Gregg Steinhafel
Joe Keenan is the executive editor of Total Retail. Joe has more than 10 years experience covering the retail industry, and enjoys profiling innovative companies and people in the space.
Taylor Knight is an associate content editor for Target Marketing and Total Retail. She enjoys writing and creating video content to interact with an audience.
For many consumers, Target had lost its way. The man tasked with getting Target back on track, Brian Cornell, who was named the company's new CEO in July, took his first significant steps in that process this week.
Target's search for a new chief executive came to an end Thursday when it for the first time chose an outsider to lead the Minneapolis-based retailer. PepsiCo executive Brian Cornell is Target's choice to replace Gregg Steinhafel, who was ousted in May as the company struggled under the weight of missed sales expectations, a rocky expansion into Canada and its massive data breach.Â
When Target's CEO, Gregg Steinhafel resigned in early May, we wrote with some confidence that the data breach was the least of Target's problems, and likely the most minor reason for his departure. We did think that the retailer's disastrous entrée into the Canadian market was a more significant issue. As it turns out, the story is worse and more contentious than that. According to a
There's been a lot of talk recently about the eyebrow-raising pay gap between retail company CEOs and the store employees below them. At last week's Code Conference, Wal-Mart's CEO (who reels in $10 million per year) said he was no different then Wal-Mart's store employees, including the 30,000 who are paid at minimum wage. Two days before that, the Los Angeles Times ran an unforgiving piece on the subject, saying that "… many CEOs now pull down so much more than their own employees that it's an ugly insult to working families."Â
Target said Monday that Chief Executive and Chairman Gregg Steinhafel is leaving in the wake of the devastating data breach late last year that hurt profits, shook customer confidence in the No. 3 U.S. retailer and prompted congressional hearings. "After extensive discussions, the board and Gregg Steinhafel have decided that now is the right time for new leadership at Target," Target's board said in a statement released on Monday. Target named Chief Financial Officer John Mulligan as interim president and CEO, and Roxanne Austin, a current member of Target's board of directors, as interim non-executive chair of the board.
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