9 companies Target could acquire to fuel e-commerce growth
By Emma Cosgrove

Several acquisitions laid the foundation for Target's e-commerce success, said COO Jim Mulligan. The retailer could still improve in three key areas, five e-commerce supply chain experts told Insider. Here are nine startups that could strengthen Target's e-commerce speed and profitability. See more stories on Insider's business page.

Target’s targets
But there are still areas where the retailer could improve and if history is any indication, more acquisitions could be the way. Five e-commerce experts pointed to three areas of focus Target may be looking at for future buys.

Last mile delivery is one area where retailers can never have enough capacity.

"If you consider Target's supply chain acquisitions historically, they all have last mile relevance," Santosh Sankar, founding partner at Dynamo Ventures, told Insider. Owning Shipt gives Target a lot of flexibility to experiment with and grow its same-day delivery service, but it has limits.

"I think Shipt could use more scale," said Rick Watson, founder and CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting. Since a gig-based service is only as good as the number of drivers it pulls in, Watson suggested more regionalized gig networks to combine with Shipt might be next.

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