensively than building the kind of massive distribution
centers used by competitors such as Amazon. Such changes set

(14:53):
Target up to prosper during the pandemic. Because its stores
sold groceries, they were classified as essential service providers and
allowed to stay open. Customers loaded up on beauty items
so they looked better on zoom calls. Toy sales jumped
because parents needed to keep kids occupied. We had people
buying tents because they were in their backyards during their

(15:14):
own little family camping trip. Cornell remembers Target's revenue rose
twenty percent in twenty twenty to ninety four billion dollars.
The following year, it topped one hundred and six billion dollars.
It was also in twenty twenty that George Floyd was
murdered in Target's hometown. Cornell responded by establishing himself as

(15:34):
one of the foremost voices for racial equity in corporate America.
He exhorted his peers to do better. I recognize that
it's time to take it to another level, and that
as CEOs, we have to be the company's head of
diversity and inclusion, he said in an event at the
Economic Club of Chicago in April twenty twenty one. We
have to be the role models that drive change. For Target,

(15:58):
that meant pledging to increase the number of its black
employees by twenty percent over the next three years and
spending two billion dollars with black owned companies by the
end of twenty twenty five. Few of Target's competitors promised
as much. The following year, Cornell was hailed as an
industry hero, accepting the National Retail Federation's annual Visionary Award

(16:19):
from Magic Johnson The Evening z MC, who introduced him
as just a cool dude. It was nothing compared to
the pat on the back he received from Target's board.
Even though Cornell turned sixty three in twenty twenty two,
the board asked him to remain in the job for
three more years, waiving its mandatory retirement age in his case.

(16:39):
Cornell and his executives had expected a slow down after
the end of the pandemic, but the magnitude of the
shift took them by surprise. By mid twenty twenty two,
Target was stuck with the backlog of kitchen appliances, patio furniture,
and other items that had lost their appeal. As inflation spiked,
the company had to unload them at a discount, cutting
its annual u will profit by fifty five percent. The

(17:02):
digital business continued to grow, but using stores to handle
nearly all the e commerce orders was creating operational problems.
With employees handling more online orders, they had less time
to tend to in store shoppers. Checkout lines grew. Even
as Target added self service stations, shelves were often empty,
the result of a newly cautious approach to ordering. Multiple

(17:26):
corporate employees say that as this crisis unfolded at Target,
Cornell was often in Florida, where he owns a home
and led internal meetings infrequently. Target says this was deliberate,
reflecting Cornell's desire to give other executives the opportunity to
take charge. As for his whereabouts, a Target spokesperson said
in an email that as CEO of a one hundred

(17:48):
billion dollar plus retailer, Brian spends a significant time traveling
in the field and meeting with team members and guests
when not working from our headquarters office. Meanwhile, the progressive
policies Cornell championed were drawing criticism from some quarters. Early
in his tenure, Target had announced it would allow transgender
workers and customers to use the restrooms of their choice

(18:10):
in its stores and other buildings. Religious conservatives protested The
company stood by its policy, though it also added private
bathrooms to assuage its critics. Then, in May twenty twenty three,
after the company set up its annual Pride Month collection,
which featured rainbow hued sunglasses, bracelets, and Star Wars T
shirts and was often displayed at the front of stores,

(18:32):
conservative commentators went on the attack. In particular, they became
fixated by a tuck friendly swimsuit designed for transgender people.
Some asserted falsely that it was intended for children. Agitators
knocked down Pride displays in stores and threatened employees. When
Target removed some Pride items and relocated displays to different

(18:54):
areas of stores, the company was lambasted by progressive leaders
who accused it of caving to run light wing pressure.
Both sides called for boycotts, and Target sales suffered inside
the company. Emotions boiled over during a video town hall
in which Cornell and his executives tried to address the
controversy while employees simultaneously argued about it in the accompanying

(19:16):
public chat area. The executives carried on seemingly unaware of
the discord. Somebody noticed. Eventually the chat function was disabled
in future virtual gatherings. Sales continued to stagnate in twenty
twenty four, even though Taylor Swift fans descended on Black
Friday week to buy a million copies of the official

(19:37):
Taylor Swift The Era's Tour book, and Diane von Furstenberg
released a two hundred piece collection featuring her signature midlength
rap dresses, along with salad plates, water bottles, and yoga mats.
Cornell tried to calm investors, encouraging them to focus on
the long term and blaming his company's troubles on inflation
and consumer uncertainty. He and other Target executives also trotted

(20:00):
out targe on earnings calls, as if to say, yes,
Target was still that company everybody remembered fondly. Ulrich era
veterans cringed. The following year, after Donald Trump retook office,
Target rolled back its DEI policies, ending formal corporate programs
to boost black employment at the company and support black

(20:21):
owned business. It also ended its participation in external surveys
such as the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index, which
rates companies LGBTQ policies. We understand the importance of staying
in step with the evolving external landscape now and in
the future, Kiera Fernandez, then its chief Community Impact and

(20:42):
Equity officer, wrote in an email to staff. You could
almost hear the collective what. Target was hardly the only
company making such adjustments following Trump administration attacks on such programs,
but for some customers, progressive policies had become as central
to Target's brand as Bully. Its beloved English bull terrier

(21:02):
Cornell stayed quiet for four months before finally addressing the
issue in a May email to employees. I recognize that
silence from us has created uncertainty, he wrote, so I
want to be clear we are still the Target. You
know and believe in, a company that welcomes all and
aims to bring joy to everyone every day. Some former

(21:23):
allies remain unconvinced. Target had long supported Twin Cities Pride,
organizer of the area's annual LGBTQ Festival, but this spring
the organization rejected the company's proposed fifty thousand dollars donation,
citing the DEI retreat. Andy Auto, Twin Cities Pride's executive director,
says he hasn't been in one of its stores since

(21:45):
I miss Target. He says, I literally pass three Targets
on my way from home to work. Right I can
get my groceries, I can get my kid's school clothes,
and now I'm finding alternatives. Auto isn't the only one
who's lost faith. Responding to the company's annual internal survey
this summer, forty percent of employees said they weren't confident

(22:06):
about the company's future. Investors haven't seemed any happier. The
company's shares have dipped below one hundred dollars this year,
compared with the pandemic era high of two hundred and
sixty six dollars. Does Cornell, ever regret not having bowed
out before so much seem to go wrong at Target.
He looks surprised by the question. I have no regrets,

(22:26):
he replies after a moment. I guess my only regret
is I wish I would have started at Target twenty
years ago, not just eleven. There are those who find
it confounding that Target's board is allowing Cornell to stick
around after Fidelki becomes CEO in February. I don't think
the appointment of Michael Fidelki is the biggest problem, says Saunders,
the global data retail analyst. The biggest mistake is actually

(22:50):
keeping Brian Cornell on the board and making him the chair.
It's just ludicrous. You're rewarding failure, and everybody at Target
knows that Target, it says. The decision to keep Cornell
around while naming his second in command as his corporate
heir are the outcome of a deliberate, years long and
thoughtful CEO succession process, and that Fidelki's decades and breadth

(23:12):
of experience across the enterprise give him a deep understanding
of the business. Fidelki's corner office has a sweeping view
of downtown Minneapolis, with memorabilia testifying to his two plus
decades with the company. A copy of twenty Years of
Design for All is prominently displayed. Nearby is a brick
from the original Target in Roseville, Minnesota, built in nineteen

(23:35):
sixty two. A cuddly plush Target branded squish Mallow sits
alongside a photo of Fidelki and his daughter waiting outside
a Target last year in Dubuque, Iowa, on Black Friday
to get a copy of the era's tour book. He
could have cut the line, but they wanted to endure
the morning chill with the rest of the Swifties. It
doesn't sound like Fidelki will be moving in February when

(23:56):
he officially becomes CEO. I like this office, he says.
He also appreciates having Cornell so close by. He says,
he and Cornell are completely aligned. We both know that
I with the team need to grab the pen and
write the next chapter. Fidelki says, Brian's been super open
and supportive about that. Fidelki radiates enthusiasm about his promotion

(24:20):
and looks like he's ready to get down to work
in a black wafflenet pullover jeans and red nikes, one
of eight pairs of similar sneakers in his closet. He
knows some investors would have preferred to have an outsider
replaced Cornell. He says everything will be copasetic once the
company starts putting up better numbers. Fidelki emphasizes the need
for Target to reclaim its leadership in style and design.

(24:43):
There are a bunch of successful models in retail, he says,
the one we're positioned to win at is that one.
You can see some of this effort underway in a
building on the downtown Minneapolis campus that has dozens of
rooms devoted to Target's more than forty house brands. In
the one that catered to Wild Fable, a young women's
apparel label that was started in twenty eighteen and has

(25:05):
become a one billion dollar a year business, the walls
are decorated with AI generated images of college age women
clad in outfits for various occasions. Some of these looks
were arrived at by feeding information into what Target refers
to as its AI powered trend Brain, which the company
says allows it to jump on trends faster. Others are

(25:26):
the result of on the ground trend spotting, which target
is accelerating to make up for what the company acknowledges
was the dulling of its stylistic edge during the pandemic.
It's even had its cool hunters staking out fratthouses on
southern California college campuses to see what female students wear
on nights, out nanoscopic skirts and off shoulder sweatshirts. It

(25:48):
turns out more changes are happening at stores such as
the one in Indena, a posh suburb of Minneapolis. Rick Gomez,
the company's chief commercial officer, strolls the aisles in cuffed genes,
brown loafers, and a beige quilted vest with a red
and white checked pocket square. He says the company is
retooling the home section, moving bulkier items such as couches

(26:10):
to its website and pushing smaller items instead. It's vases,
it's frames, it's impulse purchases. Then it's on to the
tech section, where another makeover is underway, with computers being
replaced by products that people can use to customize their
phones and laptops. Think crossbody chains for carrying smartphones and
fau baguette wrist rests. I've been talking to store managers

(26:33):
and they're like, Rick, we need more. They're selling so fast,
Gomez says, I mean, come on, they're so cute. What's
the Michael Graves tea kettle for these times? Gomez points
to a fifty dollars Stanley Quincher tumbler in shades of
pale green and purple, a color combination sold exclusively at Target.
It's not necessarily well designed like Michael Graves, but it's coveted,

(26:56):
Gomez says. There's a sign on the shelves limiting purchases
to five per customer, and there have been scenes on
social media of Target shoppers nearly coming to blows over
the product. To hear, executives tell it these are still
early days in the campaign to reassert the company's design leadership.
In September, Target returned to New York Fashion Week, taking

(27:16):
over the elevated high Line Park on Manhattan's West Side
for an event that included an acoustic set by English
singer Suki Waterhouse, followed by a marching band dancers and
a parade of models in its apparel brands. The crowd
of several hundred people was delighted when Misrahi himself materialized
in a Sergeant Pepper style jacket to toss out T shirts.

(27:37):
It didn't seem to matter that his partnership with the
company ended in two thousand and eight. All these efforts,
of course, will have to yield sales improvement. If Target
wants to prove its naysayers wrong, we have to get
this company back to growth. Fidelki says that is priority
one through ten on my list. I think that involves
an honest assessment of where we're at and where we

(27:59):
have work to do, and I find that energizing. There's
been some blood letting too. In October, Fidelki announced that
Target was cutting eighteen hundred corporate positions. The news was
accompanied by the kinds of mishaps that have become too
common at the company. Employees learned via the media rather
than their bosses. When they'd receive their final paychecks, they

(28:20):
suffered through a glitchy video conference that left them peering
at the red Target logo on their screen as they
waited to find out if they'd lost their job. The
company's stock barely moved on the news of the downsizing.
One of Fidelki's plans is to spend five billion dollars
next year opening new stores, refreshing existing ones, and otherwise

(28:40):
spiffing things up. Target has also embarked on an in
store charm offensive, directing workers to smile, make eye contact,
and start conversations with shoppers. It may come too late
for customers such as Lisa Crampsey, a social worker, perusing
the aisles at a Target in East Hanover, New Jersey
on a recent weekday afternoon. Cramsey was once a devoted

(29:02):
Target shopper, in part because she didn't care for the
conservative politics of the family behind Walmart. These days, however,
Target is no longer her happy place. The d e
I rollback was too much for her. I don't like it,
Cramsey says. If I didn't have to come to buy
socks in a couple things, I wouldn't be here. This
is my first time in Target for a very long time. Lately,

(29:25):
she's been shopping at Costco. I just got a great
deal on Yankee tickets there, She says, I could buy
socks at Costco. I have to remember that with Charles
Gorrivin
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

The Bobby Bones Show

The Bobby Bones Show

Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.