The last full-size Kmart in the mainland US closes its doors Sunday

[Dennis Donovan]

CBS Saturday Morning
The last full-size Kmart in the mainland U.S. in Bridgehampton, New York will close its doors on Sunday. Kmart was once America's second-largest retailer, but a bankruptcy filing in 2002 along with the rise of online shopping doomed the chain.
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Last edited 8:02 AM · Oct 19, 2024

Link to tweet

[SocialDemocrat61]

1. Damn!

Never been in a Kmart. Guess I missed my chance. Shucks!

[GreenWave]

2. Flashing blue light specials!

[SocialDemocrat61]

10. What is that?

[GreenWave]

16. Special sales at those stores

[Dennis Donovan]

3. It's like Walmart but in red. n/t

[SocialDemocrat61]

11. Haven't really been in a Walmart either

Been in a Walgreens and a few Targets.

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Kresge, Woolworth, JC Penney...

…wiped out, along with a lot of jobs — first by Walmart, then by Amazon.

[MyOwnPeace]

5. In western PA we had.........

GC Murphy’s - same results though………..

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Kmart and Kresge shared the same root

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kresge_Foundation
The Kresge Foundation is a philanthropic private foundation headquartered in Troy, Michigan, United States.[1] The foundation works to expand opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development efforts.[2] The Kresge Foundation is one of wealthiest charitable organizations in the world, with an endowment of $4.3 billion as of June 2021.[3]
_________________

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._S._Kresge
Kresge was born near Allentown, Pennsylvania, the son of Sebastian Kresge and the former Catherine Kunkle. Living on the family farm in Kresgeville (named for his ancestors)
_________________

https://kresge.org/the-store/
In January 1962, under the leadership of President Harry B. Cunningham, a Kmart-branded store opened in San Fernando, California. A few months later, the more widely accepted “first” full-fledged, 80,000 sq. ft. Kmart store opened in Garden City, Michigan. That year the company had grown to operate more than 820 stores under both the Kresge and Kmart names, and had total sales exceeding $450 million.

Kmart store openings accelerated nationwide throughout the next three decades, eventually replacing Kresge stores, the last of which were sold to the McCrory Corporation by 1987.

By 1996, Kmart was a global company operating more than 2,100 stores with $31 billion in sales. However intense competition pushed the company to lose its standing as the second-largest U.S. retailer and it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002. In 2004, the new Kmart Holding Corporation bought Sears, Roebuck and Co. The corporation changed its name to Sears Holdings and relocated its world headquarters from its metro Detroit origins to Chicago soon after. The corporation continued to struggle financially and closed hundreds of stores throughout the 2000s. As of late 2023, only two Kmart stores – in Miami, Florida, and Bridgehampton, NY – remain open.

[RandySF]

7. Our Kmart served Coke slushies.

[GoCubsGo]

12. I remember a few that had a deli in them.

You could buy ready-made submarine sandwiches, which were actually halfway decent. They had the slushies, too.

[Shermann]

8. The cycle continues

Kmart was bigger than Walmart in the 80s, so Walmart had to find an edge. That edge was largely cost, and to that end they invested heavily in their supply chain while Kmart was acquiring struggling companies.

Now they can go into harvest mode and raise prices without so much competitive pressure, until the next upstart retailer comes along.

Amazon found a different edge (online sales) and seems to be transitioning into harvest mode much the same way.

[doc03]

9. When Sears and K Mart merged somehow they both went down hill. Now all is

left is China Mart, which I try to avoid as much as possible.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

14. So true

[Iggo]

19. When Sears and KMart merged, they were already dead.

It was just a place to dump debt until they couldn’t dump anymore.

Then they kill it off, write it off, and move on to the next.

[Liberal In Texas]

15. I never liked Kmart much. I thought they were junky and smelled weird when you walked in.

I would only go if I knew they were selling something I needed that I couldn't get at another store.

[moondust]

17. Heckuva job, Eddie.

~
Kmart filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, when it had 2,100 stores. It was the largest US retailer bankruptcy at that time.

But a disastrous merger with Sears in 2005 made the situation even worse.

The $11 billion merger was engineered by hedge fund operator Eddie Lampert. At the time Kmart still had about 1,400 stores and Sears nearly 900 full-line US stores.

But Lampert appeared more focused on selling off the real estate the two companies had, along with other assets such as the Craftsman brand of tools previously sold only at Sears, rather than in investing in either chain, leading to a bankruptcy filing in 2018.
~
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/19/business/last-kmart-closing-bridgehampton-new-york/index.html

[Prairie Gates]

18. So there are small-sized KMarts in the lower 48 and fullsized Kmarts in Alaska- Hawaii?

What a weird set of qualifiers.