Wednesday, May 2, 2012

May 1, 1962 - The First Target Opens


Once again, another legendary retailer celebrates their golden anniversary. It’s none other than Target, “the upscale discounter”, which officially launched 50 years ago today yesterday. Pictured above is the very first Target store, located in Roseville, Minnesota, a suburb just north of the Twin Cities. From this humble beginning came one of today’s most successful and influential retailers, and one of the world’s most iconic brands.   
As mentioned ad nauseam on this site and in many other quarters, Target’s founding year, 1962, was the year of the discount store revolution. Walmart and Kmart, the industry’s other two key players, were also founded that year, as were a number of others, including Woolworth’s long-departed Woolco division and Big K, a southeastern chain that was eventually acquired by Walmart.
These chains and their coincidental founding year were all mentioned in our previous observance of Kmart's 50th a couple of months back,  but no sooner were the pixels dry on that post (Don’t you just hate expressions like that?) than I recalled some others that trace their origin to 1962 – Shopko, a Green Bay Wisconsin-based chain, still exists. Sky City, based in Asheville, North Carolina with locations throughout the Southeast, unfortunately no longer does. I’ll probably think of some more within minutes after posting this.
Target differs in a fundamental way from Walmart and Kmart, its two key competitors over the last 30 years or so (and for the foreseeable future), and this difference can be traced back to the companies’ roots. “Kmart was founded by a dime store company (S.S.Kresge) and Wal-Mart was a variety store company (Sam Walton’s Ben Franklin franchises),” said former Target executive Norm McMillan to Laura Rowley, author of On Target, an entertainingly written history of the company, while “The background of the Target enterprise was the department store business – so that influenced our strategic planning and the way stores were run.”
Indeed, The Dayton Company, founded in Minneapolis in 1902, had long been considered one of America’s best run department store firms. So well run, in fact, that they found themselves having to fend off a good deal of flak from their prestigious department store cohorts about their decision to go slumming in the discount world. Rowley quotes Target president Douglas Dayton in a 1966 speech to the Associated Merchandising Corporation: “I start with the assumption that all of you …wish that discount stores had never been invented, and I have no quarrel with that wish. It is a perfectly natural one. The catch is that it doesn’t seem to have impaired discount stores’ progress one iota…To some I may be laboring the point; to others - and I have to be perfectly frank - you have underestimated what is going on.” (This would have made a nice extra verse for Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, don’t you think? Just need to come up with a good quadruple rhyme.) A major change in consumer buying patterns was afoot, and Dayton bravely chose to jump into the fray.
Generally conservative, the Dayton Company could nonetheless claim a pretty bold move in their recent history. In 1954, they developed the nation’s first enclosed mall, Southdale Shopping Center, in Edina, a southwest suburb of Minneapolis. Dayton took the then-unusual step of inviting a key department store rival, Donaldson’s, to join the project. They engaged Victor Gruen, an Austrian-born architect with visions of the mall as a ‘civilizing force for the sprawling suburbs’, to design the center. Southdale jump-started Gruen’s career as an architect of unparalleled influence over the ensuing decade. For Dayton, it proved to be a financial winner and an anchor for their suburban “branch store” strategy.
In one sense, however, the concept of the discount store was really just an update of a time-honored department store tradition – the “basement store”, usually a basement or sub-level of a downtown flagship store reserved for bargain and closeout merchandise. Dayton’s had one in their Nicollet Avenue home base, as did many well-known department store operators across the country. While bargain hunting has been a great American pursuit for eons, in decades past there was often a certain stigma (unfairly) conferred upon those who consistently shopped “downstairs”, whether out of need or preference, instead of on the main floor. The discount stores, having no “upstairs” per se, erased this stigma, and their suburban locations put them closer to the fastest-growing base of customers. 
After some months of fact-finding “undercover missions” to discount store chains across the country by Dayton managers (Topps in Chicago, on a growth tear at the time, was one they particularly liked), the first Target store opened on May 1 in Roseville. It was a 68,000 square foot store with a surprisingly large grocery department -25,000 sq. ft., leased out to Applebaum’s Food Market of St. Paul. (Somewhere I remember seeing a photo of a very cool-looking ice cream carton with the original Target “bullseye” logo on it. Hopefully I’ll come across it again one of these days.)  
According to Rowley, the general merchandise mix was 65 percent hardlines (“auto supplies and appliances”) and 35 percent softlines (“clothing and accessories”).  Roseville was the first of four units launched that year – three in the greater Twin Cities area (Crystal and Knollwood/St. Louis Park being the others) and one a bit further north in Duluth. This 1965 photo of the Duluth store shows just how quickly the chain’s architectural style evolved from the very modest design of the first Target.  
Throughout the balance of the 1960’s, growth was “steady and methodical” when compared to Kmart at least, who were burning up the countryside with some 35 new stores a year at the time.  Three years passed before the opening of the next Target in Bloomington, Minnesota in 1965. The next year, 1966, saw Target’s first expansion market, Denver (Glendale and Westland Centers), followed by two more on the home turf, Fridley and West St. Paul, Minnesota in 1967. In 1968, Target expanded into St. Louis with North and South County stores. A third store was added in Bridgeton the next year. The close of the decade saw Target stores in Dallas (North Dallas and Garland, with a Village Fair location added in 1970) and Houston (Hedwig Village and South Loop, with Sharpstown added in 1970), along with a unit in Colorado Springs. 
One probable reason for the measured approach was the simple fact that Dayton had a lot of things on their plate in the late 60’s, putting it mildly. In 1969, Dayton bought out the Detroit-based J.L. Hudson Company, “the nation’s largest independently owned department store operation”, as their 1968 annual report put it. Now called Dayton-Hudson Corporation, and with more than double the department store operations as before, the acquisitions didn’t stop there. That same year they picked up Lechmere, a Boston-based electronic and appliance retailer, whose operations were lumped in with Target’s as part of D-H’s “Low-Margin Division.”  These moves coincided with a major expansion of Dayton’s bookstore operations, which were launched in 1966. Bruce Dayton, the company president, decided to name the company’s bookstores after himself, substituting one letter in the last name, of course – “B. Dalton Booksellers”, a mainstay of shopping malls for decades.    
Whether or not it was a deliberate part of the strategy, there was certainly an added benefit to the slower rollout of the Target stores. It enabled Dayton-Hudson to hone Target’s upscale image – the key differentiator that led to the furious post 1980-growth and high repute the company enjoys today - over time. Their faux French nickname, “Tar-zhay”, surfaced almost right off the bat, according to Douglas Dayton, Target’s original division president, who told author Laura Rowley he first heard customers using the word at the Duluth store way back in 1962. For a time, they even used “Miss Target” (actually pronounced “Miss Tar-zhay”!) for their private label line of women’s shoes.  
Eventually a stronger graphic image was needed, and for that Target reached out to Unimark International, the legendary Chicago-based design firm responsible for some of the most enduring corporate identities in business history, including those of American Airlines and Ford Motor Company. (And one that many of us wish had endured - the 1971-2011 JCPenney logo.) It’s hard to overstate Unimark’s effect on the world of corporate design, especially in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when the world seemed to change overnight from a graphical stone soup to solid-color backgrounds and Helvetica.  
In 1969, the new logo was introduced -a single, thicker ring around the bullseye replaced the double-ringed earlier versions, and Helvetica supplanted the multiplicity of fonts Target previously used. Another very significant Unimark contribution was the widespread use of the color red, which all these years later, Target virtually “owns” from a retail standpoint.  
Gotta love those red plastic shopping carts, right? And the “Target Lady”. And those retro products (like cereals and detergent) they keep featuring. Here’s to another 50 years!   
The photo above is from the fascinating book UNIMARK INTERNATIONAL – The Design of Business and the Business of Design by Jan Conradi and appears here through the courtesy of Kevin Rau, the book’s designer and archivist of the stunning collection of artifacts that illustrate the book. This book is essential for design fans and is an incredible business history as well. Forget Mad Men, this was the real thing! (Ok, don’t forget Mad Men. Sorry for even bringing that up.) Kevin has his own design firm, Rauhaus, based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he specializes in corporate identity, publication design and wonderful printed work using classic letterpress technology.
Thanks also to Michael Doty for the tip on the great circa-1970 Target commercials below. Note the combination of the new Target logo with some of the “hodgepodge” mentioned above. Fun stuff!

43 comments:

  1. As always, a great post. Amazing the way they have stayed true to their original concept in such a volatile environment where so much seems to change overnight. Also your call out to Sky City put a smile on my face. Used to visit them whenever we were vacationing in Franklin, NC.

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    1. Thanks, Tim. The only Sky City I knew from personal experience was just west of Knoxville, visible in the distance in a valley below I-40 as I flew along the highway. Wish I'd taken the time to exit just once and try to find the place!

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  2. Here in the Seattle area, they're known as "Tar-ga-zhay” the better to alliterate with the now vanished local dept store chain Bon Marche.

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    1. That's too cool, Derek - and now I know the right way to pronounce Bon Marche. Gotta love that! :)

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  3. So many questions. I don't think I've ever seen a garden center or automotive service at a Target, and I wonder when that ended? Groceries? Before SuperTarget? I never knew. I only know Target since the mid-80s when they absorbed LS Ayres discount division, Ayr-Way, in my part of the world. Was buying out the discount division of proper department stores their strategy? May I gush a little about the quality and thoroughness of your relatively rare and valuble posts. Thank you.

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    1. Stan - They had auto service until the early 70's, I believe, and groceries were a huge part of the earliest Targets. I think the buyouts were as much a strategy to gain footholds in new geographic markets as anything else.

      Thanks for your kind words. I'm hoping to make these posts a bit "less rare" in frequency!

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    2. Strangely Target didn't have to buy out any chain in my area, as they simply moved it around 1990 I think (Toledo, OH). Toledo had already had Kmart since the 60's and it wouldn't be until the last decade when we finally got Wal-Mart coming over.

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  4. Out here in California, Target made a big splash in the 80's buy snatching up almost all of the old Fed-Mart locations that had gone out of business.

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    1. Target also bought out a lot of Gemco locations in the late '80s, then Fedco locations in the '90s.

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    2. Chris, I think the larger, 70's-built FedMarts were well-suited for conversion to Targets. My opinion may be influenced by the shared red and white (and Helvetica) signage, however!

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  5. "Target...is a fun place to shop." LOL

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    1. Some copywriter got paid big bucks for that, George! ;)

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  6. 1962 was also the year that Kohl's was founded as a spin off of the Wisconsin grocery store chain of the same name.

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    1. Thanks for mentioning that important point, Ross - the pixels weren't even dry yet!

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  7. We shoped at the West County/Manchester Traget in St Louis all during the 70's - the pics of Duluth before the remodel looks so like the 70s... except the red was way more orange red originally and now is moving more blue-red - also they used to have blue sections of the store back near auto and green sections near the garden centers - I also remember a leased grocery store attached next door that turned into a Marshalls and a very large sitdown/cafeteria in the center of the store that was sunk down a number of steps with very high ceilings and big white ball lamps hanging in a grid pattern.

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  8. The Target in Denver (actually Lakewood) was technically not in Westland, but next to it. The retro flat-roofed store closed a number of years ago when a new store opened at Colorado Mills a couple miles west. The old store sits vacant, ripe for renewal. A nearby light rail stop could spur development in the area. The King Soopers shopping center, to the west of the Target, is rumored to be closing down. If you add the KS center, Target, and Westland, you get one huge tract of land that could mean a new era in shopping and residential for that part of town.

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  9. Very interesting, I never really knew much about Target's history till fairly recently. There weren't any around here (I think the nearest was in Bloomingdale, and was still called a "Greatland" till recently) so we never shopped there when I was a kid.

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  10. I like Target over either Wal-Mart or K-Mart. Part of the reason, I think, is that it reminds me so much of the old Venture chain. I loved going there when I was a kid. We lost Venture and gained Target locally, at about the same time. Thus, in a way, Target kind of picked up where Venture left off. I'd say that Target is a bit more upscale than Venture was, but not a lot, at least as I remember Venture. The color scheme is certainly different. But still, the vibe is much the same.

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    1. Both Target and Venture were offshoots of traditional department stores. As per the article, Target was created by Dayton's. Venture was the May Company's foray into discount retailing.

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    2. Also one must not forget Gold Circle which came after Target but had a very similar upscale image and was started by, I believe, Federated.

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  11. Other than Caldor, all of the relatively upscale discounters came from department store operations in the same way as Target. Richway, Gold Circle, Venture and ayr-way come to mind. The bargain basements didn't always make it into suburban department stores and often were less popular than they had been downtown. Departments like small electricals and housewares also didn't so well in branch stores and were ripe for turnover into discount operations. The big department store chains also had relationships with suppliers that 1st generation discounters could never forge and which were still somewhat spotty with the next generation of operators like K-Mart. This enabled them to produce stores that were very different from their predecessors. The cheaper name brands of clothing made it into Gold Circle and similar stores, as well as better selections of name brand housewares and domestics.

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    1. I grew up in Green Bay, WI, which is where the largest Prange's department store was located (the franchise was bought out by Younkers in 1992). Prange-Way, their discount store, began like so many others - in Prange's basement in 1911. But in the mid-Sixties, they began opening their own stores, much like the Target spin-off of Dayton's. Alas, the chain went bankrupt in 1995, but I have so many fond memories of that store and its very catchy jingle: "You never overpay....and PRANGE WAY!" :D

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  12. I've been looking for pics of old Target stores for years--especially from the 60's. Would love to see some interior views from that 1st one in Roseville. Do any exist? Thanks for the post.

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  13. Oh boy! Love this post! Where do I start? Well as someone who has shopped from the "downstairs" section my entire life (and I do mean this metaphorically) I have to turn up my nose at those who turn up their noses at the image of the downstairs shopper. I have always been proud of who I am andI wouldn't change it for anything but I think nowadays a good majority of us are all downstairs shoppers. My, how times have changed!

    Love that Target commercial. A bunch of us retail geeks were discussing that very commercial on Facebook and marveled at the fact that the Tar-zhay craze went that far back. All I can say is bring back Miss Trazhay!

    I remember starting to shop at Target in the mid 90s and loving it because it looked better than all the otehr discounters and they ahd nicer mroe stylish clothes for teens like me. I don't buy the clothes there as much anymore, though I still admire them and was actively buying them until a couple of years ago but I do go tehre for everyday needs and for that I am grateful because it ebats a lot of other places.

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    1. Thanks, Didi. I see commercials like that - made during my lifetime, when I was old enough to remember stuff, and notice how crude they are and think "Wow, how the heck old am I?" ;)

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  14. Some friends of mine on a retail group on Facebook shared this link of vintage Target pics. Absolutely awesome! Wish Tar-zhay still looked like that.
    http://superseventies.tripod.com/70s/id38.html

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  15. It's posts like this that always make me so happy to see something new come up for this blog in my RSS feed reader! I only have first-hand knowledge of the "modern" era of Target so it's great to see what it was like in its earlier years and to know more about its history.

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    1. Much appreciated, KoHoSo! I'm in the same boat here - didn't live near any Target stores until the very late 80's. The earliest ones are fascinating, but that tends to be my view of most chains!

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  16. The current "bullseye" may have been used a few years before 1970...I've seen in a website somewhere a circa 1967 ad using the current logo (without the block TARGET lettering)

    The question is whether Target will celebrate its big 5-0? K-mart isn't but Walmart has a small 50 years logo in its ads.

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    1. The current logo was introduced in 1968, according to Target.

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    2. Kmart did have a 50th year celebration on April 21, 2012 at Store #4000 in Garden City, MI.

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  17. Not a very fun voice-over in those spots, though, hmm?

    Some of you have to be wondering about the music. It's a Dick Hyman track called The Legend Of Johnny Pot. True lengnd, too: Johnny was kind of the Johnny Appleseed of the 420 world, planting pot in various empty fields and telling friends where to find it.

    If a track like that doesn't say you're all hip and with it, I don't know what does!

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  18. As always, an interesting post! I never would have guessed that Target actually used the "tar-zhay" 'joke' nickname for a line of house-brand merchandise at one point.

    While the rest of the surviving "Class of 1962" seems to be down-playing their 50th anniversary, ShopKo apparently isn't-- I don't currently live in ShopKo's territory, but I had a chance to visit one a few months ago, and was surprised to see that they had some rather nice 50th anniversary ShopKo t-shirts for sale.

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    1. Anonymous--do you have any Pamida stores in your area? They're going to become Shopko Hometown before this year is out.

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    2. I do have Pamida stores nearby; as you probably know, though, most (if not all) Pamida units are in small towns, much like the early days of Wal-Mart. It'll be interesting to see what the new Shopko-rebranded format looks like.

      By the way, I think you can add yet another member to the "Class of 1962" list, namely Meijer. Meijer existed as a grocery store chain long before then, but they launched their current discount "superstore" general merchandise format in 1962.

      I bet someone could write a graduate thesis on the economic and societal convergences of 1962 that apparently made the launch of discount store chains so attractive...

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    3. Anonymous - yes, the first Meijer "Thrifty Acres" store - another one I forgot! I think they dropped the Thrifty Acres name (and the little Dutch Boy mascot holding the stretched dollar bill) in the early 1980's. This was an important one, thanks for mentioning it!

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    4. I grew up in Green Bay, WI, where the flagship Shopko store is located. That was the only discount store we shopped at in the 70s! They always had (and continue to have) the most insanely cheap school supplies beginning in July! :D

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  19. The movie AMERICAN GRAFFITI had the advertising slogan "Where Were You in '62?"...who thought for many the answer would be "Founding a discount store chain"?

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    1. Paul, that statement was true for more than a few people that year! ;)

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  20. Another great, interesting post!

    The first Target I shopped at was across the street from the St. Clair Square mall in Fairview Heights, IL. That was 1989. That Target store seemed rather cramped and shabby to me- I never would have associated it with the terms 'trendy' or 'upscale'. I wonder if that store was built for Target, or if it was one they took over. There was also a Venture around the corner across the street from KMart.

    Shortly after, I moved back to Utah where Wal-Mart had just started making its presence known but it would be 10+ years before Target arrived to provide a trendy, upscale alternative.

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    1. Thanks! We have friends that we visit from time to time in O'Fallon, Illinois, so we're very familiar with the shopping hotbed that is Fairview Heights. :) I loved the Famous-Barr store with its funky dome (or cone, or whatever it is) patterned after the famous Northwest Plaza F-B location.

      I think Target really started to raise the trendy/upscale game in the 90's when they enlisted high-profile designers to create their stuff, so your perception of the circa-'89 version is probably not uncommon.

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  21. As posters may already know, the modern Kohl's post 1973 was also great influenced by another famous department store chain, Gimbels.
    When BATUS bought Gimbels, it had also acquired Kohl's department stores as well as the grocery store. BATUS didn't like the grocery business, so the supermarkets were later sold to Great A&P, which destroyed them and closed them around 2004.
    Many midwest Gimbels associates and buyers who used to manage their famous bargain basement stores were reassigned to the BATUS Kohl's division. What we see today when we shop Kohl's is what Gimbels might have evolved into.
    But we'll never know that.

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  22. I like this post I am in to history anyways,I work at store 1776 in Littelton CO..I have only been in CO for 3 years now and I have to say I once worked at wal mart and I swore never again but I needed a job when I moved out here when the one I had kinda fell apart and I have to say I have a blast! Anyways I do not know about the old Lakewood Target but I do know one in Bel Mar that is in Lakewood. I live near colfax and one time I was driving exploring and I found on Colfax an older Target store it was closed and I was told by some people who have worked at my store 25 years or more that it is now the Colorado Mills store well it replaced it up around Golden CO I also found the original Sheridan Store that is now the Riverpoint store while the closed stores still sit vacant some one said they are still owned to the best of they're knowlage by Target corp and that at one point had though about putting Target City (or Target Market) Depending on who you ask in the old buildings or building new buildings in the sites not sure if that is true or what ever! Anyways I just wanted to let you know that I really liked this post As a Target Team Member I am all about learning the history of how it all started and why I have always liked it more then other places to shop and this just proves from the get go that Target had a vision and has stuck with that vision while keeping up with the times as well and that is what the American dream is about!

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