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MINNEAPOLIS — Target Corp. opened the first of its scaled-down TargetExpress stores last month on the ground floor of a new six-story apartment building near the University of Minnesota campus.
Target Corp. opened the first of its scaled-down TargetExpress stores last month on the ground floor of a new six-story apartment building near the University of Minnesota campus.
At 20,000 square feet and with 16,000 SKUs, the mini Target is designed to appeal to urban shoppers looking for a convenient place to pick up the merchandise they need on a daily basis.
"Our urban guests want to get in and get out," said Karl Anderson, the store’s manager. "They tend to be focused more on immediate consumption" than the stock-up shoppers who frequent Target’s suburban outlets, which are typically 130,000 square feet and offer 76,000 SKUs.
Target executives plan to open four more TargetExpress stores next year: three in the San Francisco Bay area and one in St. Paul, Minn.
Target’s dive into urban retailing is far more deliberate than that of rival Walmart, which has 350 Neighborhood Markets, measuring 38,000 square feet, on average, and 20 Walmart Express stores, typically about 12,000 square feet. Walmart announced this year that it was accelerating the rollout of its smaller-format stores; the company now expects to open an additional 270 to 300 smaller-format stores this year, while also opening about 115 Supercenters.
Target began experimenting with urban retailing two years ago, launching an 80,000- to 100,000-square-foot format called CityTarget. There are now eight CityTargets, in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere.
"We’re continually testing things to discover what works," Anderson said during a pre-opening tour of the new TargetExpress. Target has carefully sought to match the store to its neighborhood, a four-block area known as Dinkytown that has been home to an eclectic mix of small storefronts and that is becoming more residential in character.
Expecting a digitally savvy college crowd, the TargetExpress prominently highlights merchandise featured on the retailer’s Cartwheel mobile app, a savings tool that permits customers to select from promotions covering up to one-third of in-store items. Target says that active users of the app increase their store visits and spending by 30%.
Additionally, iPads are located at the ends of some aisles to help shoppers find merchandise or purchase items directly from the Target.com website.
