Target said 20,000 new items—“twice as many as last year”—will be available to customers this holiday season, as the retail giant tries to lure customers with “more new, on-trend, and affordable gifts.”
The company created a Target Deals page where shoppers can explore the latest promotions. The page organizes deals by category, such as “Halloween” or “household essentials,” with sections for special deals available only to Target Circle members.
The landing page comes as Target seeks to freshen its holiday assortment.
Rick Gomez, chief commercial officer at Target, said in a statement that new items will be dropping each week, and that more than half of its assortment is exclusive this year. That includes pop culture exclusives, such as toys and collectibles based on the final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things and Universal Pictures’s Wicked sequel, as well as apparel and affordable beauty products.
While affordability and newness have been priorities for Target since at least the 2024 holiday season—when the company said it was offering 50% more new items than 2023—its focus on newness in particular appears to be sharpening. The company has sped up its go-to-market time for new products and, in a recent earnings call, attributed sales gains in key categories such as food and home to more newness.
“When we deliver newness that’s on trend,” Gomez told shareholders, “the consumer reacts and we drive sales.”
Whether the strategy helps Target out of its current doldrums remains to be seen, however. The company reported a 1.9% decline in comparable sales in the second quarter, and foot traffic declined for the seventh straight month in August. The retailer is also in the middle of an executive shake-up, with COO Michael Fiddelke set to replace longtime CEO Brian Cornell on February 1.
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