A 40-day target boycott begins today. It could not be a worse time for the company

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Cnn
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Before Wednesday, Target stands with a 40-day consumer boycott, which refers to the departure of the company from DEI guidelines of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

“We ask people to separate themselves from the goal because they have turned their back on our community,” said Rev. Jamal Bryant, a prominent pastor from Megachurch in Atlanta, who started boycott, in an interview with CNN.

The boycott, which begins at the beginning of Lent, takes place more than a month after Target has made changes to its DEI programs and a difficult period of time for the company, since it is exposed to a rush of tariffs in the middle of a challenging economy.

On January 24, days after Donald Trump's presidency, Target announced that it will remove the attitude for minority employees, ended an executive committee that focused on racial equity and made other changes to diversity initiatives. Target said it had a new strategy called “belonging to the Bullseye”, which it introduced for the first time last year, and the company continued to work for “a feeling of belonging to our team to create our guests and communities”. Target also emphasized the need to “stay in step with the developing external landscape”.

Target is one of dozens of Fortune-500 companies, the DEI to respond to conservative court decisions, pressure from activists and legal legal groups and recently the threats of the Trump administration, which has evaluated, withdrawn, including potential criminal matters against companies. Companies are trapped between the efforts to increase diversity and avoiding a conservative legal approach.

But no company has confronted itself as targeted with an amazing setback from Dei supporters. Customers online protested the decision, and Anne and Lucy Dayton, the daughters of one of Target's co -founders, described the company's actions as “betrayal”.

Target is under more pressure than companies such as Walmart, John Deere or Tractor Supply, since Target continued in his DEI efforts and has a more progressive customer base than this competitor.

In the years after George Floyd was murdered by the police in 2020, Target was a leading advocate of Dei programs in the business world after George Floyd was murdered by the police. Target also spent years a public reputation as a progressive employer in LGBTQ questions.

“Blacks spend more than $ 12 million a day, so we would expect a little loyalty, some decency and camaraderie,” said Bryant.

Melissa Butler, the CEO of the lip rod, one of the largest black ownership companies that were supported in Target, said on Tiktok that she was disappointed with Target's retreat. But she fears that the boycott could hurt black ownership transactions.

“We don't want these minority companies to suffer or have a negative impact,” she said.

Target refused to comment on CNN as the boycott. A Target spokesman said that the company was still obliged to include and offers a wide range of products and services, including articles that belong to black and minority providers.

However, there is already signs that the setback from the move of Target has an impact on the company.

Customer visits to Target, Walmart and Costco have slowed themselves down in the past four weeks, but according to Placer.ai. The slowdown could also be attributed to weather, economic conditions and other variables, warned Placer.ai.

The data “show a clear decline in traffic at the end of January to mid -February after the step back from Dei,” said Joseph Feldman, analyst at the Telsey Advisory Group, in a reference to customers last week.

The boycott also comes when Target is exposed to pressure from tariffs and a withdrawal of consumers. Target said on Tuesday that his turnover decreased in February and expects sales to increase only by 1% this year.

The CEO of Target, Brian Cornell, said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that Trump's tariffs in Mexico could force the company to increase the prices for fruit and vegetables this week. Target also said that the uncertainty of the “tariff” will affect its profit in this quarter.

Cornell said the goal is strongly based on Mexican product imports in winter. “These are categories in which we will try to protect pricing, but the consumer will probably record price increases in the next few days,” he said.

Ryan Young and Jason Morris from CNN contributed to this article.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated in which Melissa Butler, the CEO of the lip rod, spoke about the target boycott. It was posted on Tikkok.