Hard lines reflect the Target touch of class: private label lines, cross-merchandising polish upscale identity - The Power Retailers: Target

Discount Store News, April 1, 1996 by Richard Halverson

When it comes to hard lines merchandising, Target demonstrates the same creative flair that it shows in its marketing and promotion.

Among the innovations that have recently appeared in its stores are moves to cross-merchandise both hard lines and soft goods through signage, rather than actually moving goods from their respective departments. The Destination Sun program, for example, highlights swimwear and sun apparel, suntan lotions, beach toys and water gear.

Micromarketing, continued development of private label brands, an across-the-store promotion of Warner Bros. licensed products debuting this month, a license to create a new automotives brand (Car & Driver) and the new use of GT Interactive Software to drive its computer software and video game business are all hallmarks of Target's hard lines merchandising.

Introduced in spring '95, Destination Sun is a cross-merchandising program that crosses soft lines and hard lines distinctions, as do many of Target's PL programs, such as Windsor & Browne. By using hanging signs, Destination Sun focuses attention on all sun-related merchandise, whether swimsuits in apparel, suntan preparations in H&BC, picnic gear in housewares or beach buckets and boogie boards in toys.

Target the Home Collection is another cross-merchandising program that links housewares and RTA furniture departments with distinctive blue signs above and beside selected merchandise.

In housewares, Home Collection signs focus attention on no-brand kitchen gadgets that Target imports directly, as well as its Furio brand dinner plates. Across the aisle in RTA, the same Home Collection signs spotlight an expanded line of Furio, which also dominates Target's RTA offerings.

Giftware has become a focus category, and Target carries six of its own distinctive fixtures of glass shelves on brushed, stainless steel supports. During Easter, its new stores in Northern Virginia were featuring ceramic candy dishes shaped like Easter baskets with bunny motifs.

Giftware offers knockoffs of top-selling skus in wood and decorative brass from Pier l and Pottery Barn.

Born out of a merchandising faux pas in Florida in '89 micromarketing at Target has emerged as more than just a theoretical concept.

That year, Target was sponsoring the Arctic adventures of Wil Steger and developed a private label line of Steger outdoor apparel, such as parkas and mittens and cold-weather sweaters. But Target found that the line sold poorly in its Florida stores, and since then has been making sure that it carries swimsuits year-round-more one-piece suits in stores on Florida's West Coast, where customers are older, and more bikinis in the East Coast stores, where patrons are younger.

In 1992, Target invested heavily in computer equipment that can micromarket individual stores within the same market.

Linda Ahler, recently named president of the Dayton Hudson department store division, was instrumental in setting Target's course on micromarketing when she was senior vp, merchandising, Robert Giampietro, vp, merchandising, now heads Targets micromarketing program.

Buyers are encouraged to think in smaller quantities to allow for regional variations-catering to the taste for Jays potato chips in Chicago and Saguaro brand chips in Phoenix.

Hardly any retailer is as far along with micromarketing as Target,, said Sid Doolittle, partner of the McMillan/Doolittle retail consulting firm in Chicago.

In southern Atlanta, one of the older stores purchased from Richway in the '80s demonstrates how seriously Target is taking micromarketing. The store has dropped fishing, whereas most Targets, such as in Fredricksburg, Va., and Tampa, Fla., still carry tackle.

Catering to a large Afro-American customer base, the Atlanta store offers a full gondola run of n ft. of hair preparations and beauty prod@ ucts for dark-skinned women. Romance novels and other paperbacks and magazines intended for black readers dominate the book section. The store also stocks greeting cards for blacks.

Each Target features a small seasonal area that can be merchandised at the store managers discretion during off-seasons. Before Easter took over its seasonal area, the south Atlanta store was featuring in a vignette of bed and bath products,right down to an African-American-oriented novel on the night stand.

The same type of micromarketing for black customers was evident in apparel departments for men and women, including an Afro-inspired line of women's apparel called Authentics and a young men's line called Envisions. Target's new stores in Detroit also carry the same Afro-inspired lines.

Other examples of micro-marketing abound: o Minneapolis stores carry ice fishing gear, such as tents to protect fishermen from the bitter cold. o The Maryland Parkway store in Las Vegas carries no fishing gear, but is heavy on camping equipment and bikes, since both are major activities there. o The new Target Greatland store in Woodbridge, Va., features a special section of Spanish language cassettes and compact discs in a separate area called Musica Latina, while the new store located 120 miles south, in Fredricksburg, Va., has no Spanish language music section.