An entire nation without a single full-line Kmart store? Hard to believe, but that’s what is happening as the retailer closes its last large-format store in the 50 states this month. There remains one convenience-style mini store in the Miami market and a few locations in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands but the last full-line Kmart in Long Island’s Hamptons area was the sole remaining conventional discount format left.
At one time, with more than 2,000 locations Kmart was the largest retailer in America, bigger than Walmart or Target or even its eventual corporate sibling Sears. The two brands were put together in the early 2000’s by dealmaker Edward S. Lampert in his effort to create a retail empire. It didn’t work out quite that way and after a trip through bankruptcy court a few years following a slow but steady cycle of store closings, the parent company – Transformco – is left with about a dozen Sears stores. Those are likely to close too as leases expire and Lampert believes the real estate is worth more dead than alive.
For Kmart, which began its life as the Kresge five-and-dime variety store in the early 1900’s, founded by retail pioneer Sebastian Spering Kresge, it is sad moment, though at this point largely anti-climactic. Kmart at one time had the single largest private label home furnishings program under the Martha Stewart brand, reputed to do $1 billion at retail, as well as any number of fashion programs, including its flagship Jacqueline Smith label. It also created the iconic Blue Light Specials, in-store pop-up sales that predated their online counterparts by decades.
Now it’s gone and all those big red K signs are just faded-out ghosts on the retail landscape.