• 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.

• Home Depot's CIO says digital shelf labels won't mean different prices for different shoppers.
• The retailer sees the tags as a way to show delivery timing and help pick online orders.
• It comes as consumers and lawmakers worry about electronic shelves tying in dynamic pricing.

Buying a screwdriver at Home Depot?

Well, you and your next-door neighbor should be paying the same price for the same product on the same day.

Angie Brown, the home improvement retailer's executive vice president and chief information officer, told Business Insider that it's exploring a larger rollout of its electronic shelf labels, or ESLs — the small digital placards that large retailers have been using to replace paper price tags.

When asked if those wireless-updatable tags could introduce dynamic pricing, Brown responded, "Absolutely not."

Instead, The Home Depot uses those tags to accurately inform customers when their store expects the next delivery of a specific product, Brown said.

"We love being able to show you on the sign, 'You can get this as soon as the next day,'" she said. "And we want that to be right."

Why those little shelf electronic labels have caused so much worry

Several major brands — including Walmart, Kroger, Best Buy, and Whole Foods — have rolled out electronic shelf labels in their stores.

Consumers have scrutinized the rollout amid fears that stores could quickly raise prices during busy shopping periods or use customer data to show different prices to separate shoppers.

Some state lawmakers have responded to that anxiety, too. New Jersey passed a yearlong moratorium on new implementation of the tech. Maryland passed legislation requiring grocery stores to keep electronically displayed prices unchanged for a full business day.

Concerns have prompted retailers to get ahead of dynamic pricing concerns: Walmart's CEO, John Furner, for example, wrote a memo in September to customers and employees, explicitly stating that the technology wouldn't be used to adjust prices.

"We don't set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won't," he wrote. "We price the product, not the person."

Target also shared a similar statement this month, saying that the company "does not use personal information to raise prices."

Electronic signs in Home Depot

Home Depot has been testing the technology for years. In its 2020 annual report, the retailer said it had initially used electronic shelf-label capabilities in the appliances section before trying them in additional merchandising departments.

Brown said Home Depot sees the labels as a tool for store operations, not a new pricing strategy.

As stores increasingly double as fulfillment hubs for delivery workers and pickup orders, she said, ESLs can light up to help gig workers and employees quickly locate a product — an update that Walmart rolled out in its stores earlier this month.

She also said the company is not using the technology in its garden department.

There are two important caveats.

First, Home Depot sells several commodities, such as building materials and garden goods. Brown said the ESLs will reflect the individual commodity markets.

Second, Home Depot's Pro customers can receive bulk discounts when they cross purchasing thresholds. Brown said those prices are set by transparent rules, not by a shopper's personal data.

Still, for everyone else walking through a Home Depot aisle, she said, the promise is simpler: The price one customer sees should be the same price another customer sees.

"Those are the use cases we're interested in, not in changing price more often because we have electronic shelf labels," she said. "We've never talked about changing our pricing strategy if we were to roll out ESLs."