Posted on 02/23/2022 3:16:59 PM PST by algore
Kmart, a once-popular discount chain with more than 2,000 stores throughout the United States, has become the latest victim of the retail apocalypse, with just four stores still in operation.
The once retail giant recently announced that it is closing two more of its locations - leaving just two in New Jersey, one on Long Island, New York, and one in Miami, Florida, according to the Oregonian.
The announcement came after decades of the discount retail chain failing to keep up with Walmart and Target's low prices, a problem that was only exacerbated by the rise of the Internet and the store's inability to properly brand itself.
It was supposed to be 'so bland that it nobody felt it was uninviting,' said Ben Schultz, a graduate student in public history at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee who has been studying the decline of the retail chain. 'It was a place that could be common to everyone.'
But 'when they tried to change their image, they didn't have an image
Kmart has filed for bankruptcy twice since the turn of the century, as its global profit margins fell from $49 billion in 2005 to just $3.26 billion in 2020. It continues to do well in Australia.
And shares for Kmart - which merged with the now defunct Sears department store in 2005 under the conglomerate Sears Holdings - have stagnated since October 2021 at less than one cent.
Target's stock price, meanwhile, was at $194 on Wednesday, and Walmart's was at $136.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Exactly on the mark about Rosie O’Facist. Once K Mart trotted her out I knew it was only a matter of time.
Well, twenty years. But K Mart has been dead for a decade.
I had one in my town in NJ that declined years ago when Wal-Mart arrived, and one even closer in a neighboring town that held out a bit longer (further from Wal-Mart) but both are now gone; the one in my town is becoming a Target.
The last times I was in these places it was clear they weren’t re-stocking much (and it was a few years before they finally closed); in one of them they gradually moved the last aisle on one side steadily closer to the center of the store (creating a wall with shelving) though I never figured what they did with the growing area of dead space. In the final visits electronics was practically gone; it had been one of the busiest departments before. They didn’t even staff the register; when a worker at a nearby jewelry counter noticed a small line at the register she’d call over the loudspeaker for someone to come over, handle the customers, then disappear again.
A far cry from the crowded stores I remembered from my earlier years...
I can understand the three stores in the Greater New York area, you can handle that from a single warehouse, but how do you economially service a single store in south Florida.
We had a Smart and Final open up, and about the last time I was in our local K-Mart purgatory I told Mrs. Flash NO MORE K MART. From now on, it’s Smart and Final, because the checkers are SMART, and when you’re ready to check out, you can FINALLY leave.
We had a Kresge store when growing up. It was like Ben Franklin, but they also had a grill. It had a counter and a few booths. Lots of memories of my mother taking me there for lunch before I started school. When I got a little older we would go there to spend our allowance ($1) and sit down at the counter for a coke with friends on Saturdays. You could buy a lot for $1 at Kresge’s back then.
Nice memory. Now that you mention that, I believe we had one too. Maybe Chicago, Maybe NYC. Lunch was good.
I had a large cassette tape collection, mostly taped in the 70’s and 80’s. I used to buy Radio Shack Supertape by the case, and I also used a lot of DAK tapes. In later years I hauled the old tapes out of storage (not climate controlled) and started converting them to digital files. Surprisingly the Supertape cassettes still played well for the most part - biggest issue was the adhesive binding the leader to the tape had dried out and I had to repair a lot of them. The DAK tapes did not weather the years as well.
I do miss KMart though - they sold Big & Tall clothes that were cheap and durable (Basic Editions).
Remember using my father in law’s TRS-80 home computer back in the ‘80 or so. Tandy Radio Shack = TRS. Usually called the Trash 80.
How sad. Future generations will not understand the lyrics or appreciate the cheer of Rootboy Slim’s immortal holiday classic “Christmas at Kmart”.
“I must have died and went to heaven, ‘cause hell is Christmas at the 7-11.”
“ I remember a plan to convert Sears Auto centers into localized Datacenters cause the land was Sears owned änd they already had high power lines running to them, and they were plentiful”
I remember that plan as well. I worked for the Sears online business unit at the time and was expecting that be moved to the new company, but it never happened. Thankfully, I found a better gig and got out before the whole thing cratered.
It breaks my heart to see what West Nashville has become. :-(
“It breaks my heart to see what West Nashville has become. :-(”
They demolished my old home and built one of those disgusting hipster roosts in it’s place. Same thing is happening here in Colorado. Californians and Northeasterners.
I attended Cohn high school, and it’s terrible to see all those old “war era” houses torn down and replaced by 2 “tall uglies” per lot.
“I attended Cohn high school, and it’s terrible to see all those old “war era” houses torn down and replaced by 2 “tall uglies” per lot.”
Developers spread around a lot of money and the Nashville city government is notoriously corrupt. I graduated from Cohn in 68’. My father and Mother both went there.
I saw that picture in a newspaper many years ago, and clipped it out. As someone who was just getting by at that time, the caption made me smile. It was something like ‘Donald Trump and his wife Ivanka outside a Walmart after shopping for Donald Jr.’
Knew little to nothing about him at the time. So glad that he would eventually become one our most successful Presidents.
I am still here!
Just not posting much these days but check in for news.
I remember my mother and her mother (grandma) always taking me to the Woolco store in Frederick, Maryland when I was a kid. The place bored me to tears, but sometimes, we’d get something to eat afterward.
There is a level of boredom far below Woolco for a little kid. Woolco at least had a toy section. Next to our Woolworth’s was a “Pilgrim Mills”, a large fabric store from the days when many women sewed, and not just quilts. My mother would drag the four year old version of me in there, the most boring place on earth. The smaller competitor, Bluestones, at least had a bucket of lollipops mounted high at the front door, to be used either as a pacifier or a reward by the mother.
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