With Halloween around the corner, Target is brandishing a machete. 

On Tuesday, the big box retail giant announced it will be slashing the prices of some 2,000 products, including food, beverages, gifts, and other home-holiday essentials. The news comes as retail players prep for what’s poised to be a leaner holiday shopping season.

Season of Discounting

First things first: We know for a fact that this holiday shopping season will be leaner. Because Thanksgiving falls so late in November this year, there will be five fewer shopping days than usual between Turkey Day and Christmas. Meanwhile, many retailers are pricing in a slowdown leading up to and after the US presidential election (hasn’t anyone heard of stress snacking and stress shopping?). All while inflation continues to weigh on weary shoppers. All told, the National Retail Federation projects US retail spending in November and December to increase between 2.5% and 3.5% compared to last year, trailing the 3.9% and 4.7% growth rates of 2023 and 2022, respectively.

Nearly 60% of respondents in a recent Bank of America consumer shopping survey said they’d be conducting more of their holiday shopping in discount stores compared to last year, and Target wants them to feel at home: 

• Target’s holiday markdowns are just the latest round: In May, the company said it was cutting prices on around 5,000 items, which it has since upped to 8,000 items.
• Meanwhile, last week Walmart announced its “inflation free” Thanksgiving meal discount — with prices below last year’s — at around $7 per person. Aldi has similarly announced a Thanksgiving meal deal that it says will cost around $5 per person.

Beyond the Grave: As Target and its competitors search for fresh ways to thrive, one dearly-departed retailer will soon come back to life. This week, a year after filing for bankruptcy, Bed Bath & Beyond announced a comeback. Parent company Beyond is investing $25 million into home decor and furniture retailer Kirkland’s (not to be confused with Costco’s Kirkland brand), and will receive in turn a licensee agreement for new, smaller-format Bed Bath & Beyond stores across the US. Just in time for Halloween, it’s the night of the living dead retailers.

You’ll miss out on a cheery hello from a Walmart greeter, but then again, that’s pretty status quo when you’re lying in bed with the flu. 

Walmart announced on Tuesday that it’s introducing a new same-day delivery service for prescription medication. This comes two weeks after Amazon announced it’s expanding its pharmacy operation and same-day medication delivery to 20 new US cities, bringing about 50% of the US population within Amazon’s delivery radius.

First: Do No Harm to Your Bottom Line

Amazon has been trying to break into healthcare for a while now, with mixed success. It acquired healthcare clinic chain One Medical for $3.9 billion in February 2023, and one year later, per reporting from Business Insider’s Eugene Kim, its integration into Amazon’s larger business was still experiencing serious growing pains. Walmart opened its first pharmacy in 1978, so it’s been in the business longer, but it hasn’t been able to expand into actual doctoring. Back in April, Walmart shuttered its Walmart Health operation, closing 51 health clinics in the process. 

Both retail giants have struggled with the clinical side of healthcare. But if Amazon knows one thing, it’s absurdly fast delivery, and Walmart — which is slowly but steadily waking up to the wonderful world of e-commerce — is falling in lockstep:

• Walmart is promising incredibly fast delivery times, as short as 30 minutes, the Financial Times reported. Even by Amazon standards, that’s zippy.
• The moves come as American brick-and-mortar pharmacy chains struggle with diminishing profit margins.

Race to the Bottom: Elsewhere in e-commerce-land, The Information reports that Amazon has started setting prices for its planned rival to super-cheap Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein. Per The Information’s reporting, Amazon is setting upper limits for items on the new service, including $8 for jewelry and $20 for sofas. If those sofas have any quarters stuck between the cushions, it’s practically a net gain.

They tried East meets West; now, they’re just doing their best.

HSBC, long one of the world’s most active cross-border lenders, announced a sweeping restructuring Tuesday that will cut costs and, if all goes as planned, ease increasingly tense geopolitical relations by splitting its footprint between East and West.

‘Dirty Work’

HSBC has a unique corporate structure among major lenders. It’s headquartered in London, but most of its profits come from China and Hong Kong — $16 billion versus $30 billion worldwide last year. This setup, however, has led to major whiplash for executives torn between the clashing demands of regulators in Britain and China.

From 2019 to 2021, furious at HSBC for cooperating with a US investigation into a Huawei executive, Beijing retaliated by cutting back on state companies’ business with the bank. In the fourth quarter of 2019 through all of 2020, HSBC canceled dividend payouts to shareholders under pressure from the Bank of England to shore up balances. The same year, Beijing led an authoritarian crackdown on Hong Kong, during which HSBC froze the accounts of democracy activists. UK legislators found the bank complicit in human rights violations by denying pensions to people who fled the crackdown, and accused it of “doing the dirty work of the Chinese Communist Party.” HSBC said it has to follow the rules where it operates.

Last year, the £120 billion ($156 billion) lender fended off a rebellion by Chinese insurance giant Ping An, which demanded it hive off its western businesses and move its headquarters to Asia (HSBC stands for The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, after all). With geopolitical tensions poised to heighten, the bank announced a swift and sweeping reorganization:

• Beginning Jan. 1, 2025, HSBC will be reorganized into four standalone units, with the UK and Hong Kong businesses on their own. The other two units will be “corporate and institutional banking” and “international wealth and premier banking.”
• HSBC will divide its operations between an “Eastern markets” division, overseeing Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, and a “Western markets” division, overseeing its non-ring-fenced UK bank, Europe, and the Americas.

Jury’s Out: HSBC gave scant detail on its plans to cut costs, though it said it will slash its 18-member executive committee and replace it with a 12-member “operating committee.” The lack of clarity left analysts wanting more info. UBS analyst Jason Napier noted the reorg itself could come with a hefty price tag: “Aligning functions for a group with 213,978 staff involves exceptional costs.”