“It's also important to note that while our stores are fulfilling more digital orders it's not coming at the cost of in-store sales…our stores as hubs strategy isn't putting our core business at risk. It's simply helping us grow faster.” - Brian Cornell, Target CEO, in 2019

In August, Target announced that they would be backing away from their ‘stores as hubs’ program. The program started in 2017 and used dedicated spaces in the backrooms of regular Target stores to fulfill the company’s digital orders.

The ‘stores as hubs’ program was rolled out with huge fanfare… and a massive $7 Billion investment… so why has Target changed their mind?

Their explanation for the change is that they need to focus more on the in-store shopping experience, but it could also be that true omnichannel retail fulfillment is harder to deliver against than they thought.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner considers the roll out and then roll back of Target’s ‘stores as hubs’ program:

• How the program worked, and what the incentives were to keep it going
• The challenges Target ran into as well as the successes they had under their omnichannel strategy
• What we know about how they plan to handle digital order fulfillment moving forward

Links:

• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
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