Target has been around for over 50 years, enjoying its status as the "cool" big box
store.
But from how people have been pronouncing it to the answer to what's up with those red
circles out in front of the stores, here are things about Target that you didn't know.
Many Target shoppers have made the joke of using a French pronunciation for the store's
name to make it sound more upscale.
They may think they're funny or even original in doing so.
"Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm funny."
The French pronunciation is a very old joke dating back to the year the store first opened.
Indeed the fancy pronunciation of the store has become so ubiquitous that even financial
professionals use it when they're discussing business trends.
That was the case back in 2014, when Target was struggling to make gains in the market
and equity analyst Bob Drbul said-
"[Target] needs to get back to the 'Tarjay', it's been awhile since we have had that perception,"
Target has been using a white bull terrier as their "Bullseye" mascot since 1999.
And no, they didn't find a dog that miraculously happened to have red markings on his face.
Instead, they use safe vegetable-based paint to color in that bullseye.
The pooch is featured on the stores' gift cards and Target has made several hundred
Bullseye plush toy styles.
One of the toys even made it to The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Bullseye is a friendly dog who loves to walk the red carpet and wear cool costumes, including
a fire suit for auto races, and barks it up with celebs.
Oh, and he has at times been portrayed by females.
In 1961, the Dayton Company department store chain announced that they would open up a
discount store offshoot, saying that the new place would, quote-
"combine the best of the fashion world with the best of the discount world, a quality
store with quality merchandise at discount prices, and a discount supermarket."
But they didn't know what to call it.
They looked at over 200 possible choices for the name and logo, and decided that a target,
complete with a bullseye logo, was the way to go.
They explained the choice, saying,
"As a marksman's goal is to hit the center bulls-eye, the new store would do much the
same in terms of retail goods, services, commitment to the community, price, value and overall
experience."
While there have been a variety of logo styles over the years, the bullseye remains front
and center.
It is so recognizable that reportedly 93 percent of Americans who shop can identify the brand
without the store name, just the logo!
Target's Corporate Command Center (or CCC), located in Minneapolis, is where they watch
what's happening at all their stores from over 75,000 feeds from digital cameras.
According to Target's corporate site, it,
"serves as a hub and provides up-to-date information on weather conditions, natural disasters,
and major news world-wide, among other critical business needs."
The CCC has also partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be ready for
any sort of disaster.
For example, if a hurricane is going to hit an area, they can ship needed supplies to
that region for customers to buy.
That's exactly what Target did when Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast in 2012.
Target partners with big names in fashion, like Victoria Beckham, who unveiled clothing
line VBxTarget in 2017.
But she's just one of many designers who have created affordable products for the stores
that are a far cry from the mom jeans and sweatpants that people expect from big box
stores.
And unlike when Halston killed his high-fashion career by teaming up with JCPenney, teaming
up with Target has only added to current designers' fame.
In 2002, Isaac Mizrahi was the first big-name designer to create lines for the store, and
many have followed.
Missoni, Proenza Schouler, and others have caused a shopping frenzy over the years.
The biggest-ever collaboration?
Probably Lilly Pulitzer's Palm Beach resort wear in 2015, all of the items were snatched
up in just a few hours, according to The New York Times.
They've long since sold out of stores, but still pop up on eBay.
According to the Target fan site All Things Target, the chain has a specific schedule
for slashing clearance prices.
Here's the schedule: If you're looking for electronics, accessories, kids clothing, books,
baby and stationery, those prices go lower on Monday.
Tuesday features domestics, women's clothing, pets, and food items.
Wednesday means further markdowns for men's clothing, health and beauty, diapers, lawn
& garden items, and furniture, while Thursday features lower prices on housewares, lingerie,
shoes, toys, sporting goods, decor, and luggage.
And don't forget Friday when it's time to party with the auto, cosmetics, hardware,
and jewelry departments.
In 2016, a Target customer in a rush spotted him cashier Ismael Gilbert being extremely
patient with an elderly woman who was paying for her items in change.
He helped her count everything out and was very kind.
The customer who posted this story on Facebook was in the store with her children as she
watched the whole thing unfold, all of them learning a lesson about kindness.
"We need more pause in our life to look for the positive."
Gilbert's great customer service became a national story.
Then later that year, a manager at a local kidney dialysis center later spotted him in
action and offered him a job.
HuffPost said he is currently employed as a patient care technician while the center
is also paying for his education so that he can become a registered nurse.
Maybe good guys don't always finish last.
Many retail food companies and chain restaurants have test kitchens, and so does Target.
Since they have in-house food brands like Archer Farms and Market Pantry, they test
all the recipes first before producing them.
One of the food kitchen experts in the Target Test Kitchen explained their philosophy-
"We're designers, but in the food world...Food is chemistry so we're working with these ingredients
and making sure they go together."
But unlike a chemistry class, these experiments usually have a delicious ending.
In addition to making sure that things taste good, Target's food scientists also believe
in keeping costs down.
In 2012, The New York Times claimed that an anonymous pregnant teenage girl's father discovered
her pregnancy via targeted store coupons.
But that may not have been the real story.
Charles Duhigg, the author of the piece, talked to author Eric Siegel, who directed Duhigg
to a talk Eric Pole gave about Target's predictive analytics that Siegel witnessed.
The speech reportedly did not include the teenager anecdote, but the article did.
It was noted that the anonymous anecdote helped launch Duhigg's book, which hit The New York
Times best seller list.
However, Siegel said in his book that the top way Target found out if a customer was
pregnant wasn't from their shopping habits, but from them signing up for a baby registry
at the store.
All these years later, the Dayton family is worth a whopping $1.6 billion, according to
Forbes in 2015.
There's a good chance that the late Target founder would be quite pleased with his family's
success were he here to see it!
Not every Dayton descendant worked exclusively in the retail sector though, as one of them
held a seriously coveted political office.
That would be former Minnesota governor Mark Dayton, who held the office from 2011 through
2019, stepping down when he chose not to run for a third term.
That was on the heels of his tenure as a senator of Minnesota, a job he had from 2001 to 2006.
As much as Americans love Target, Canadians weren't feeling it.
Target spent $7 billion and two years there, only to see it completely fail.
CEO Brian Cornell said,
"In my time here at Target, I've developed a better understanding of just how deeply
our entry disappointed Canadian shoppers."
Part of the problem was that Target took over the leases of Zeller's, a defunct chain, instead
of building the stores from the ground up.
Fortune pointed out that the two stores were not compatible from a layout standpoint, and
that the locations of Zeller's stores were not in areas for Target's middle class customer
base.
That decision doomed Target's international dream, with the article saying that quote-
"...inheriting many awful locations from a dying low-end retailer was at the heart of
the damage to Target's cheap-chic allure in Canada."
In addition, Slate said that the chain tried to move too quickly and were never able to
set up a supply chain for their merchandise, resulting in empty shelves.
In April 2016, when the subject of transgender people using the restrooms of their choosing
was abuzz, Target posted,
"We welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility
that corresponds with their gender identity."
But customers who weren't on board with that decided to boycott the stores.
It was a move that made a dent in Target's bottom line, especially in the South.
The Wall Street Journal reported in April 2017, one year later, that among those inside
the company, they expected about a year of a dip in business, especially in the South,
but that was not the case.
The article noted that some of the stores seeing declining sales were physically worn
down, so since that time, Target promised to invest billions of dollars in part to upgrade
and remodel the over 100 stores that need it, especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area,
where they had lost many customers because of the bathroom pronouncement.
In addition, Target said they would spend $20 million to add private bathrooms to stores
that didn't already have them.
In 2015, Target found itself on the receiving end of a lot of love from breastfeeding parents.
That's because their breastfeeding policy, which is arguably quite progressive, was posted
by a user in a Facebook group for nursing moms, and went viral after being shared by
another.
Notably, the policy says parents can breastfeed anywhere they need to in the store, and should
be left alone when they are doing so.
Also, if asked, the fitting room should be offered for a more private option, and not
the restroom.
Plenty of folks were happy to see this, and they gave kudos to Target for being so forward-thinking.
As the company said in a statement-
"We want all of our guests to feel comfortable shopping with us.
Our breastfeeding policy, which applies to all stores, is just one of the ways in which
we support our guests."
That's a long way away from where the retailer found itself in 2011, when a group of breastfeeding
mothers staged a sit-in to protest how one mother was treated at a Target in Texas.
Target may be headquartered in Minnesota, but when a famous monument in Washington,
D.C. was in need of repair, the retailer didn't hesitate to open its wallets.
In fact, Target forked over a million dollars to help maintain the Washington Monument back
in 1997, and helped to raise an additional $4 million on top of that.
That essentially made them partners with the National Park Service and the National Park
Foundation.
Part of the money was used to hire an architect who would ensure that the monument was recognizable
during construction, said Stephen Lorenzetti.
The Park Service's regional resources manage explained in an interview with The Baltimore
Sun that,
"The thinking at Target has been that since the monument was going to be covered up, they
wanted it to be a little interesting, a little more than a cultural icon hidden from view."
Well done, Target!
If you're a regular Target shopper, you've probably become accustomed to the large, red
spheres that sit outside of the entrance and exit doors.
But if you thought they were simply an aesthetic choice, perhaps to complement the crimson
Target logo, you'd be wrong.
According to an article published on MSN, those large spheres are called bollards, and
they serve a specific purpose: to prevent drivers from ramming their cars into the entrance
and potentially causing injury to shoppers.
Who knew they were so practical?
As well-intentioned as the large scarlet orbs may be, they have attracted their fair share
of controversy on more than one occasion.
For one, in 2016, one mother sued the retailer when her 5-year-old child severely injured
his elbow after falling off of a bollard.
Then, a year later, another woman filed suit when her car was hit by a bollard that had
become unmoored.
Yikes!
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