Target missed the target this year on “pride month.”
The retail giant reported Wednesday that it missed its second-quarter revenue goals, after the company’s pro-transgender apparel provoked a consumer backlash. Target’s controversial merchandise included “pride” apparel for babies, “tuck-friendly” swimwear, and products designed by a self-professed Satanist and transgender activist.
Target stock tanked from a peak of nearly $170 per share in April to just more than $126 per share by mid-June, where shares remain. Target’s stock lost nearly $14 billion in the last two weeks of May, as the controversial clothing collections made headlines.
The company’s quarterly earnings report revealed the true scale of Target’s losses. The retail chain documented a 5.4 percent decline in comparable sales, the first such drop in six years.
“Total revenue of $24.8 billion was 4.9 percent lower than last year, reflecting a total sales decline of 4.9 percent partially offset by a 1.3 percent increase in other revenue,” Target reported.
According to National Review, Target Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington told reporters on a call that the company will recalibrate the chain’s pride merchandise next year.
“You will see us celebrate Pride, you will see us celebrate these heritage moments, but with these modifications,” she said.
Other corporate brands suffered similar stock carnage as a result of their LGBT campaigns this year — including Anheuser-Busch, the beer company behind Bud Light. The marketing team’s decision to use transgender-identified influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote their product effectively rebranded the beer as the unofficial beverage of transgenderism, resulting in a wide-reaching boycott from which the company has yet to recover. Stores in the Midwest even struggled to offload built-up inventory of the beverage by effectively giving away the drink for free, offering customers a rebate equal to the beer’s purchase price.
“Bud Light sales are still stale,” headlined coverage from Yahoo Finance on Tuesday.
The corporate backlash coincides with a series of surveys published this summer that found Americans moving to the right on culture war issues like abortion and transgenderism.
A Gallup poll conducted in May found social conservatism at its highest level since 2012.
