Target Canada doesn't do online sales yet

Here's a surprising factoid: Target doesn't have e-commerce up and running yet in Canada.

Sure, the Minneapolis-based retailer has a website up north. But you can't buy anything from it – or, for that matter, find detailed information about all the products it sells in stores.

I asked the folks at Target about it when I was reporting a story last week about the retailer's troubles to right size its Canadian operations. Eric Hausman, a company spokesman, said a small team is looking at what it would take to have a digital strategy in Canada.

"We know e-commerce needs to be part of our long-term strategy, but right now we need to focus on the basics," he said.

The retail analysts I spoke with mostly agreed, saying Target Canada needs to work on getting products to its shelves and drawing more traffic to its stores before it should divert its focus to figure out online shopping.

"The worst possible thing you can do is have a website when you have supply chain and inventory issues," said David Soberman, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto.

But still, some say, the lack of online shopping capabilities shows how unprepared Target was to expand into Canada.

Canadian retailers have been a little complacent about pursuing online sales because of perceptions that the population is so spread out and that it would be expensive to ship items to them, said Doug Stephens, a Toronto-based retail consultant. But, he added, it is pretty feasible since about 80 percent of the Canadian population lives within 2 hours of the U.S. border.

Now Canadian companies are beginning to wake up to the online opportunity, especially as Amazon has been making a big push into Canada, he said. Wal-Mart also has an active website across the border.

"It's astonishing" that Target doesn't have e-commerce in Canada, Stephens said. "It's such an opportunity for them."