It's been a year since Catch and Target announced their partnership together.
The Wesfarmers-owned businesses teamed up to leverage each other's strengths; Catch opened Target up to its 1.5 million active customers, while Target gave Catch access to an extensive retail footprint.
Additionally, the partnership gave Catch's customers a channel to click-and-collect their orders from Target, which brings additional footfall to the retailer.
Speaking to Ragtrader, head of Catch Marketplace Steve Traplin said that one year on, the partnership is still delivering benefits for each brand.
"We're a trusted eCommerce platform, an 'Aussie Battler' so to speak, and people do like shopping on it on our platform and we see that from the increased demand.
"And our customers love Target and the Target brand, and they know what it's for.
"So bringing those together is good for us on our platform and therefore, it helps us with increased demand and excitement.
"And then from the Target perspective, what they're learning and getting better at is understanding how that footfall can work better for them, more and more and more each day," he said.
However, the challenges of COVID meant the teams had to roll out new services to accommodate the health orders, Traplin explained.
"In some cases, we had too many customers picking up at Target at the same time.
"So we introduced a booking system where you can book the time to pick up, and we've had to evolve into that and that includes Kmart as well," he said.
Another challenge the partnership faced in the early days, was aligning the traditional and eCommerce retail calendars, Traplin said.
"Target runs to a different cycle compared to what we do, so aligning calendars, aligning marketing calendars, aligning business rhythms, was a challenge that we had to overcome in the first six months.
"Now we've come to a really good place there and the winner out of that becomes the customer.
"Because we understand when they're on sale in Target stores and they want to be exclusive that way, because that's the right criteria.
"Or then the sale is exclusive on our site because that's the right way from a strategy perspective.
"Or the sale is on and done at both.
"So, they're using us to drive online, they're using us to drive footfall.
"And we're obviously loving, having the brand on our platform, because of just the customer excitement around it," he said.
And while COVID may have forced all businesses to hyper-focus on the 'now' rather than the uncertain future, Traplin said that there are some key expectations for the partnership going forward.
"The long-term view is: the relationship will get tighter and tighter, the customer experience will get better and better.
"The linkage between offers, and our joint marketing plans, I think there'll be a few more of those.
"We'll broaden our selection, and we'll continue to do that.
"We'll continue to refine that every week because we know the products that work well, and we know the products that don't work well.
"We will also focus on delivery experience, and the individual customer journeys - what you like and want to purchase from Target will be slightly different to what I do - and how do we resonate that make it more relevant for the end user?" Traplin said.