Who ever said treating a scrapped knee couldn’t be a cultural experience? If you thought high art and a first-aid kit had nothing in common, think again. Band-Aid Brand has gotten an artsy makeover courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As part of an exclusive collaboration, the duo have released a collection of first-aid products including decorative bandages, a classic metal tin package, and first-aid bags.

The artwork featured on the products was carefully chosen through a vetting process that included “in-depth consumer research to ensure we selected pieces that shoppers would connect with the most,” according to Steven Maseda, head of US wound care at Band-Aid owner Kenvue.

“The selected works by Katsushika Hokusai and William Morris—renowned 19th-century artists from different cultures—are united by the mutual celebration of nature in their work and the use of the woodblock printing technique, which allowed production of multiples numbering into the thousands,” Josh Romm, head of global licensing and partnerships at The Met, told Retail Brew via email.

Keep reading here.—JS

Target saw foot traffic fall for the eighth consecutive week, extending a losing streak that began just a few days after the company announced it would end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program in late January.

For the week that began March 17, foot traffic fell 5.7% YoY for Target, according to data from Placer.ai. That’s compared to the 7.1% it fell last week, and an average weekly decline over the last eight weeks of 6.2%.

In a March 4 earnings call, when it reported a 3.1% Q4 loss and a non-specified sales decline in February, Target executives were bullish about its Easter assortment boosting business. But if it has so far, it’s not reflected in the foot-traffic data. What may have taken the spring out of the Easter Bunny’s hop for Target is a 40-plus day boycott coinciding with Lent (so ending on Easter) spearheaded by Black clergy for which more than 150,000 have signed up, exceeding organizers’ stated goal of 100,000.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Dollar Tree really has a discount for everyone. A group of private equity investors agreed to buy the flailing Family Dollar chain for $1 billion, a sharp loss for the Dollar Tree, which acquired it 10 years ago for roughly $9 billion.

Brigade Capital Management and Macellum Capital Management will take over the nearly 7,000 Family Dollar stores. That’ll halve the number of stores Dollar Tree operates under its umbrella.

Why couldn’t Dollar Tree make Family Dollar work?

When Dollar Tree bought Family Dollar in 2015, it outbid rival Dollar General in hopes of cementing its status as the king of budget retailers. But Dollar Tree quickly learned that it had snapped up poorly maintained stores and found that Family Dollar had a different customer base that proved to be challenging to serve.

Keep reading here on Morning Brew.—MM