As Target alters its dress code, it also wants staff to buy more of its clothes

Target seems pretty preoccupied with what its staff members are wearing at the moment.

Last Friday, Bloomberg reported that the retailer is planning to tighten its dress code this summer, outlining that workers can wear only plain red shirts alongside blue denim or khakis — where graphic or patterned red tees with jeans of other colors had previously been allowed.

Cut to this week, and Axios reports that Target will now add an extra 20% onto employees’ current 10% discount across its own-label apparel brands.

The first of those moves serves Target’s aim to make the customer experience more “consistent” and “recognizable” across stores, per a spokesperson. The second, meanwhile, reflects the company’s efforts to boost sales more broadly, after total revenues in Q4 fell for the fifth quarter in a row and traffic slumped for a fourth straight quarter as well.

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Even though the boosted discount is aimed only at Target employees — “only” is used quite loosely here, given that that’s still more than 400,000 people globally — focusing on its clothing brands seems as sensible an approach as anything else, after apparel and accessories revenues fell to their lowest point since the pandemic last year.

For its full 2025 fiscal year, Target sales across the division slipped 5% from 2024 and are down roughly $2.2 billion from the apparel and accessories 2021 peak — when the company’s Lululemon-ish athleisure line, All in Motion, became its 10th private-label brand to pass $1 billion in annual sales.

Though the retailer also seems to be doubling down on its big-brand fashion offerings, having announced an expansion of its long-standing partnership with Levi’s just last month, it clearly wants to convince customers that Target garments could warrant a place in their wardrobes again... starting with its own employees.