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 ...
I think the Blue Light Special did them in.
Attention K-Mart shoppers...
Yes, we can find that stuff on line. CompUSA, Radio Shack, Fry’s Electronics allowed us to get the stuff RIGHT NOW, and in some cases (e.g. keyboards, mice) get some needed tactile interaction before making the purchase.
When I lived in Illinois, I could actually drive to the CDW warehouse. Now THAT was selection.
Yes, we can find that stuff on line. CompUSA, Radio Shack, Fry’s Electronics allowed us to get the stuff RIGHT NOW, and in some cases (e.g. keyboards, mice) get some needed tactile interaction before making the purchase.
When I lived in Illinois, I could actually drive to the CDW warehouse. Now THAT was selection.
My church bought one nearby and made another campus out of it.
You skimmed over the big boycott part so your comparison is apples vs oranges, a big, irrelevant non starter.
“I worked in a K-Mart in West Nashville for a year or so in 1984.”
I remember it. i was raised up there.
Sears was good in its heyday. Kmart never was so much. They never were a brand, so blame the marketers. They also never kept up with the tech revolution.
Radio Shack was the largest retail operation in the world.
I remember the day I bought my first shortwave radio, the DX-160, at Radio Shack, with the money I earned from my paper route. That was my baby!
Yes. Kresges was a dime store that didn’t survive the strip mall and shopping mall revolution. They had genuine soda fountains.
“KMart seemed to hit the skids after they were all cocky about supporting abortion or gays and wrre boycotted.”
Kmart and Sears both suffered a two decade milking and gutting by the private equity financier Eddie Lampert. Two once great American businesses stripped of assets and starved for capital as the stores died one by one. Not unlike what Wall Street financiers have done to many US companies over the last 30 years.
K-Mart’s website still lists 5 stores in New York.
Heck I remember in the early seventies if you went to the Kmart down in Annandale Virginia over by the storm drain there was always a bunch of old oil filters and empty oil cans...
We used to call them the enlisted PX.
“The last time I ever went to a Radio Shack...”
Lafayette’s was better. But they went out of business in the later 70s.
Surprised as hell that Target stock is higher than Walmart!!
I knew they were having problems, but not that they were gone.
That place was a candy store. I loved it.
The mom would dump we kids off at Kmart while she would go shopping. We would spend hours at their restaurant which was next to the garden center. The last one I visited was in Bishop California a few years ago. It was a dump. Empty shelves and few employees that spoke English. They had a captive audience for a cheap store but they even blew that.
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