History

The company's roots were founded in 1902 when George Dayton opened a retail store named Goodfellows in downtown Minneapolis. In 1903, the store changed its name to the Dayton Dry Goods Company, and it changed its name again to the Dayton Company in 1910. In 1956, The Dayton Company opened Southdale, the world's first fully-enclosed two-level shopping center in suburban Minneapolis.

In 1962, the Dayton Company entered discount merchandising by opening its first official Target discount store in Roseville, Minnesota, a suburb north of St. Paul. By 1979, it would be the company's top revenue producer. In 1967, the Dayton Corporation was established and it went public with its first offering of common stock. In 1969, the Dayton Company merged with the J.L. Hudson company. In 1978, the company acquired Mervyn's and became the 7th largest retailer in the United States. In late 1986 the company acquired Gemco from Lucky's and in 1990 it acquired Marshall Field's. Dayton Hudson Corporation changed its name to Target Corporation in 2000; by then, more than 75 percent of the corporation's revenue came from the Target division. In 2001, Target Corporation announced that its Dayton's and Hudson's stores would operate under the Marshall Field's brand. The three brands had been operating as a single unit, the Department Store Division.

On March 10, 2004, Target Corporation announced it had hired Goldman Sachs Group to analyze options for selling its Marshall Field's and Mervyn's chains of department stores. Three months later, on June 9, 2004, Target Corporation announced its sale of the Marshall Field's chain and several Mervyn's stores to St. Louis, Missouri-based May Department Stores Company, which became effective July 31, 2004. On July 21, 2004, it announced the sale of Mervyn's to an investment consortium including Sun Capital Partners, Inc., Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., Lubert-Adler/ Klaff and Partners, L.P., which was finalized September 2. In 2005, Federated Department Stores acquired May Department Stores and announced that by Fall of 2006, it will eliminate the Marshall Field's name in favor of the Macy's nameplate.

Today, Target Corporation has its headquarters on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, near the site of the original Goodfellows store. It operates its main retail subsidiary, Target Stores, under the banner of 'Target'. The company owns several other subsidiaries, which include:

• Target Financial Services (TFS): issues Target's credit cards, known as the Target REDcard, consisting of the Target VISA and the Target Card (formerly the Target Guest Card), issued through Target National Bank (formerly Retailers National Bank). Target Financial Services also oversees GiftCard balances (see GiftCards section below).
• Target Sourcing Services / Associated Merchandising Corporation (TSS/AMC): This global sourcing organization locates merchandise from around the world for Target and helps import the merchandise to the United States. Such merchandise include garments, furniture, bedding, and towels. TSS/AMC has 27 full-service offices, 48 quality-control offices, and seven commissionaires located throughout the world. TSS/AMC employs 1,200 people. Its engineers are responsible for evaluating the factories that do business with Target Corporation for quality, as well as labor rights and transshipment issues.
• Target Commercial Interiors: provides design-services and furniture for office space. Currently, Target Commercial Interiors has an unusually high market share of Fortune 500/1000 business customers, and are expanding to attract small to medium sized businesses, as well as home offices. This subsidiary has six showrooms in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, including a first-of-its-kind retail concept store and showroom in Bloomington, Minnesota that opened on June 23, 2005.
• Target Brands: owns and oversees the company's private label products, including the grocery brands Archer Farms and Market Pantry. In addition, Bullseye Dog is a trademark, and the Bullseye Design and 'Target' are registered trademarks of Target Brands.
• target.direct: owns and oversees the company's e-commerce initiatives, such as the Target.com domain. Founded in early 2000, target.direct is a combination of the company's e-commerce team and its direct merchandising unit into a single, integrated organization. In 2002, target.direct and Amazon.com created a partnership where Amazon.com would provide order fulfillment and guest services for Target.com, and to this day Target Corporation's e-commerce website still uses Amazon.com's e-commerce system.

Retailing division: Target Stores

Target Corporation's discount retail chain in the United States has 1,418 stores in all states except for Alaska, Vermont, and Hawaii that operate under the mastheads of Target, Target Greatland, and SuperTarget. The first Target store opened in 1962 in Roseville, Minnesota. That store was closed and demolished on January 8, 2005 to make room for a SuperTarget. Target Corporation has aggressive plans to have 2,010 stores open by the year 2010.

Target

Target stores are generally 95,000 to 125,000 square feet (12,000 m²) and carry hardlines ("normal" products and goods), softlines (clothing), and a limited amount of groceries, usually non-perishable. Specifically, Target stores carry clothing, shoes, jewelry, health and beauty products, electronics, compact discs, DVD's, bedding, kitchen supplies, sporting goods, toys, pet supplies, automotive supplies, hardware supplies, and food. They also carry seasonal merchandise such as patio furniture during the summer and Christmas decorations during November and December. Many stores may also have one-hour photo processing, a portrait studio, an optical store, and a pharmacy. Many stores in the southern states also include a garden center. Stores opened and remodeled in 2004 or later also include the expanded snack bar that is featured in Target Greatland locations. These generally include a Starbucks and a Pizza Hut Express in addition to Target's Food Avenue. It has also been reported that Cold Stone Creamery and Target have signed a deal to test in-store ice cream shops in four stores.^{[citation needed]}

In the past, the one-hour photo processing labs were not owned by Target, but by Qualex, a subsidiary of Eastman Kodak and were staffed by employees of Qualex, not Target. However, in June 2005, Target spokeswoman Brie Heath announced that Target Corporation will replace the Qualex photo labs with their own labs running Kodak equipment, and will staff them with Target employees. Unlike the previous Qualex labs, all photo processing is done "in house", including next-day, digital, and Kodak Perfect Touch processing, although a few labs have been replaced with "send-out" only service with a self-service Kodak Picture Maker kiosk. A select number of "test" stores are running with Fujifilm equipment instead of Kodak. Target has also partnered with Yahoo! Photos for online photo services, including ordering prints online for one-hour store pickup.