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Sep 24, 2023

5 Reasons Target Stores Look Better Than A Year Ago

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) “Our strategy is working.” That’s what

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

"Our strategy is working." That's what Target CEO Brian Cornell told listeners on the company's analyst call last week, a proverbial red-circle love fest given the good news gushing out of Minneapolis.

And Target did have good reason for the good cheer. Many of the initiatives Cornell et al have been working on are starting to pay off. In many cases, these improvements are behinds the scenes in logistics, supply chain management, online technologies and personnel.

But for Target shoppers, there is plenty of proof that things are getting better too. In addition to store remodelings, new formats featuring smaller footprints and enhanced online fulfillment options there is no denying that the typical Target store just looks better than it did a year ago.

Cornell was particularly proud on the call of what's been accomplished so far in the physical stores: "Guests like what we are doing. The investments we are making are taking root and they are driving results, creating a more inspired and connected shopping experience."

Recent visits to stores in the Atlanta metro area show some very specific improvements in merchandising, display and branding, confirming that the shopping experience is indeed more inspired.

Here are five specific things you’ll see in Target stores today that you wouldn't have seen a year ago.

The Target stable of brands – both house labels and captured names – had become pretty stale. Merona was rampant in apparel while Threshold was downright ubiquitous in home.

Under Cornell, the store has rolled out ten new brands over the past year including three he describes as "billion-dollar" labels. More are on the way.

From Magnolia Home's Hearth & Hand and Project 62 in home goods to JoyLab, A New Day and Goodfellow in apparel, the store is overrun with new house brands, each put together with more than the usual aplomb. They recall the glory days of the Tar-jay era when the range of store labels was revolutionary in scale and scope.

The classic beef about Target was always the disconnect between all those hip TV commercials and the reality of the gondola-driven miles of aisles of a mass merchant.

There's still a big footprint and plenty of rackem’-and-stackem’ shelving but they are now interspersed with creative merchandising pods that most department stores would (and should be) envious of.

The Hearth & Hand display is positively spacious with assorted high and low fixturing, minimal stock on display and elegant signage. It occupies a space of more than 300 square feet in some stores, a proverbial continent for a discounter.

In apparel, brands get their own fixtures, again breaking the rectangular grid to become focal points of the department with curved tables and racks. This is unheard of in this channel.

For years, Target was a downright Sign Nazi when it came to overhead signage and department nomenclature. Again, plenty of that still exists, but it is now increasingly broken by clever, whimsical and amazingly eye-catching signs, large and small: overhead, on end caps, as backdrops for vignettes or entire departments. Who else would call the seasonal Easter department the "Hop Shop"?

Once the land of slotting fees and deeply discounted promos, Target's end caps have now reverted back to their original purpose: to catch the eye of passing-by shoppers and get them to wander down an aisle they had no intention of ever seeing.

Some of that is achieved by signage, but some too by fixturing, which mixes different heights and configurations to continually break up the mass monotony.

Part of what makes Target look fresh and enticing is also about what's not there. The store, to the astonishment of most, was one of the last retailers in America to continue to devote an inordinate amount of floor space to CDs, DVDs and books. Inordinate is not strong enough: it was embarrassing.

Those departments have now been right-sized with the realities of a Netflix, Kindle and Spotify world. They are still there but all that extra space is now being used much more efficiently.

Cornell said the store's results have been "phenomenal." For those who believed in the first half of the current Target slogan – "Expect More" – those expectations are finally being met.

Home pod for Hearth & Home