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Target Opening Smaller Stores Tailored to Neighborhoods
Target wants to reach urban and college town consumers through “flexible-format” locations that are less than 50,000 square feet.
Minneapolis, Minn.--Target is adapting its big-box strategy to fit the needs of urbanites.
According to Bloomberg, earlier this month at the company’s national meeting at its Minneapolis headquarters, Target CEO Brian Cornell told reporters he planned to open hundreds of smaller stores in the future.
Target calls these locations, which are less than 50,000 square feet, “flexible-format” stores. They offer edited assortments of merchandise and food, tailored to the demographics of their location.
The retailer first began opening flexible-format stores in 2012. The company’s 2015 annual report noted the “positive initial results” of smaller stores in focus markets such as Chicago, which center on a “locally relevant experience.”
Target currently operates 1,795 stores in the United States, with nine more to open before the end of the year, all of which are flexible-format.
A 45,000-square-foot store to open in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood will offer baby items and a grab-and-go food section among other Target staples, while a 21,000-square-foot location slated to open in Cupertino, Calif., where Apple is headquartered, will offer tech accessories.
All the flexible-format stores feature in-store order pick-up for online shopping, which is helpful for apartment dwellers who might not have a doorman.
Towns with colleges are also a major focus of Target’s flexible format agenda, with locations planned for Penn State, Pa., Cambridge, Mass., University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla., and University of Southern California in Los Angeles. These locations focus on dorm and apartment furnishings, groceries and fan merchandise.
So far, Target’s website lists 19 planned new stores for 2017, only one of which will be a big-box store.
The company seems to anticipate that Manhattan will embrace the forthcoming Tribeca location when it opens in the fall; a 27,000-square-foot store is already planned to go up in the East Village in 2018.
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