Target Goes Gender-Neutral With Kids’ Decor

After taking a gender-neutral approach to its toy department, Target is doing much the same with kids’ home decor.

Over the weekend, the retailer announced that a new kids’ decor line called Pillowfort, which is not specifically aimed at either boys or girls, will debut in stores later this month, reports Consumerist.

Replacing Target’s Circo brand, Pillowfort, notes the outlet, will include the base colors of pink and blue, while, at the same time, offering additional, gender-neutral prints and patterns.

Julie Guggemos, Target’s senior vice president of design and product development, said to the Minneapolis Star Tribune of Target’s current kids’ decor offerings: “It was an aisle of pink, fairy princesses, ponies and flowers. And, for the boys, it was rockets and dinosaurs.”

She continued: “Well, you know what? Girls like rockets and basketball. And boys like ponies. Who are we to say what a child’s individual expression is? We really wanted to develop a collection that would be universal.”

Guggemos told the Star Tribune that Target’s move to gender-neutral kids’ decor was largely motivated by consumers’ outspoken disapproval of the retailer’s previous (and since changed) practice of identifying gender-specific subsections within its toy department.

“It gets back to listening to mom, understanding what she’s looking for from Target and making sure we’re delivering the products and the content that’s going to be right,” remarked Target Chief Executive Brian Cornell in the Star Tribune article.

“Girls were picking prints that the boys picked and vice versa,” stated Guggemos to the outlet.

“They’re not afraid to express who they are. We picked up on that right away and decided we were getting in our own way a little bit with some of those paradigms … It’s time to change.”