By David Gill
This month will bring a revamped home textiles department to Target stores across the nation.
The mass merchant is changing the look of its domestics sections, creating a presentation more focused on components rather than ensembles. Target announced its plans in August, on a conference call of top executives speaking to financial analysts who cover the company.
According to Kathryn Tesija, the retailer’s executive vice president of merchandising, the new textiles layout “will provide our guests, who today are focused more on replacement purchases of individual items, the ability to see our entire assortment without searching across multiple aisles. This presentation is easier to shop and also more efficient, allowing us to present more items in the same amount of space. And we can use our focal end caps to showcase ensembles for our guests who want to be inspired by how they can pull all of the parts together.”
She added that in home, Target will bolster its Target Home brand along the lines of its relaunch of the Room Essentials brand, which will clarify the Target Home brand’s attributes, add more fashion content and push farther ahead on the trend curve. In addition, the Missoni for Target collection, which includes bedding, will be rolling out this month.
The next few weeks will also bring the unveiling of the new target.com website. Tesija said the new site “will be more visually appealing and customized to match each guest profile. It will also provide more detail in expert product reviews, while incorporating capability for user-generated video and photo content along with social features.” A more streamlined checkout process will also be on the new site, she said.
Tesija also said Target is “laser-focused” on growing its mobile technology through a relaunch of its mobile site later this fall. The new site will allow the retailer to integrate the technology from the new target.com, and offer an enhanced layout, greater usability and integrated social features.
More than 10 percent of total visits to the website begin on a mobile device, Tesija said. “We have 30 million unique visitors using mobile devices, and we expect visits on these devices to exceed traditional online traffic by 2015,” she said.