Target // Housewares
In 2022, I moved from the soft-lines side of things (Apparel + Accessories), and over to hard-lines (Home + Housewares). When I shifted over I was still a Business Partner, doing all of the hands-on Merchandising + builds. However, after my 1st year on the business, I was promoted to Manager. I worked on the Housewares business (also known as Kitchen) from 2022 - 2025. That first year, as a Business Partner, I was really focused on the fundamentals. Target had Visual Merchandising in this space prior to me joining the team, but there were still a lot of kinks to work out with respect to: refining partnerships, streamlining processes, bettering collaboration across channels to ensure alignment with multiple functions, and leaning in further to storytelling to unlock what each of these unique “Focal” fixtures within this space really could do for us to amplify narratives in a bigger + more authoritative way. After that first year of setting some ground work and building relationships, as I moved into the Manager seat, I was really focused on continued refinement. I had gotten partners on board with the idea that we shouldn’t be operating in a rinse + repeat model and just setting the same stories as the year prior, and I was able to push the boundaries of how they saw these assets as storytelling levers to interject the “Tarzhay” magic and speak to more guests. On top of the cyclical concepting and refinement work to push curation, improve storytelling, clean-up fixture usage, + improve fixture capacity knowledge, I became a valued member of the Kitchen roundtable and was often leaned on for advice + direction, which was amazing! During this time, I also had the privilege to work on another Owned Brand launch: Figmint, leaning in from start to fruition, and I was also as able to dabble in a couple celebrity partnerships as well: Bobby Flay + Tabitha Brown for Target!
Cyclical Work …
This section leans into some of the cyclical work I did as a Business Partner. The work shown below was done at a time where the Kitchen business was still operating in a less than ideal state, and there were a lot of moments where I needed to challenge partners on overall space usage, item capacities, + storytelling prioritization. For these builds, I was in the driver seat of all item placement decision making + assortment curation amplification decisions. In addition, I lead containment need conversations, proposed containment solves, partnered with packaging to improve product placement options within the presentations, + influenced SEM explorations. These builds came with challenges for sure, as this was a learning curve for the team and we were still finding footing on how to improve the space, but proud of the work that was accomplished here + the positive transformation in seasonal storytelling for the Kitchen business!
2023:
summer entertaining
end of summer refresh
fall entertaining
halloween shop within shop exploration
holiday Wondershop baking
2024:
summer entertaining
back to school Pillowfort on-the-go
back to college
Figmint Brand Launch …
As mentioned above, during my time as a Business Partner for Kitchen, I was able to work on the Figmint Owned Brand launch from start to finish. The goal of this brand launch was to improve guest perception + bring to market an owned brand that could compete with the higher-end Kitchen retailers, while still providing the value our guests know + love. This was a unique experience that allowed me to look at and leverage our Focal fixtures in a different way than the team had done prior. This work came with countless partnership meetings on assortment refinement, simplifying to amplify, elevated containment creation discussions, + SEM (store experience marketing) opportunities to enhance the overall brand.
2023:
brand launch
store execution / social posts
2024:
spring refresh
2024:
Figmint on-the-go
2025:
Figmint on-the-go
2025:
Figmint fall baking
Cyclical Work …
This section leans into some of the cyclical work I did once promoted to Manager. With this work, I was able to leverage my experience in the Business Partner seat, and take learnings from the relationship building I had in that role. In addition, having the previous experience of doing the builds and navigating CFT member personalities + preferences/ gaining buy-in to my merchandising, I was then able to not only onboard and train my back-fill to the space with ease, but also accurately + confidently navigate any ambiguity while having her back in the full process with the team. Teaching and training someone with little to no Visual Merchandising experience, while at times can be challenging, was also very much fulfilling! It allowed me to leverage a skillset I used often during my time as a Manager at both Charlotte Russe + Tommy Hilfiger, but had yet to be able to lean into while with Target until this point. Teaching + training the Visual Merchandising capability, helping others see different ways-in/ creative solves for a problem, and helping build confidence in direct reports, both with respect to the actual merchandising as well as the relationship building and presentation skills, are things that bring me an immense amount of joy + allow me to feel like I’m living my purpose! Below are some of the cyclical builds I Managed, inclusive of the up-front concepting work I created, to pass off build strategies + visual merchandising direction to my business partner, to set her up for success with merchandising builds. Again, as we refined the processes of how Visual Merchandising shows up for Kitchen and Target as a whole, you will see that the overall approach to concepting work evolved! This evolution dabbled in many ways-in to communicating + bringing the space to life through: a mix of inspirational swipe compiling + curating, CAD planning + mapping, illustrating + rendering, and even adjacency/ slotting negotiations + proposals.
2024:
fall: entertaining, halloween, + kid’s melamine
holiday: entertaining, Wondershop baking, + kid’s melamine
2025:
spring: new year organization, valentines, + easter
summer: entertaining, kid’s kits, + partnerships
Back to college was the first time we pushed the merchant team to a further extreme than ever before: to truly think bigger + beyond the scope of 1 story setting on 1 asset, but to imagine the total Kitchen space as a fully curated moment along the racetrack. The idea that we could combine stories, that work well together based on end-uses, color curations, + price points, to think of our assets differently + really amplify storytelling while also screaming value in a bigger/ more authoritative way. The below shows this explore push, to combine 6 back to college value programs, all designed to work into 3-4 color story room aesthetics, and merchandise by aesthetic/color story vs. item type moments. This merchandising pivot would create large color hubs for guests to shop by their preferred color expression + room aesthetic, with a one-stop-shop of all their back to school kitchen essentials that would fit that color/aesthetic in one place vs. having to shop every single endcap to find what they need. The team was on board with going this route, which was a HUGE + exciting feat! However, in the ninth hour the team reverted back to hesitation and chose to walk away from this coming to fruition in stores. Instead, they leaned into a “Microwave Chef” narrative for the Focal, and set the other assets with their previously determined category or end-use moments, all of which had all color stories mixed into each submission being told. While it was extremely disappointing to not see this bold color expression come to life in store and gain learnings from if it would have better ‘built the basket’ by providing guests more ease + bigger value amplification… I am still very proud of the up-front work to challenge the status quo, start getting the team to think differently, overall partnership with SPT in unlocking new ways of working, achieve buy-in from merchants, + see the excitement of what could be spark further inspiration.
summer: back to college
fall: entertaining, outdoor picnic + halloween
holiday: entertaining, kitchen decor, kid’s melamine, + Wondershop baking
PolyPro Refinement …
When coming onto the Kitchen team, the biggest hurdle I faced was illustrating to the Merchant team how under-utilized some of our assets were. The team had become so accustomed to just setting the same program types on the same assets as years prior, there wasn’t a lot of stop/think of what could be moments. Polypro was the biggest culprit of this. Polypro is a value back-to-college program, of dinnerware (plates, bowls, cups) that is highly competitive in the market. The team had been highlighting this on a Focal fixture because they associated the Focal fixture with ‘more space’. However, the Focal fixture only provided more space for select item types based on dimensions. Because the Focal fixture is a set arrangement fixture that does not have movable shelf heights, the structure of this asset is very limiting. In addition, these Focal fixtures were created + rolled out to stores to be leveraged as story telling moments, not bulk-out spaces. The very nature of what the Polypro product is, is not a story to be told or a curation moment, but rather a true bulk-out statement. Therefore, just by item type and overall intent, plus capacity needs, this submission really should be an Endcap statement. Shifting Polypro to Endcaps would allow teams to truly get the max capacity out on the floor, provide flexibility with shelf movement to ebb + flow the presentation based on inventory amounts per style fluctuations by store, and scream value messaging with Endcap headers. By moving this program to Endcaps, it not only benefits the Polypro assortment from increased sales turn, but it opens the Focal fixture up for more storytelling and curation to inspire the guest and find something else they didn’t know they needed/wanted — in-turn building the basket even further. Below you will see the evolution of Polypro, moving from Focal fixture, to Endcaps. This push took over 2 years for me to gain the necessary trust + buy-in from the merchant team to make this shift. You will see 2023 + 2024 where Polypro occupied the Focal fixture and was very ‘rinse + repeat’, and un-inspiring presentation for the guest. Then in 2025, lots of behind the scenes render explores were done, while crunching numbers, to prove out just how much capacity would be gained, as well as additional colors/impressions we could invest in to grow the assortment in totality, all of which was done to get the necessary buy-in from the team. Ultimately, we finally had a major win here with the team getting on board with this shift + setting PolyPro on 2 Endcaps for 2025 + allowing the Focal fixture to tell the Microwave Chef story for back-to-college. This shift allowed additional colors to set, growing the assortment, allowed for increased depth of buys for the top items, + even still, with increased visibility and value messaging the sell-through increased, sales grew, and the Endcaps had plenty of space when it set in-store where the team could have invested even further!
2023:
2024:
2025:
