Target Corp. Overview

Target Corp.

Introduction

Popularly known as “target”, Target Corporation is a multi-billion dollar company scattered mainly across Canada and the United States. It has an American origin and can be acknowledged as a massive department stores network. It has its head office located in Minneapolis, Minnesota and  is a well reputable company in the United States. As a matter of fact, it is the seventh biggest retailing company in the United States. In addition to that, it is a part of the S&P 500 index. It has close to 2000 retail outlets in the nook and crannies of the US and was positioned number 37 on the Fortune 500 (2020) list of biggest US firms by total revenue. As of 2020, the company had about 409,000 employees. The company has a lot of retail format ranging from discount store target, the hypermarket SuperTarget, to small stores that were known as CityTarget and TargetExpress.

History

George Dayton founded Target Corporation in 1902, marking the company’s beginning. Goodfellow Dry Goods was the company’s initial name until it was changed to Dayton’s Dry Goods Company in 1903 and then to Dayton Company in 1910. In Roseville, Minnesota, the very first Target shop debuted in 1962, and the parent corporation changed its name to the Dayton Corporation in 1967. After amalgamating with the J.L. Hudson Company in 1969, it took the name Dayton-Hudson Corporation and was the manager of many department store chains, including Dayton’s, Hudson’s, Marshall Field’s, and Mervyn’s. The Dayton-Hudson Corporation changed its name to Target Corporation in 2000.

The Start of Dayton Company

During the Panic of 1893, the Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis caught fire; the religious community was seeking funds because insurance would not reimburse the cost of a replacement edifice. In order to reconstruct, the church’s congregation begged George Dayton, an involved congregant, to buy the vacant corner lot next to the church. He eventually built a six-story building on the newly acquired land. In search of tenants, Dayton persuaded the Reuben Simon Goodfellow Firm to relocate its nearby Goodfellows department store into the newly constructed structure in 1902. However, the store’s owner had already retired and had sold Dayton his share of the business. In 1903, the name of the retail outlet was changed to the Dayton Dry Goods Company and in 1910, the name was abbreviated to the Dayton Company. Dayton ran the business as a family business that he tightly controlled and enforced strong Presbyterian principles because he had kept his financial ties but lacked prior retail experience. As a result, the store outlawed the sale of alcohol, declined to place advertisements in publications that supported liquor ads, and prohibited all company operations on Sundays. Dayton established the Dayton Foundation in 1918 with $1 million after donating the majority of his wealth to charity.

The Dayton Company had grown to be a multimillion dollar corporation by the 1920s, and it occupied the entire six-story structure. After the 1923 death of his older son David at 43, Dayton started giving some of the business to Nelson, his other son. Before the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the corporation completed its first expansion by purchasing the Minneapolis jeweler J.B. Hudson & Son.  During the Great Depression, the newly acquired jewelry store operated at a net loss, but its department store survived the financial crisis. When Dayton passed away in 1938, his son Nelson took over as president of the $14 million company and continued his father’s strong Presbyterian principles and traditional managerial style.

After Nelson Dayton passed away in 1950, his child Donald took over as president. He managed the business with the help of four of his relatives rather than working alone and together , they abandoned the Presbyterian principles in favor of a more secular philosophy. It started out by operating the business on Sundays, selling alcohol, and favoring a more radical, aggressive, inventive, pricey, and expansive management style. In the 1950s, the business bought the Lipman’s department store chain, based in Portland, Oregon, and ran it as a separate branch. The new executives acquired and established new retail outlets and a shopping mall, thereby expanding the business.

Founder

The idea of upmarket bargain retailing was created by John F. Geisse while he was an employee in Dayton corporation. The first Target discount shop was established by the Dayton Company on May 1, 1962, at 1515 West County Road B in Roseville, Minnesota, a suburb of Saint Paul, adopting Geisse’s ideas. In order to avoid shoppers identifying the new chain of cheap stores with the department store, Stewart K. Widdess, Dayton’s PR director, came up with the name “Target.” Douglas Dayton served as the first president of Target. In addition to that, four units, all in Minnesota, were built  as the new subsidiary units in the newly formed company’s first year of operation. A fifth store was able to open in the years 1965 and 1966 when Target Stores recorded its first profit after sales reached $39 million. The fifth store was launched in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Target Locations opened two stores in Denver as part of its expansion outside of Minnesota, and its sales surpassed $60 million. Glendale, Colorado, a part of the Denver Metropolitan region, is home to the first store constructed in Colorado since Minnesota in 1966. The shop, which became a SuperTarget in 2003, is still operational.

Target moved into St. Louis, Missouri, with two newly launched stores in 1968 and updated its bullseye emblem to a more contemporary design. William A. Hodder took over as president of Target after Douglas J. Dayton returned to the organization’s parent, Dayton Corporation, and senior vice president and founder John Geisse left the business. Geisse later started the Venture Stores chain after being hired by St. Louis-based May Department Stores. At the end of the year, Target Stores had eleven units and $130 million in revenue. It bought the Pickwick Book Shops in Los Angeles and combined it with B. Dalton Bookseller subsidiary. Target Stores accounted for between 75 and 80 percent of the company’s total sales and earnings by the time Dayton-Hudson Corporation was renamed Target Corporation in January 2000, while the other four chains— Dayton’s, Hudson’s, Marshall Field’s, and Mervyn’s—were used to push the expansion of the discount network, which grew to 977 retail locations in 46 states and had sales of $29.7 billion by the end of the year. In order to create target.direct, a stand-alone subsidiary, the company divided its e-commerce business from its retailing segment.

Today, the company has about 1938 retail units and generated 106 billion dollars in revenue as at 2021.

Subsidiaries

As of 2018, Target had four different subsidiaries. These subsidiaries contribute to the total revenue generated in the company. The subsidiaries are;

-Target Capital Corporation

-Target General Merchandise, Inc.

-Target Enterprise, Inc.

-Target Brands, Inc.

There are a wide variety of products sold at Target retail outlets. Examples of these products include;

-Cosmetics and health products

-Clothing and Accessories

-Consumables

-Video games

-Pet supplies

-Miniature Appliances

-Lawn and Garden equipment

-Shoes

-Furniture and Beddings

-Toys and so on.

Key Officers

Target has a lot of key names in its parent company and also its subsidiaries. Some of the reputable executives in its parent company are,

Brian Cornell

Board Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Robert Harrison

Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller

Julie Guggemos

Senior Vice President, Chief Design Officer​

Laysha Ward

Executive Vice President and Chief External Engagement Officer

Jill Sando

Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer

Melissa Kremer

Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer

Don H. Liu

Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Risk Officer

Michael Fiddelke

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

To know more about the operations of this company, visit www.target.com