SBP Interview - Target Canada: The Rise and Fall of a Promise, with Omar Roubi
EP 240 · Sep 29, 2026 · 63 min · Omar Roubi
0:00 / 1:03:21
The short version
Target is a company people love. More than 1,700 stores, a brand with real pull. Then it came to Canada, lost billions, and walked away inside four years.
This is a story about Big and Little marketing. Little is the advertising. Big is everything else: product, price, place, and how the whole business organizes around the customer. Roger Martin says a promise has to be memorable, valuable, and deliverable. Advertising makes it memorable. Price and place make it valuable. Product makes it deliverable. In Canada, Target's ads were excellent, and the business broke the promise anyway.
CPA Omar Roubi joins Marc and Vassilis to reverse engineer the collapse through the four Ps. Omar teaches this case at the University of Colorado Denver and built a definitive audio case study on it at LumiQ. He also lived it: his wife moved from Texas to help launch the Toronto-area stores.
Inside: the Zellers real estate deal that started the countdown, empty shelves sitting above full back rooms, the imperial vs metric mix-up, three distribution centres across a 6,000 km country, and why the famous $5.4B loss is mostly a writedown, not operating losses.
A case study in why great marketing can't save a broken business.
Our Guest:
Omar Roubi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-roubi-cpa-texas/
Chapters:
00:00 Cold open: one bad decision begets more
00:26 Big marketing vs Little marketing
02:16 Omar Roubi returns
03:14 The personal connection: launching Target in Toronto
06:14 "Too big to fail"
06:36 The accountant's takeaway
09:22 Place: the Zellers real estate deal
12:08 Wrong locations, wrong customer
18:47 The 12-month countdown clock
22:25 Product: empty shelves, full back rooms
25:02 Physical availability and the metric mix-up
32:46 Price: "expect more, pay less" meets three warehouses
41:05 The currency headwind
45:07 The $5.4B loss vs the $200M operating loss
48:27 Little marketing: is ROI the wrong number?
53:01 The apology videos, and brand vs performance
57:04 The one number that signals trouble first
1:00:07 The human cost: 17,600 people
References:
References
CBC News. (2011, January 13). Target buys Zellers leases for $1.8B. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-buys-zellers-leases-for-1-8b-1.981132
CBC News. (2012, July 6). Target wins approval to come to Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-wins-approval-to-come-to-canada-1.1160485
Castaldo, J. (2016, January 1). The last days of Target. Canadian Business. https://canadianbusiness.com/ideas/the-last-days-of-target-canada/
Kumar, N. (2025, September 2). The experience paradox: Why better satisfaction scores don't always mean growth. Kantar. https://www.kantar.com/north-america/inspiration/experience/the-experience-paradox
LinkedIn B2B Institute & WARC. (2024, August 13). Making a promise to the customer: How to give campaigns a competitive edge. https://business.linkedin.com/advertise/resources/b2b-institute/making-a-promise-to-the-business-customer
Roubi, O. (Host). (2021, August). The rise and fall of Target Canada [Audio podcast]. LumiQ.
Strauss, M. (2013, April 5). Target Canada prices 0.2 per cent higher than Wal-Mart's: Survey. The Globe and Mail.
Strauss, M. (2014, September 22). Target Canada winning price battle with Wal-Mart. The Globe and Mail.
Target Corporation. (2011, January 13). Target Corporation to acquire interest in Canadian real estate from Zellers Inc., a subsidiary of Hudson's Bay Company, for C$1.825 billion [Press release]. https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2011/01/
Target Corporation. (2015a, January 15). Target Corporation announces plans to discontinue Canadian operations [Press release]. https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2015/01/
Target Corporation. (2015b, January 15). Form 8-K. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000027419/000002741915000005/
Zellers Inc., Hudson's Bay Company, Target Corporation, & Target Canada Co. (2011, September 12). Amended and restated transaction agreement [Exhibit 2(a) to Form 10-Q]. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000027419/000110465911066091/
Chapters
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Transcript
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SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Baba podcast.
SPEAKER_01: There is a lack of thought. There's lack of vision. This is a classic example of bad decision making. And one bad decision begets more bad decisions. I feel pretty confident that if I was in the room or the average professional was in the room, they would take a pause at least to see if this is the viable way to enter the Canadian market. But that decision that signed their death certificate.
SPEAKER_03: Then it came to Canada, lost billions, and walked away within four years. Past success doesn't buy you the next market. This is the story about Big M and Little M marketing. Little M is the advertising, Big M is everything else. Think product, price, place, and how the whole business organizes around the customer. Now Target's advertising was excellent, and so was its promise. You know, expect more, pay less. Roger Martin says the promise has to be memorable, valuable, and even deliverable. Advertising makes it memorable. We can all agree with that. Price and place make it valuable. Product, however,