We Need to Unpack Target's Bombshell Announcement

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the show. It's Jasmine. I'm your host. I'm the person behind a whole lot of what we've got going on at Female Founder World. And this is a bestie session. It's one of those episodes where I want to chat with you about this stuff I know we're all thinking about. And today that is Target because Target has joined companies like Walmart to roll back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. And I want to talk about what's happening and the really important bit here, what this means for us women who are building businesses. And I'm going to try and give this to you in a few minutes so that we can move on with our lives because we've all got stuff to do, but we need to understand what these big shifts at huge retailers mean for us as business owners.

0:48A lot of these DE &I programs kicked off during 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement. And in 2021, Target said that they would invest more than$2 billion in black owned businesses, including adding 500 black owned brands to its shelves. And they really went hard on this messaging about supporting diverse founders as a cohort and supporting small business, a lot of them women owned businesses. And they really clearly targeted black consumers and Gen Z and communities who care about inclusion in their marketing. So then you fast forward to this week and Target says, sorry guys, changed our minds.

1:32We're pulling out of these DE &I initiatives, including ending our three-year diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. They're just scrapping the whole program. People have been pretty outraged about this. Not as many people as you think would be, but there have been a number of folks calling for a Target boycott, but black brand owners at Target pretty quickly responded to this on platforms like Instagram and TikTok and pointed out that a boycott would only really further hurt these brands. Tabitha Brown, who is an actress and she has a kitchenware brand that sold at Target, said it really well in an Instagram post.

2:14She said that if we all decide to boycott, so many black owned brands will be affected and their sales will drop and the businesses will be hurt. And that applies across the board to all of those small businesses that are stocked at Target and that rely on this retailer for distribution. And honestly, I really, I really feel for all of these small businesses and for our community who is stocked in Target and trying to navigate this, because when you launch into a big retailer like target, it really can consume all of your marketing efforts. You as a brand are responsible for driving people to your product and target.

2:52And there are real monetary repercussions if your product does not move off that shelf once you're in target. And that's why you see so many founder led brands in our community, really going hard on the target content and pushing their customers to support them at Target when they do get that big deal with the retailer. And to those small businesses, like I just imagine there is no other option but to continue promoting your products at Target. Failing at one of these mass retailers can be quite literally devastating. I can honestly end a small business. So there's just no other option. And it's tricky, like some of your customers might not understand the decision to continue pushing them to shop at Target and support your brand there.

3:44And you're going to have to be really prepared as a business owner to explain the decision, maybe in a video from the founder or something like that. But at the end of the day, so many of us are tied to these big retailers that completely divesting from these non-supportive platforms could ruin these businesses. When I put my, you know, my customer hat on, maybe it's that now we only shop these kind of diverse owned brands at Target. And that's what we're focusing on because boycotting entirely will really hurt the brands that we care about in this community in the longterm and just make companies like Target see even less value in these businesses?

4:29And look, I don't obviously have any perfect answers here, but I'll be really closely watching to see if there are any changes that some of those really valuable programs like Target Takeoff, their Accelerator program, or Altamuse or Sephora Accelerate. So many of these big retailers have been investing in programming, in grants, in supporting diverse founders. And And I'm watching to see what happens next with those retailers. And I really hope that they haven't all been fooling us with what their beliefs are and they're going to stick by it. Even as there's been this undeniable big vibe shift in the public discourse around away from DE &I and supporting diverse brands.

5:16I'd also say that if you have a brand and you haven't explored building up an army of independent boutique stockists and shoppy shops to diversify your retail strategy against the fickle whims of these giant corporations. This is your sign to do that now. We have a free download. It's a contact database of all of these cool indie stockists that we have found and how to reach out to them and try and get your brand stocked in their stores. And we also have a program called Retail Bootcamp that's running at the moment, which I'll link in the show notes. We run that a couple of times a year and it's all about how to build up that indie stockist strategy.

6:00And I've always been really gung-ho on the indie strategy, thinking that it's something that is such a great way to build up predictable revenue and have a profitable wholesale strategy. but now seeing this shift with target and just feeling really nervous about the mass retail landscape. I'm even more just sure that this is such a good approach for so many brands. Okay. That is the show. Lots of love to you guys. It's crazy out there. It's a wild time to be building a business, but we've got this. Please jump into the group chat. You can download the Female Founder World app in the iOS store now, and that's the best way to get our group chat.

6:42and we can all continue this conversation in there. I just wanted to jump in and end the show with a quick thank you and shout out to all of our paid Business Besties subscribers. Business Besties bypass literally years of networking by getting access to all of the people that you need to build your dream business. Besties get access to exclusive in-person meetups in cities all across the US, Australia and the UK. You get access to our group chat and you get to bypass the wait list. You also get invited to exclusive monthly group business coaching call sessions where you can speak to experts and founders and ask them all of those questions that you just can't Google.

7:25It's$9 a month. You can cancel anytime. Head to bestie.femalefounderworld.com or click the link in the show notes for more.