TARGET

Target has pulled some clown masks from the shelves of many stores and online amid reports of clown threats nationwide.

According to ABC News, the retailer made the decision last week.

"Given the current environment, we have made the decision to remove a variety of clown masks from our assortment, both in stores and online," Joshua Thomas, a spokesperson for Target, said in an email statement to USA Today.

Not too long after Unilever’s blockbuster deal with Dollar Shave Club was announced, another online razor company made its own news. Harry’s inked a deal to sell through Target, complete with an inline presentation and an endcap decked out with a huge Harry’s signature razor.

(To view the full Shave Report, click here.)

The shave category is trying to get its groove back. With the exception of razors, where sales are up a healthy 10.6% for the 52-week period ended Sept. 4, 2016, as tracked by IRI across multi-outlets, all of the other categories in shave are down.

(To view the full Shave Report, click here.)

In the slightly less than one year since CVS Health acquired all of Target’s 1,669 pharmacies and 79 retail clinics, the company has completed the process of turning them into CVS Pharmacy and MinuteClinic locations, converting as many as 150 stores per week at the peak of the integration process.

(To download Special Report: Double Down on Health, click here.)

A new flexible-format Target store in the Tribeca area of Manhattan is now open, and so far it's been a hit with shoppers.

According to the New York Daily News, the exterior of the store doesn't say Target — only its logo can be seen, the big red bullseye signals what it is. Inside, the first floor feels more like a local trendy shop than a Target. 

Amazon.com’s battle against Target is moving to a new battleground: college campuses.

According to Fortune, the online retailer has its eyes on the next generation of affluent shoppers and is quickly expanding its fleet of campus kiosks that allow students to retrieve online orders. 

Amazon’s push comes just as Target, which operates a few campus stores under its small- store format, is making college stores part of its new growth plans, Fortune reports.

Target has announced plans to test vertical farms within select U.S. stores, according to Business Insider.

The popularity of vertical farming, an agricultural technique that involves growing plants indoors in precisely programmed conditions, is growing rapidly.

“Down the road, it's something where potentially part of our food supply that we have on our shelves is stuff that we've grown ourselves,” Casey Carl, Target’s chief strategy and innovation officer, told Business Insider.

Target is focused on opening smaller stores in urban areas and college towns as it battles declining traffic and sales at its fleet of mostly suburban stores, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper quotes Target CEO Brian Cornell as saying that in the future the retailer could open "hundreds of these” smaller stores, which average around 20,000 square feet.