Minneapolis - St. Paul Business News

[Anondson]

There is a balance, we don't want to be overrun with the sort of construction in the "What the..." thread, no matter how much Cuidad Juarez character it brings to Lake Street.

[MNdible]

Don't worry, the invisible hand of the free market will take care of all of your health, safety, and welfare needs. Once there's an outbreak of salmonella or a tragic fire, people will stop visiting that business, they'll go belly-up, and voila, problem solved!

[mattaudio]

I take it you two didn't actually read the article, which doesn't talk about health/safety/welfare regulation, but instead talks about regulations that the city attorney even calls 'layers to be peeled away,' and inconsistent messaging from the city that fails to set a clear benchmark for business and property owners.

[Anondson]

I read it. I posted the link. I was noting before it got brought up that there is a need for regulations. People defending a status quo inevitably point to a worst case in order to not change an indefensible systemic bureaucracy. Not acknowledging the worst cases doesn't make them not exist. Acknowledging them isn't a defense of the government-as-usual.

[MNdible]

I also read it. And I also acknowledged that there certainly is opportunity for streamlining, especially taking advantage of improvements in technology.

Gubmint Regulation is really easy to hate on. Who likes regulation? YUCK. But in a big city, where a businesses' potential bad decisions can have negative impacts on their customers and the broader public, they're necessary.

I guess I'm just not that shocked that there are a lot of hoops that need to be jumped through on one's way to opening up a new business. People with a lot of money hire somebody to help them through that process. They also hire somebody to grout the tiles rather than doing it themselves. Your results may vary.

[RailBaronYarr]

I'd like to say that I grout my own tiles and backsplashes with excellent results.

[MNdible]

Maybe there needs to be a TV reality show about navigating city bureaucracy, starring a sort-of-hot lady with a devil-may-care attitude.

[Nick]

Over the past few years of working for the City directly in a regulatory role, I've observed that, while there are always ways to improve processes and cut out bureaucracy, roughly 90% of people loudly complaining that they're in a bad situation because of City processes/bureaucracy are incorrect that their bad situation stems from City processes/bureaucracy.

Speaking as Nick, Inc. obviously and not as a representative of anyone/anything.

[seanrichardryan]

Ding Ding.

[acs]

Locked: http://finance-commerce.com/2015/01/bmo ... usinesses/

$3 Billion over three years for MN businesses including construction and CRE. Maybe they can find a couple hundred million in there for a Duval tower? In all seriousness this may be a sign of great things to come.

[Nick]

Granted, I'm not the kind of person who's credentialed enough to talk about "deliverables" in a gibberish department-wide email, but part of me wonders if there's any kind of macro silver lining in Target laying off a few thousand corporate employees in what is, overall, a pretty good economy.

Lotta experience walking out their doors--how many people will start new businesses?

Not that that's likely to be much short-term consolation to anyone losing their job, but it's not quite 2008.

[acs]

I don't even want to get started on how poor of a business move this is, but for comparison Amazon has a goal of employing something like 30,000 people in downtown Seattle. It was pure hypocrisy today talking about focusing on the Millennial demographic and urban stores while likely axing their recent hires and decamping to the suburbs.

[Nick]

counterpoint: those things have nothing to do with each other

[acs]

Yes they are, it's known as corporate culture. It's by no means the ticket to profitability, but it's a big factor in both recruiting talent and driving innovation.

[trigonalmayhem]

From everything I've heard the corporate culture at target didn't sound very conducive to actually making good business decisions or getting stuff done. It sounded more like a way for twenty-somethings to meet their future husband/wife and pay for drinks in uptown than a viable business environment.

But I'm a bit old-fashioned and work for a pretty conservative old-fashioned company. But we're not laying thousands of people off anytime soon either. I'm also one of the youngest people in my department at 31.

[nate]

There was a short but plausible sounding article in this weeks Economist about Target's struggles in the last five years or so:
-Focusing on low-margin groceries at the expense of clothes and furniture and electronics.
-Losing the cheap-chic edge they enjoyed in the late '00s.
-Expanding too rapidly into Canada.

This kind of stuff goes way beyond a shoddy corporate culture, but are strategic errors at the executive level.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/ ... ba3c16df4a

[up north]

From everything I've heard the corporate culture at target didn't sound very conducive to actually making good business decisions or getting stuff done. It sounded more like a way for twenty-somethings to meet their future husband/wife and pay for drinks in uptown than a viable business environment.

But I'm a bit old-fashioned and work for a pretty conservative old-fashioned company. But we're not laying thousands of people off anytime soon either. I'm also one of the youngest people in my department at 31.

This jives with my experience.

In the summer they book out about half of Stadium View apartments near the U and fill it up with about 200 interns from colleges around the midwest. I lived at Stadium View a couple years back and it's basically a two month long expense paid party curtsey of Target Corp.

Obviously not all of their problems but it doesn't help.

[acs]

There was a short but plausible sounding article in this weeks Economist about Target's struggles in the last five years or so:
-Focusing on low-margin groceries at the expense of clothes and furniture and electronics.
-Losing the cheap-chic edge they enjoyed in the late '00s.
-Expanding too rapidly into Canada.

This kind of stuff goes way beyond a shoddy corporate culture, but are strategic errors at the executive level.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/ ... ba3c16df4a

Obviously I like Target's new focus on city targets and express targets, but that comparison to Trader Joe's just makes me cringe. It smacks of what Kohl's attempted re-branding in imitation of Apple post-recession (for those who don't remember, that was a collosal failure and one reason they might not be around much longer).

[QuietBlue]

Yeah, that's pretty accurate based on my experience too. I had some contract positions there over the course of several years, then was a regular employee for a few more up until three years ago. If anything, Target has focused too much on recruiting younger people and would benefit from balancing them out with some employees that are older, more experienced, and, to be honest, more mature. They're reaping what they've sown as far as the culture goes, and the large-scale strategic blunders haven't helped either.

[nate]

There was a short but plausible sounding article in this weeks Economist about Target's struggles in the last five years or so:
-Focusing on low-margin groceries at the expense of clothes and furniture and electronics.
-Losing the cheap-chic edge they enjoyed in the late '00s.
-Expanding too rapidly into Canada.

This kind of stuff goes way beyond a shoddy corporate culture, but are strategic errors at the executive level.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/ ... ba3c16df4a

Obviously I like Target's new focus on city targets and express targets, but that comparison to Trader Joe's just makes me cringe. It smacks of what Kohl's attempted re-branding in imitation of Apple post-recession (for those who don't remember, that was a collosal failure and one reason they might not be around much longer).

JCPenney was another retailer that tried and failed at wholesale transformation. It sounds easier to pull off than it is, I guess.