Target actually can trace its origin back to 1902, when George Draper Dayton opened a retail store called Goodfellows as a dry-goods store in downtown Minneapolis and became one of the dominant department stores in the Midwest.
In 1903, the name of the store was changed to the Dayton Dry Goods Company.
In 1910, the name changed again to the Dayton Company. In 1965, the Dayton Company opened Southdale, the world’s first fully enclosed two-level shopping center, in suburb Minneapolis.
And by 1962, the Dayton Company entered the full-line discounting arena by opening target. The Target name has intentionally been chosen to differentiate the new discount retailer from the Dayton Company’s more upscale stores.
In 1995, the first Supertarget store opened in Omaha, Nebraska and in 1999 the Target.com website was launched.
In 1967, the Dayton Company went to public, and in 1969, it merged with the J.L Hudson Company of Detroit to create single entity, Dayton-Hudson Corporation.
In 2000, the parent company, Dayton Hudson, officially changed its name to the Target Corporation.
Target Corporation
