Tonight we toured a brand new Target store in a new retail development near the Portland Airport. On the whole, the store was beautiful. Signage and visual merchandising was crisp and modern, the food section was WELL above average, and the siting and location of the store was top notch.
But we immediately noticed a few problems. First, when my companion started looking at women's clothes, she was mortified. Gone was the stylish "Tar-zhay" looks which set the standard for affordable haut couture for the masses, and in its place was a hodgepodge of increasingly awful styles... from the large (oh so large) selection of rompers (and two notes: when did rompers become de rigueur for women above the age of 16? and when did it become permissible to make them with big elastic bands in the back?) to the vaguely Amish looking sleepwear... it was shudderingly bad. But, ours is not to reason why when it comes to the vagaries of fashion. Plenty of other blogs cover that... better.
But what struck us strongly was how poorly the new trial "Great Save" section accomplished its goals. Basically, this is Target's attempt to compete with Sam's Club and Costco by having a warehouse club section within the Target store. It's not a bad idea, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. First, the area is a hodgepodge of large quantities of national consumer brand items (think gallon container of Cheddar Goldfish) with off brand and generic merchandise (three awful looking lamps in a box for $19.99). It's woefully confusing, and if Target simply filled this section with large/case quantities of national consumer brand goods, they'd have something worth shopping. Assort slightly differently than Costco and you'll have shoppers lining up to buy 48 packs of Doritos for their kids' lunch boxes.
What really made the experience a near-epic fail was that the signage and pricing was... well.. spectacularly inconsistent. The Bluray DVD section had individual titles marked on shelf tags at $12 each... with a large shelf sign proclaiming all the items in the section "on sale" for $14.99... but they were all actually on sale for $10 - something we only discovered after taking two discs to the price check scanner across the aisle.
What's the point of having a "Great Save" if you make the signage so inconsistent the shopper can't understand it?
Clearly, the concept needs work. Combined with how badly the Tar-zhay fashions resonated... Target needs to rethink what is trying to convey to shoppers. Right now, it's a muddled mess. Even the employees were confused: a very nice clerk informed us that the reason the signage under plastic bins advertised apple juice for $2.99 was that the signage wouldn't print correctly and they had to move the apple juice boxes. Good thing we weren't shopping for either storage or kids' lunch fixins'.
But, on the plus side, they did have some gum that I like at the register. So they did get a $.99 impulse purchase out of the visit.
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