(Photo: Cr Kathy Duff)
June 2, 2020
The online petition launched by South Burnett councillor Kathy Duff in a bid to save the Murgon Target Country store has attracted an official response on the petition webpage.
As previously reported, the answer is not positive for Murgon residents who had been hoping the store could be turned into a mini Kmart.
Target managing director Marina Joanou responded on the change.org petition page:
Since our announcement last week about the closure of our Murgon store, we have been overwhelmed by messages of concern and support from our customers. The decision to make such significant changes to our business has not been easy, and particularly the very difficult decision to close stores is not one that is made lightly, but it is absolutely necessary for the survival and sustainability of the broader business and the thousands of people we employ.
We are very aware that what was announced will have a significant impact on many people, most importantly our team members and their customers, and on regional communities where stores will be closing.
In regional Australia, only about half of our Target Country stores are suited to being converted to smaller format Kmart stores because they meet a range of criteria including location, population catchments and being large enough to make the small format model work.
Regrettably, many of our regional stores are not suitable for conversion, and while we appreciate the sentiment behind, and intent of, your petition to convert or keep the store open, we are unable to revisit the decision.
We acknowledge this is a tough time for our team members and for our customers, and we will support them and you as best we can. We continue to focus on improving our online shopping offer within Target and our digital capability across Kmart, Target and Catch. We’re working hard to retain, as best we can, the convenience our customers currently have access to in store, by providing a range of online pickup and delivery options right across Australia.
We know there is little we can say that will ease your disappointment over the closure of our Murgon store, but we hope that this information provides additional context around what was a difficult but necessary decision.
The petition had attracted 3440 signatures by 3:15pm on Tuesday, with many more collected on paper copies located around Murgon and in Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington’s office in Kingaroy.
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