Target’s Pre-Father’s Day Register Outage Cost the Retailer $50 Million, Analyst Says

Source: fortune.com - Monday, June 17, 2019
The impact of Target's weekend register glitch won't show up until the retailer discloses quarterly revenue in August, but it could have cost the company about $50 million in lost sales, according to one analyst. Target's registers went down for about two hours on Saturday across the chain, stemming from what the company called an "internal technology issue" that left some shoppers frustrated and venting on social media. Like other retailers, Target generates anywhere from one-fifth to one-third of its weekly sales on Saturday, so two hours on that busy day is worth about $50 million, according to Bryan Gildenberg, chief knowledge officer at Kantar Consulting. Kantar's estimate assumes that most stores are open 12 hours a day, and that some shoppers returned later on to complete their purchases. In last year's second quarter, Target had revenue of $17.8 billion. Target declined to comment on the estimate's accuracy. On Sunday, Target was hit with an unrelated problem at a data center run by technology vendor NCR , which led to the retailer being unable to process select card payments at some stores for about 90 minutes. Both issues have been resolved, a Target spokesman said, and the discount retailer is evaluating "every aspect of what went wrong" to ensure it won't happen again. Abandoned Carts Saturday's outage came on the eve of Father's Day in the U.S., when the retailer was promoting various items--from ties to golf balls-

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