Target is upping its game this holiday season, including boosting wages, hiring an optimistic number of seasonal workers, introducing exclusive brands, renovating stores, teaming with Pinterest and even introducing a new way of online gifting just in time for Christmas.
With new brands, new stores, new workers and new zeal, Target is ready to welcome holiday shoppers. Rebuilding trust with consumers following its massive 2013 data breach, it’s becoming more consumer-led across its operations.
Driven by customer requests, it’s been expanding its grocery section, taking on the transgender-bathroom issue and rolling out new brick-and-mortar store formats for urban customers, such as its just-opened store in New York’s Herald Square. Second-quarter results showed the pay-off: sales increased 1.6 percent, comparable store sales rose 1.3 percent and traffic rose 2.1 percent.
It’s still in the midst of its own brand makeover, including announcing a five-point climate-change action plan. And it has added eight exclusive brands since last year, including Goodfellow & Co. menswear; Project 62, a youthful home decor line; and Hearth & Hand with Magnolia, a farmhouse chic collection from Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines, who are stepping back from their HGTV show to focus on this line, a five-year commitment, their other businesses and of course, their kids.
To take advantage of the season, Target plans to hire 100,000 temp holiday workers this year—40% more than last year—with the expectation that its lower prices and ramped-up spending on e-commerce will lure enough shoppers to justify the extra labor spread across its stores and online-fulfillment operations.
Those hirees will join existing Target employees in enjoying an increase in the chain’s minimum wage to $11 an hour. While Walmart and other competitors made big announcements about boosting their minimum wages at a time of tightening labor and social agitation about “living wages,” Target quietly boosted starting pay to $10 an hour last year. Target said base-level pay would increase to $15 an hour within three years.
Target also struck a deal with Pinterest to license its camera image search tool, which lets users of the Pinterest app browse photos that are similar to pictures they take themselves. Users will be able to snap photos of items they like and get suggestions from Target for similar products to buy from the chain.
“We believe visual search in particular is incredibly important to our business,” said Kristi Argyilan, senior vice president of marketing for Target, according to the Journal.
Target just announced a new way to help holiday shoppers: Before shipping a present, Target will let online shopers send an email to check if the recipient might want something else instead, USA Today said. The new “GiftNow” button will allow online shoppers to purchase a present and then send an e-mail as an “electronic gift box,” or “e-gift,” for short. The recipient can then accept the present, switch its color and size or swap it out for something else.
The Minneapolis-based chain also is planning to remodel existing supercenters and to open smaller stores in cities, unveiling an initiative to remodel more than 1,000 of its existing 1,800 stores by the end of 2020. “We’re remodeling, and across the street someone is closing the door,” CEO Brian Cornell told the Wall Street Journal.
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