Target’s investment in stores — which paid off during pandemic — isn’t over

As more consumers wanted to avoid in-person shopping as the coronavirus pandemic heightened, Target’s store-first policy allowed for a quick expansion of curbside pickups and deliveries.

Analysts and industry watchers have lauded Minneapolis-based Target’s forward-looking pre-pandemic strategy of investing in brick-and-mortar stores as the key to its success in the last year as some other retailers had to pivot on the fly.

But back in 2017, when Target, facing sluggish sales, introduced the concept, the response was not widely applauded. But the company stayed firm that to compete with the likes of Amazon, the stores had to be built out to fulfill online orders at the same time they became more welcoming to in-person shoppers.

“We knew we had all of this capacity in our stores, and so we started to build it out, and that’s what we have done over the past three or four years — improve our capabilities, improve our process, build technology, train our teams,” said John Mulligan, Target’s chief operating officer, in an interview last week.

The company is banking on those shoppers staying as the pandemic wanes.

“To me in many ways 2020 is just an accelerated set of chapters in a book we’ve been writing for a while,” said Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke in an interview.

More than 95% of Target’s third-quarter sales…