Target CEO Brian Cornell said he’d be open to partnering with Uber or other companies in an effort to reach consumers who are living in urban centers.
Target CEO Open to Uber Partnership in Urban Push
From the store to your door, via Uber ... possibly.
Asa Mathat for Re/code
“Uber could certainly be a partner someday,” Cornell said during an interview at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Wednesday afternoon. “We won’t take anything off the table right now.”
It’s an interesting idea for Target and Uber, which hired Tom Fallows, the former head of Google’s same-day delivery service, last fall in a move widely believed to signal that the company was interested in delivering merchandise, not just consumers.
Target has already been focusing more on reaching consumers — particularly millennials — who are moving to larger urban areas. The company has a number of smaller “city center” stores, and has been experimenting with even smaller 20,000-square-foot stores called Target Express.
For the company to compete with online retailers such as Amazon, Target needs to be where consumers are living, according to Cornell, which means that “we need smaller stores like our City Targets.”
Those urban locations are likely to be among the first to have storage lockers, which would allow consumers to pick up merchandise that they’ve purchased online anytime they choose. “I like this locker concept,” Cornell said. “I can envision in the future lockers will play a role.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
