This Wednesday, CNBC spoke to Target CEO Brian Cornell and discussed the boycott orchastrated by the anti-LGBT Christian fundamentalist organization, the American Family Association.
According to Daily Kos, the AFA’s petition to boycott Target over its trans-inclusive policies has reached 1.2 million signatures – all people who plan to withhold their business from the giant store chain. When Squawk Box host Kelly Evans asked Cornell how he was going to “navigate” the challenge of a potential massive boycott, he had this to say:
We’ve had a long history of embracing diversity and inclusion. A couple of weeks ago, I had one of our team members send me a note reminding me that if we went back to the mid 60s, our company was one of the very first to use African-American models in our advertising — and back then, it wasn’t well received.
We had a lot of tough feedback, but sitting here today, we know we made the right decision. And I certainly recognize that the stance we took, which, by the way, was very similar to many of our retail peers, has received quite a bit of feedback and as a company we’re constantly listening. So we listen to our guests, we listen to our team members.
But what’s been lost in this story is the fact that the vast majority of our stores — actually over 1,400 of our stores — already have a family restroom. And we’re committed over the next few months to make sure every one of our stores has that option, because we want our guests to be welcomed in our stores.
But if there’s a question of safety, I can tell you and others—our focused on safety is unwavering, and we want to make sure we provide a welcoming environment for all our guests one that safe, one that’s comfortable, and that’s our commitment over time.
So, we took a stance and we’re going to continue to embrace our belief of diversity inclusion and just how important it is to our company, but we’re also going to make sure our focus on state is unwavering and we’re going to provide a great environment for our guests to shop every time they’re in out stores.
Watch the segment in the video below:
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