Trim auto/hardware focuses on DIY basics - Target's Chicago, Illinois-area Greatland superstores, automobile and hardware departments, do-it-yourself

Discount Store News, April 5, 1993

Given the image that Target has crafted as an upscale discounter emphasizing apparel and domestics, it appears only logical that it should de-emphasize its automotives and hardware departments.

Over the past two years, Target has pared down its hard lines offerings to basics, conceding the serious do-it-yourself (DIY) customer to Kmart and Wal-Mart. In merchandising these departments, Target has winnowed its selections to those items that require little skill to use or install, such as a shower head and motor oil and filters--but no spark plugs.

As the departments in the newly opened Chicago Greatland stores illustrate, offerings almost fall into what one analyst described as an "impulse purchase" category.

Automotive parts and accessories occupy four gondolas tucked into the left rear corner of the Chicago Greatland stores as well as the rear and side walls with their customary warehouse racking.

Greatland is using motor oil as a traffic builder, offering eight brands at loss leader or close to cost prices. On end-cap, it features Excel oil at $2.77 for a gallon jug, equal to 69.5 cents per quart, and on the side wall, quart bottles of Excel of 67 cents.

Other sharp prices: Amoco, 79 cents a quart on endcap; Chevron and Trop Arctic, 83 cents; Quaker State, $1.02 or $1.08 (varying by store); Pennzoil, $1.14; Valvoline, $1.24; and Castrol, $1.26.

Most of the motor oil shelf space is devoted to the lower priced brands, with only three or four facings for the top national brands, Quaker State and Pennzoil.

Greatland devotes the automotives rear wall to air and oil filters, including those that bear Target's sole private label in automotives.

The Target oil filters are shelf-priced at $1.99, compared to $2.44 to $2.99 for Fram.

Target label air filters range from $3.99 to $14.99, against $4.67 to $8.69 for Fram. Shelf-pricing saves the labor cost of individually price-ticketing each time.

Endcaps featured items such as: Peak anti-freeze, $3.29 a gallon and Scott shop towels, 99 cents a roll; and beaded seat cushions at $9.99.

Target merchandises auto sound in consumer electronics, where a top-of-the-line Sony system, with CD player, is priced at $289.99. Purchasers have to arrange for their own installations.

The seasonal area at Greatland is located to the rear between automotives and toys. Now set for Lawn & Patio, seasonal offers just what the name implies, items used to care for lawn and those set on patios, such as a large selection of patio furniture, grills, low-voltage lights and planter boxes.

Target stocks no riding mowers and displays, instead, a line of six skus of MTD walk-behind mowers standing on end on a shelf to save floor space.

A Spanish language sign in the Schaumburg Greatland advises customers to use one of the customer service phones to call for help in getting one down.

Top of the line is a Yardman self-propelled, convertible mulching mower, 21-inch cut, with 5 H.P. Briggs & Stratton engine, at $394.88. It is marked as a "Great Buy," Target's everyday low pricing program.

An opening price point is an MTD Lawnflite, 20-inch cut, with 3.5 H.P. B&G engine at $99.88.

On endcap, Greatland features items such as the Sunbeam Electric grill at $288.99 and the Smokey Joe table-top grill at $26.89.

Target carries no spring bedding plants or shrubs. Instead, its green goods offerings consist of a gondola run, called Home Floral, of green house plants. Price points include: upright plants in 10-inch pots at $15.99; six-inch at $5.99; and hanging plants in six-inch containers at $4.99.

In hardware, which is adjacent to automotives, Target cross merchandises the same type of motion detector floodlight, coach lights and low-voltage lighting offered in Lawn & Patio. Those include the new Regent motion detector coach lights at $39.99; the basic Woods Wire motion detector floodlight at $14.99, and the Intermatic Malibu kits of 14 low-voltage lights for $59.99.

In plumbing, the Greatland planogram combines a selection of wicker hampers, shelves, each $24.99, and wastebaskets, $10.99, normally associated with domestics atop a selection of Magnolia toilet seats. The wicker accessories outstrip the $8.99 to $9.99 range for the toilet seats.

As an example of its easy-to-do-only approach, the Greatland stocks shower heads, such as Turbo models at $14.99 and $24.99, but no kitchen or sink faucets that require a special tool and a fair amount of dexterity to install.

An endcap in the hardware department was featuring Target's private label light bulbs at $1.26 for a four-pack, compared to $1.46 for General Electric. Another endcap carried the Woods Wire 100-foot outdoor extension cord at $9.99.

Target has developed a small private label line of mechanics hand tools, called Duralite, to complement Stanley. For a six-inch slip joint pliers, the price for the Duralite and Stanley item was the same, $4.99. But for a 10-inch adjustable wrench, the Duralite price was $7.99, vs. $11.99 for one from Stanley, and a 25-foot, one-inch tape rule from Duralite was priced at $4.99, against $9.59 for Stanley. The Stanley tape was the only item observed in lawn and patio, hardware or automotives that bore one of Target's new yellow Price Cut stickers, with $12.99 as the old price.