--- title: People love stealing stuff from Target - The Hustle description: Organized retail crime is crushing US retailers. image: https://media.hubspot.com/hubfs/Imported%20images/TheHustle+HubSpot_Lockup.svg --- # People love stealing stuff from Target ![Ben Berkley](https://53.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/53/assets/hubspot.com/web-team/WBZ/HubSpot%20Media/Blog%202021/Images/Nav/Optimized/TheHustle_Icon_Dark.svg) [Ben Berkley](https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/author/ben-berkley) Published: June 02, 2023 Updated: October 11, 2023 If Target’s mascot, Bullseye, were a real dog, he’d have A5 Wagyu beef for every meal and roll around in [this $3.2m](https://www.marcpetite.com/blogs/luxury-dog-accessories/top-7-most-expensive-dog-collars) “Bugatti of dog collars.” ![People love stealing stuff from Target](https://media.hubspot.com/hubfs/Imported%20images/TheHustle+HubSpot_Lockup.svg) Target ain’t exactly hurting is our point here — its [average customer](https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-target-shopper-demographic-white-millennial-woman-earning-middle-income-2021-7) makes ~23 trips per year, spending ~$50 each time; sales topped $107B last year. Yet we grimaced when we learned about Target’s growing inventory loss problem. #### **How much are we talking here?** Last fiscal year, the retailer [saw](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/target-says-organized-retail-crime-fueled-losses-have-shot-up.html) $763m in “shrink”: loss of inventory, whether by accident or a deliberate act like shoplifting, fraud, or cargo theft. CEO Brian Cornell expects Target’s inventory losses to balloon beyond $1B this year. - It’s not just Target — Walmart, Walgreens, and Home Depot also recently [lamented](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/18/its-not-people-shoplifting-why-retails-focus-is-organized-crime.html) theft increases. #### **What’s changed?** Organized retail crime is up. (Or, in Target parlance, up & up.) “It’s not people shoplifting an individual item for personal use,” National Retail Federation president Matt Shay [told](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/18/its-not-people-shoplifting-why-retails-focus-is-organized-crime.html) *CNBC*. Stores, he said, are fighting “sophisticated” networks stealing throughout the supply chain — on docks, trucks, and railways, as well as in stores. Efforts to limit secondary markets for stolen goods are underway; a law [goes into effect](https://www.adamsandreese.com/news-knowledge/whats-next-following-the-inform-consumers-act) next month requiring US online marketplaces to verify high-volume sellers. #### **It’s easy to blame criminals, but…** … retailers must also look inward; investing in loss prevention can, y’know, prevent losses — yet 68.5% of retailers [do not](https://cdn.nrf.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/National%20Retail%20Security%20Survey%20Organized%20Retail%20Crime%202022.pdf) have teams fighting against organized retail crime. Perhaps that’s because external theft only accounted for 37% of lost inventory last year — employee theft (28.5%) and process failures (25.7%) were other major culprits. **Back to Bullseye:** Listen, we’re not saying he’s running a crime syndicate, but does anyone else have a presence in all ~2k Target stores? Just saying, it’s a little suspicious. 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Signup for a free account Close modal ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Ben Berkley", "url" : "https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/news/author/ben-berkley" }, "datePublished" : "2023-06-02T23:52:12.000Z", "headline" : "People love stealing stuff from Target", "image" : [ "https://media.hubspot.com/hubfs/Imported%20images/TheHustle+HubSpot_Lockup.svg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/news/people-love-stealing-stuff-from-target", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject" } } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@id" : "#article", "@type" : "NewsArticle", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Ben Berkley", "url" : "https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/author/ben-berkley" }, "dateModified" : "2023-10-11T19:23:02+0000", "datePublished" : "2023-06-02T23:52:12+0000", "headline" : "People love stealing stuff from Target", "image" : [ "https://media.hubspot.com/hubfs/Imported%20images/TheHustle+HubSpot_Lockup.svg" ], "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 112, "url" : "https://fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/53/assets/hubspot.com/web-team/WBZ/Blog%202021/Images/Logos/HubSpot%20Logo%20112X112.svg", "width" : 112 }, "name" : "HubSpot", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.facebook.com/hubspot", "https://twitter.com/hubspot" ], "url" : "https://www.hubspot.com" }, "speakable" : { "@type" : "SpeakableSpecification", "xPath" : [ "//title", "/html/head/meta[@name='description']/@content" ] } } ```