2025-11-26T10:16:01.257Z
- Retailers across the United States are preparing for the peak holiday shopping season.
- For Target, that means filling stores with toys, electronics, clothing and more.
- Target showed Business Insider inside the warehouse where items are sorted and shipped to regional stores.
Target really needs a win this holiday season.
The company has struggled with declining comparable sales in recent years, and it cautious expectations for the most important fourth quarter of this year.
One of the aspects of business that new CEO Michael Fiddelke keenly interested in improvements to ensure that products are actually available on shelves for customers to purchase.
“If you trust us to make a trip to the store, we can't let you down because we're out of stock, and we haven't done a good enough job in that regard over the past few years,” he said during the November earnings call.
Few days are tougher on shortages than the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday has changed a lot in recent years, but it's still the highlight of the holiday shopping season.
This means that stores must have the required number of toys, electronics, clothing and other goods.
The bullseye retailer invited Business Insider to take an exclusive look behind the scenes at one of its distribution centers, where items from suppliers are sorted and shipped to select stores across the region.
Target also fulfills more than 97% of its e-commerce orders at one of its retail stores, meaning almost everything the company sells online or offline must first go through one of those distribution facilities.
Business Insider visited the warehouse the week before Thanksgiving and saw first-hand the sheer volume of inventory needed to ensure every Target store has exactly what it needs every day.
Here's how Target is preparing for the holiday rush.
Target's regional distribution center is located a half hour outside of Milwaukee in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.
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The 1.5 million square foot facility serves 81 stores in four states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
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Senior Site Director Julie O'Clary began her career at Target as a site intern and has worked in several locations over the years.
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O'Clary says her facility typically processes about 600,000 boxes of merchandise in a normal week, but during the holiday rush that number increases to 800,000 per week.
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Another 300,000 boxes pass through the facility without active sorting, bringing holiday volume to more than a million boxes this week.
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The huge warehouse can fit about 26 football fields and operates like a small city with more than 1,050 employees.
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Trucks from suppliers arrive with goods that need to be unloaded and sorted. There are approximately 45,000 different product codes stored in the warehouse.
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A batch of toys is unloaded from a truck onto conveyor belts and scanned by laser equipment.
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Pallets of toys, such as Cozy Coupe cars from the Little Tikes brand, arrive here.
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In the days leading up to Black Friday, loading docks are a ballet of people and forklifts.
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“We see a lot of brown boxes here, but inside that brown box are toys or cosmetics—something that our guests want, something that brings them joy—so that’s our job,” Clary said.
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Towers of top-selling Black Friday items like these flat screen TVs can be seen all around the property.
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The warehouse also offers a look at what could be the next viral toy, like Target's kids shopping carts.
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Here, pallets of Mario Kart racing toys are stacked next to electric scooters and children's four-wheelers.
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Almost everything in a building needs a label, and these printers are churning out barcodes non-stop.
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The company also regularly tracks all issues (and potential issues) on boards throughout the enterprise, which are updated hourly.
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Although it's not a store, some employees still wear Target's classic red plaid shirts.
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At this facility, Target also tailors inventory orders to provide each individual store with the exact quantity of items it needs.
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For example, each box goes to a different store and contains different quantities of clothing in the right sizes and colors.
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The goods are then sent upstairs to a network of conveyor belts that direct each box to the correct truck.
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Boxes pass by at high speed, and the system automatically slows down, allowing items from multiple belts to combine into one.
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Since this is one of Target's larger distribution centers, the flow of merchandise continues around the clock.
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An overhead conveyor delivers sorted goods to trucks waiting at loading docks. Other large and bulky items are stored near the departure docks for quicker access.
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The boxes are automatically tipped onto rollers, which are fed directly into a waiting truck.
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The parade of boxes is then loaded onto tractor-trailers like a life-size game of Tetris.
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Another sign of the holidays is a pallet of Target-brand artificial Christmas trees on the loading docks.
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O'Clary says the facility processes about 40 million outgoing cartons per year. Some stores receive a truckload every day, but during the holiday rush they may receive multiple deliveries per day.
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O'Clary says her team is putting in thousands of hours of overtime this week to make sure Target customers have well-stocked shelves for their holiday shopping.
Dominic Reiter/Business Insider
