Posted on 09/23/2024 12:35:36 PM PDT by Red Badger
The doors to the last full-size Kmart store in the United States will close forever on October 20.
WJAR reported on Sunday that an employee confirmed the location in Bridgehampton, New York, will close up shop on that date.
“Kmart has been slowly closing stores for years since merging with Sears in 2005 under the management of hedge-fund CEO Eddie Lampert. Sears Holdings, the parent company of Kmart and Sears, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018,” the report said.
According to Fox Business, the department store chain ran about 2,300 locations in the 1990s. Transformco, which owns the smaller location in Miami, also owns a few stores in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“Transformco says on its website that the first Kmart discount department store opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan,” the Fox article stated.
“The Miami Herald reports that the Kmart store there leased out nearly all of its former space to home goods store At Home. That Kmart location has now been reduced to what used to be the garden department of the original store,” the outlet added.
In August 2023, Fox 5 reported the last Kmart in New Jersey was shutting down, and residents shared their thoughts on the move:
VIDEO AT LINK..........
“It’s the end of an era. It’s yet another franchise that is gone. The whole world is changing, stores are disappearing,” one woman told the outlet.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Spiegel?
ATTENTION KMART SHOPPERS: Will the last one out the door please turn off the lights.
Funny thing: Every K-Mart store I ever walked into (only a few) smelled like mothballs. .... Then again, I’m so, uh, “senior” that maybe it was me! Cheers!
Spiegal, yes and Monkey Wards.
I actually remember being in a KMart as a kid and those being announced with the blue lights flashing - everyone was excited. It was something that was unique to people about shopping there and they did away with it.
“The Miami Herald reports that the Kmart store there leased out nearly all of its former space to home goods store At Home. That Kmart location has now been reduced to what used to be the garden department of the original store,” the outlet added.
Yes - here that is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTBiahDJ_go
Basically the same size as a Family Dollar or Dollar General. That is all that remains of it now after this full size store closes of the once dominant US retail chain. It still has stores in Australia and New Zealand and while they started under the same ownership they have since been separated in their ownership.
We’ve lost Sears, K-Mart, McCrae’s, Dillards, Family Dollar, Big Lots and several Restaurants.
Bidenomics is wunnerful...............
(Sigh) End of an era. When I was growing up in the late 70s/early 80s the families Saturday morning activity was a trip to K-Mart, mom would shop while dad took us kids back to look at the toys and then the Atari games in electronics (and sometimes if we were lucky, he would even let us buy one). Then he would take us back to the K-Mart cafeteria and get us a hamburger, since mom always took a long time.
Just looked and there are a few Sears stores left: “There are 11 Sears stores in the United States as of July 05, 2024. The state and territory with the most number of Sears locations in the US is California, with 4 stores, which is about 36% of all Sears stores in the US.”
https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Sears-USA/
They had great hotdogs in the 70s and early 80s. First thing you smelled walking in.
Well, KMart/Sears’ case they kind of did that to themselves with a series of bad decisions over a number of years.
Like Kodak and the others on a long last. People get fooled into thinking that CEO's and boards are brilliant people.
People get fooled into thinking that CEO’s and boards are brilliant people.
Or that Hedge Fund CEOs are good people who want businesses to succeed, instead of raping the companies.
Yep, employees hit hardest.
Sears made a few mistakes but would have done really well had it simply transferred its hugely successful mail order business onto a WORKING webpage! Instead, it only loaded a fraction of its merchandise to the web and afflicted the site with a totally dysfunctional Product Search Engine that caused so much frustration that millions of people just turned off Sears and never returned. If you can’t find the items you want, you’ll switch over to another website where you CAN. It is just that simple.
Amazon did little more than copy Sear’s mail order business model WITH a working website. How difficult could that have been? (Answer: a computer-savvy 12 year old could have done it)
Then, the killer for Sears was getting bought out by a fellow who invested for the underlying real estate. Closing retail stores (even the ones that were still doing Okay) became the name of the game. This is called “DBM” in business college (Death By Management). Selling off the good asset lines (automotive, tools, appliances, etc.) was just a part of the game.
A terribly ignoble murder, if you will, of an American institution that provided all sorts of (usually good quality, until the end years) merchandise to several generations of shoppers both in nice large stores and by mail order... with a “customer is always right” service and return policy. You could always buy from Sears with confidence that it would work out well.
PS: Chicago, the Sears, Roebuck headquarters, still has a survivor (albeit long since sold off) of the Sears success years in its (50,000 watt) radio station WLS-890AM. WLS stands for World’s Largest Store, which was a Sears, Roebuck slogan for many years. It is now unfortunately owned by Cumulus but its signal can still be heard during the day in a dozen states and at night it can be heard in almost all across America (we’ve listened to it in both New York, Alabama, and California).
Sears closed their catalog division the same year Amazon started.
Grants, Bradley’s, Ames, Fields, Sears, Wards, and now Kmart. It’s the big box store cycle. Target and Kohls are on their way soon.
My husband and I sometimes spent Saturday night shopping blue light specials when we first dated. It was a lot of fun.
The boycott against them for their woke abortion stance in the 80s/90s did them in. They never recovered
Even the fast food joints are taking a thrashing inflation has no mercy it’s why the democrats love it’s a or else notice.
Sears did have an online presence. It was called “shop your way”. I think it’s still around. I used to buy a lot stoves and ovens from them. It was the best prices I could find. Order online and pick up at the store when they came in. Got a lot of points too for my Christmas shopping.
I miss the hoggie sandwiches at Kmart.
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