target iphone appTarget laid out an aggressive growth strategy today during a two-hour long meeting with the investment community that includes boosting digital sales by 40 percent this year.

The company’s updated roadmap follows a number of bold moves that the Minneapolis-based retailer has made recently against its competitors, including Amazon and Walmart. For instance, last week Target reduced its minimum online order requirement to $25 to qualify for free shipping of online purchases after experimenting this holiday with lifting all requirements to receive free shipping.

To put this year’s forecast in perspective, it expects store sales to rise only 1 percent in 2015; and said last year’s digital sales grew by only 30 percent.

The company doesn’t regularly break out sales from online and mobile, but it has said in the past that digital sales represent roughly 2.5 percent of Target’s revenue (so clearly these kinds of growth rates are easier when working off a small base).

targetTo support its digital growth, Target laid out a plan that includes spending between $2 and $2.2 billion in capital expenditures, with $1 billion going towards technology and supply chain.

In the past, Target has neglected its online channel, with Amazon powering its e-commerce site for many years before the companies parted ways in 2011.

Some of the money being earmarked for digital will go towards increasing the number of stores that can ship products directly to consumers. By October, it hopes that number will jump to 350 stores from 139. Today, Target has already enabled in-store pickup at all locations, which allows customers to buy online and then quickly pick-up the purchase in the store.

Both of those efforts — ship from store and in-store pickup — are considered competitive moves against Amazon, which is building warehouses closer to urban centers to reduce shipping costs and deliver purchases faster to customers.

The heavy investments will slightly decrease the company’s gross margins over the next five years, but it’s hoping it will partially pay off through an increase in sales. It finds that shoppers who interact with the retailer across multiple channels, including in-person, online and from a phone, are more engaged.

Target said customers, who shop in-person and through digital channels, makes purchases threes times as often as a person who only shops in the store. As a result, those shoppers generate 3.2 times more sales and 2.6 times higher margins, according to Target’s Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell, who presented along with other Target executives during a webcast today.

Target also announced a number of smaller tech initiatives, including a program in which it would partner with entrepreneurs to test products and concepts in the stores. It will specifically focus on the “Internet of Things” space, which includes such gadgets as Internet-connected watches, wearables or home appliances designed to make people’s lives easier.

Another small innovative it was working on was building in phone holders into shopping carts to make it easier to for customers to look up information on the Target app while wondering store aisles. Some of these things have required new hires with a background in technology. Target said a quarter of its technology employees have joined the company over the past year and are spread throughout a handful of offices in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Bangalore and New York.

Employees at its headquarters, however, will not be as lucky as Target looks for places to save money. It announced today it will be laying off “several thousand” jobs, mostly at its Minneapolis offices, where it has 13,000 employees.

Also, today the company presented its 2015 guidance, which includes adjusted earnings per share of between $4.45 and $4.65, compared with last year’s $4.27. It is also projecting sales growth of 1.5 to 2.5 percent this year.

Following today’s presentation, Target’s shares were up only slightly to close at $78 a share.

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