Again-to-school is Goal’s largest procuring second outdoors of the vacations.
Enterprise Insider went behind the scenes with Goal’s shops chief to see the way it’s tackling the frenzy.
“That is the sixteenth state in three weeks of visits,” Adrienne Costanzo instructed us.
If the vacation procuring season is a retailer’s last examination every year, back-to-school is the midterms. For Goal, this yr’s take a look at is an enormous one.
Success is determined by getting the fundamentals proper: thrilling merchandise, absolutely stocked shops, and aggressive pricing. These are all areas the place Goal has stumbled in recent times.
This yr’s season can also be an early learn on CEO Michael Fiddelke’s turnaround plan. He took the reins earlier this yr after a tough patch for Goal, which confronted boycotts in 2025 after winding down a number of range, fairness, and inclusion initiatives. Final week, it confronted contemporary criticism over a youngsters’s Halloween costume resembling racist minstrel imagery; Goal pulled it and apologized.
To see how Goal is making an attempt to tug it off, Enterprise Insider visited a pair of shops in Madison, Wisconsin, with chief shops officer Adrienne Costanzo.
Costanzo huddles with retailer supervisor, Ben Cossack, earlier than her walkthrough.Dominick Reuter/Enterprise Insider
Costanzo is a 22-year veteran of Goal and has held quite a few roles in HR and retailer operations. Her appointment to her present place got here in February 2025, roughly six months earlier than Fiddelke was introduced as CEO. She’s now answerable for greater than 350,000 employees throughout 2,000 shops in all 50 US states.
This month, Costanzo has logged critical miles to verify in with consumers, staff, and retailer managers about what’s working and what is not of their shops as they head again to highschool.
“That is the sixteenth state in three weeks of visits,” she mentioned whereas in Madison. “I have been to Michigan, I have been to Nebraska, I imply, I have been like in all places.”
On the Saturday of this go to, grade-school mother and father had been gearing up for the primary day of sophistication, and school college students on the College of Wisconsin had been kitting out their residences. Dorm move-ins had been nonetheless per week away, and each places had been doing brisk enterprise.
Customers fill the middle aisle at a Goal retailer close to the College of Wisconsin.Dominick Reuter/Enterprise Insider
Not like the vacations, completely different faculty seasons peak at completely different instances, creating all method of complexity for stock planning and staffing, Fiddelke instructed traders on a second-quarter earnings name.
“The foot visitors is unimaginable — the mother and father and college students,” Costanzo mentioned of her multi-state tour.
Her visits embody conversations with consumers who specific reduction at Goal’s improved in-stock charges and constructive impressions of collaborations with manufacturers like LoveShackFancy and Hollister, she mentioned. It is a return to the type of merchandising that helps draw clients into shops and tempts them so as to add surprising finds to an already full procuring cart.
Throughout the excursions, Costanzo talked with retailer managers about all the pieces from their hiring and coaching efforts within the prior months to a brand new trailer loading technique that helps retailer employees get merchandise onto cabinets extra shortly.
Costanzo talks with staff within the stockroom.Dominick Reuter/Enterprise Insider
Even with larger visitors, each places had been extra tightly stocked than on earlier Enterprise Insider visits, with no stock carts lingering within the aisles. (Costanzo’s go to was introduced forward of time.)
A notable exception to the absolutely stocked cabinets was a bit reserved for Pokémon, which the shop director mentioned offered out after greater than 50 clients had been ready in line for the merchandise to drop.
“You may’t promote air,” Costanzo mentioned, explaining to the shop leaders that her crew is engaged on an answer to make sure essential shelf area would not sit idle whereas suppliers work to meet up with excessive demand.
Prospects store at a Goal retailer close to the College of Wisconsin.Dominick Reuter/Enterprise Insider
Whereas this go to concerned a little bit of an entourage, Costanzo mentioned she additionally drops in on shops incognito, which permits her to get extra of a guest-eye view of how Goal’s groups are performing.
One such go to, she mentioned, confirmed her Goal nonetheless has work to do in coaching and balancing the duties of retailer groups throughout busy moments like this.
“Our crew places their head down and is doing the work,” she mentioned. “I didn’t expertise a whole lot of the attention contact and smiles. I did not expertise as a lot as I might have wished round consideration on the verify lanes.”
“I need us to face at our greatest after we’re busy with the overall expertise,” she added.
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