It's Target goes global — Take Two.
After picking itself up from a disaster in Canada, the Minneapolis-based retailer is once again testing the international waters. Only this time, it's not doing anything as risky or costly as building new stores. For now, Target is embarking on a much cheaper and faster expansion through online channels.
"We're not going to open up 100-some stores in a market to go after the next international opportunity," Casey Carl, Target's chief innovation officer, told the Star Tribune in a recent interview. "But we will step into it through digital first … We'll walk into it smartly."
And that, he said, will lead to a more robust international presence and strategy for Target down the road.
Target knows there's an appetite for its cheap-chic apparel, housewares, and health and beauty products outside of the United States. The company says it gets more than 50 million visits to Target.com every year from people in other countries. But until recently, they haven't been able to purchase items from Target online.
In November 2014, the company began a pilot with eBay's global shipping program to make about 200,000 products it has on that portal available to shoppers in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, one of the hot sellers was T-shirts from the TV show "Breaking Bad."
In June, Target began expanding that test to the 64 countries in eBay's program.
"Already we've learned that China loves our Legos and that guests in Europe are willing to pay much higher shipping fees for hard-to-find products," Carl said at Target's annual employee meeting in September.