• Major brands put a lot of care into choosing a defining color — for Target it's Pantone 186.
• But a shade that works in one context might not suit all situations.
• Target told BI it adopted a shade called "Cherry Stain" for when the bullseye red is a bit hot.

Target takes its colors very seriously.

The retailer's iconic red, also known as Pantone 186, is a vibrant, highly saturated shade that makes its bullseye logo stand out in a crowd. It's a color that catches the eye on subway platforms and suburban shopping centers alike.

A new employee-only line of apparel, designed in collaboration with Isaac Mizrahi, is dubbed Collection 186. And two decades ago, Target bought all the ad space in an issue of The New Yorker and asked the magazine's illustrators to work only in black, white, and red.

But when Target remodeled its SoHo location in New York last year, using the trademark red for nearly every element of the store's entrance proved to be a bit much.

"It was just a little too overpowering, so our design team brought in this color that we're now calling Cherry Stain to kind of help balance out all of the red," Target's chief brand officer Michelle Mesenburg told Business Insider during an exclusive store tour last week. "It has now become part of our IP color palette at Target."

While the new Cherry Stain color appears on several fixtures in the SoHo store, it is more prominently seen as the official shade of the newly launched Beauty Studio department, which the retailer is rolling out in stores this year.

It's a calmer, more inviting hue that both complements the primary red and serves as an alternative when the bullseye shade might come off a bit too hot.

The company is now using the shade in more contexts, including some Target logos that now appear as a combination of the Pantone 186 and the new Cherry Stain, rather than the traditional red and white.

"It's a fresh chapter," Mesenburg said. "We're pulling elements of what we're learning here [in SoHo]. It may not translate exactly one-for-one, but the influence is coming into the full chain."

• The holiday shopping season keeps starting earlier and earlier.
• Target has struggled in recent years to keep the momentum going to the end.
• This year's strategy leans harder into the micro-season trend, with a big push in the home stretch.

The holiday shopping season keeps creeping earlier on the calendar, and that head start can come at the expense of the final stretch.

After weeks of crowds, big-box stores in the week before Christmas can be left with picked-over shelves. This year, as part of CEO Michael Fiddelke's turnaround effort, Target is shifting from a marathon mentality to a series of sprints intended to help the retailer finish strong.

Target's US stores will kick off the holiday season with a major reset in the first week of November, followed by another overhaul in the first week of December after Black Friday.

But the team isn't stopping there.

For the home stretch, Target is picking up the pace with a new micro-season intended to carry the energy through the final 10 days before Christmas.

"Decorating your home is done, then you start going to gift-giving," Target's chief merchandising officer Cara Sylvester told reporters at a preview event in New York last week. "The entire back of the store will be transformed into what we're calling Christmas Morning Magic."

That means this year, instead of seeing leftover string lights and stockings in the seasonal section, Sylvester said the zone will be flooded with fresh stocking stuffers priced from $3 to $20.

Target is, of course, not the only retailer to struggle with late-season momentum that can leave last-minute shoppers in the lurch, but Fiddelke has focused on faster cadence to win back shoppers.

"The holiday season is such a culmination of what the team has been hard at work on all year," he said at the briefing. "It's a hectic time of year."

Target's chief brand officer Michelle Mesenburg told Business Insider that the company is taking a lot of cues from its recently revamped concept store in New York's SoHo shopping district.

Starting early and turning items over more quickly has been a successful strategy at the SoHo store, she said, as well as a flexible approach to fixtures that keep the store looking fresh through several episodes of a longer season. Now the company is looking to put that philosophy into practice nationwide this holiday.