Apple inside of Target

Commercial partnerships examined.

Will Apple find more room to grow inside of Target?

14 EXPERT COMMENTS

by Matthew Stern  in Retailwire

Target is expanding its partnership with Apple so that more people looking for Apple products at the general merchandise retailer can have an experience closer to what they would get at the Apple store.

The Apple at Target store-within-a-store concept is now operating in 150 Target store locations, according to a press release. The current count represents a threefold increase from the begnning of the year.

The concept dedicates twice as much selling space to Apple products than are usually found in Target stores. The shops are staffed by Apple-trained Target tech consultants.

Along with the expansion of the brick-and-mortar relationship, Target is giving Target Circle members four free months of trial access to Apple Fitness+ and will be offering deals on other Apple services, as well.

Jill Sando, executive vice president and chief merchandising officer at Target, called Apple at Target another reason for customers to “choose Target for all their shopping and tech service needs.”

Target has had a great deal of success with other store-within-a-store partnerships.

Its partnership with Starbucks, which began in 1999, is not only still in operation but has scaled to more than 1,300 of Target’s 1,900 locations, according to an article on TechCrunch. Target even began folding Starbucks orders into its curbside pickup service in February of 2022.

Target has also experimented with smaller-scale in-store shops. In 2016, when FitBits and other health monitors were still buzzworthy technology, Target piloted a “connected health” section in 510 of its stores. The shops were anchored by health technology from a vendor named Qardio, and were adjacent to store pharmacies.

This is also not the first time Apple has opened stores inside of other electronics retailers.

In the mid-2000s, Apple began opening shops inside of Best Buy locations, as an article from 2007 on the iPod Observer website discusses. The shops maintained the look and feel that the Apple Store had at the time, and were staffed by an Apple expert.  ....  '