About Us

Web Site Summary

URL: http://www.target.com

Year Launched: 1999

Category: Mass Merchant

Merchant Type: Retail

Ranking: #19

Description from Quantcast: Trend-forward merchandise at this national discount retailer.

Extended Company Profile:

Target Corporation
Type: Public (NYSE: TGT)
Founded: 1962 (Minneapolis, MN)
Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Key people: Robert J. "Bob" Ulrich, CEO & Chairman
Industry: Retail
Products: Clothing, footwear, bedding, home decor, housewares, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, sporting goods, and pet products.
Revenue: $52.620 billion USD (2005)
Employees: 338,000

Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT) was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1962. It is the sixth-largest retailer in the United States behind Wal-Mart, The Home Depot, Kroger, Sears Holdings Corporation and Costco, and is ranked 29th on the 2005 Fortune 500. It sells more gift cards than any other retailer in the United States and is also the third-largest seller of music in the United States.

History
The company's roots were founded when George Dayton founded the Dayton's department store chain. In 1902, George Dayton constructed a six-story building in downtown Minneapolis and convinced R.S. Goodfellow Company to move its Goodfellows department store into it. The store's owner, Reuben Simon Goodfellow, retired and sold his interest in the store to George Dayton. In 1903, the store changed its name to the Dayton Dry Goods Company, and it changed its name again to the Dayton Company in 1910. In 1956, the Dayton Company opened Southdale, the world's first fully-enclosed two-level shopping center in Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The Dayton Company also became a retail chain by opening its second Dayton's store in Southdale.

In 1962, the Dayton Company entered discount merchandising by opening its first official Target discount store in Roseville, Minnesota, a suburb north of Saint Paul. In 1967, the Dayton Corporation was established and it went public with its first offering of common stock. In 1969, it acquired the Lechmere electronics and appliances chain that operated in New England. The Dayton Company also merged with the Detroit-based J.L. Hudson company that year, to become the Dayton-Hudson Corporation consisting of Target and five major department store chains. Some of the other department stores owned and operated by Dayton-Hudson included Lipmans of Portland, Oregon (1950s-1980; ironically, sold the chain to Marshall Field's-owned Frederick & Nelson), and Diamonds of Phoenix, Arizona and John A. Brown of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (both sold in 1984 to Dillard's).

In 1978, the company acquired Mervyn's and became the 7th largest retailer in the United States. In 1979, the Target discount chain became the company's top revenue producer. In 1980, it acquired the Ayr-Way discount retail chain of 40 stores and one distribution center from Indianapolis-based L.S. Ayres & Company. These stores were remodeled, and opened in 1981 as Target stores. In 1982, it acquired 33 FedMart stores in Arizona, California, and Texas, which were reopened as Target stores in 1983. In late 1986, the company acquired 50 Gemco stores from Lucky Stores in southern California, which reopened under the Target brand in 1987. In 1989, it acquired 31 more stores from Federated Department Stores's Gold Circle and Richway chains in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. It also sold its Lechmere chain that year to a group of investors including Berkshire Partners, a leveraged buy-out firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, eight Lechmere executives, and two local shopping mall executives.

In 1990, it acquired Marshall Field's. In 1992, it created a short-lived chain of apparel specialty stores called Everyday Hero with two stores in Minneapolis. They attempted to compete against other apparel specialty stores such as GAP by offering private label apparel such as its Merona brand, and in 1997 both of these stores closed. In 1998, it acquired Greenspring Company's multi-catalog direct marketing unit, the Rivertown Trading Company, from Minnesota Communications Group. In 1999, it acquired Fedco and its ten stores in a move to expand its SuperTarget operation into Southern California. It reopened six of these stores under the Target brand and sold the other four locations to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and the Ontario Police Department. On September 7, 1999, it relaunched its Target.com website as an e-commerce site and as part of its discount retail division. The site initially offered merchandise that differentiated its stores from its competitors, such as its Michael Graves brand.

In January 2000, Dayton Hudson Corporation changed its name to Target Corporation and its ticker symbol to TGT; by then, between 75 percent and 80 percent of the corporation's total sales and earnings came from the Target division while the other four divisions, Dayton's, Hudson's, Marshall Field's, and Mervyn's were used to fuel the growth of the discount chain. It also separated its e-commerce operations from its retailing division, and combined it with its Rivertown Trading unit into a stand-alone subsidiary called target.direct. In 2001, it announced that its Dayton's and Hudson's stores would operate under the Marshall Field's brand. The three brands had been operating as a single unit, the Department Store Division. On March 10, 2004, Target Corporation announced it had hired Goldman Sachs Group to analyze options for selling its Marshall Field's and Mervyn's chains of department stores. Three months later, on June 9, 2004, Target Corporation announced its sale of the Marshall Field's chain and several Mervyn's stores to St. Louis, Missouri-based May Department Stores Company, which became effective July 31, 2004. On July 21, 2004, it announced the sale of Mervyn's to an investment consortium including Sun Capital Partners, Inc., Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., Lubert-Adler/ Klaff and Partners, L.P., which was finalized September 2. In 2005, Federated Department Stores acquired May Department Stores and announced that by Fall of 2006, it will eliminate the Marshall Field's name in favor of the Macy's nameplate.

Subsidiaries
Target Corporation headquarters in the Nicollet Mall shopping district of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Target Corporation headquarters with Target Light System, created by 3M.[14]
Today, Target Corporation has its headquarters on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, near the site of the original Goodfellows store. It operates its main retail subsidiary, Target Stores, under the banner of 'Target'. The company owns several other subsidiaries, which include: