Kmart set to close another location, leaving just 3 stores in the entire U.S.

The familiar sights and sounds are still there: the worn-out, faded tiles, the relentless beige-on-beige scheme, the toddlers ’clothes and refrigerators, and pretty much everything in between.

There’s even a canned recording that starts, “Attention, Kmart Buyers,” except it’s to remind people of COVID-19’s precautions, not to alert them to a flash sale of women’s underwear like formerly.

Many of the shelves are bare, however, in the Avenart Kmart, New Jersey, picked up by bargain hunters as the store prepares to close its doors for April 16th.

Once closed, the number of Kmarts in the United States (once more than 2,000) will be reduced to the last three holdouts, according to various reports, in a retail world now dominated by Walmart, Target and Amazon.

The disappearance of the store in the middle-class suburbs, 15 miles south of New York City, is the story of the death of discount department stores write small.

“You’re always thinking about it because stores are closing everywhere, but it’s still sad,” said cashier Michelle Yavorsky, who said she worked at the Avenel store for two and a half years. “I’m going to miss the place. A lot of people bought here.”

At its peak, Kmart sold product lines backed by celebrities Martha Stewart, Jaclyn Smith and Kathy Ireland, sponsored NASCAR car races and was mentioned in films such as “Rain Man” and “Beetlejuice”. He was nominated for artist songs from Eminem to the Beastie Boys to Hall and Oates; In 2003, Eminem bought a 29-room Detroit suburban mansion that was formerly owned by former Kmart President Chuck Conaway.

The chain consolidated a place in American culture with its Blue Light Specials, an intermittent blue sphere placed on a stick that would call shoppers to an ongoing flash sale. Part of its success was due to its early adoption of repayment programs, which allowed customers with no credit to book items and pay them in installments.

For a while, Kmart had a little bit of everything: you could buy the materials for your children’s back-to-school, get the car ready, and eat without leaving the place.

“Kmart was part of America,” said Michael Lisicky, a Baltimore-based author who has written several books on the history of U.S. retail. “Everyone went to Kmart, like it or not. They had everything. You had toys. You had sporting goods. You had candy. You had stationery. It was something for everyone. It was almost as much a social visit as it was a visit from “You can spend hours here. And they just splattered the American landscape over the years.”

The decline of Kmart has been slow but steady, caused by years of declining sales, changes in buying habits and the impending shadow of Walmart, which began its life a few months after the founding of Kmart in 1962.

Struggling to compete with Walmart’s low prices and Target’s most modern offerings, Kmart applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2002, becoming the largest retailer in the United States to take that step. , and announced that it would close more than 250 stores.

The billionaire behind the fall

A few years later, hedge fund executive Edward Lampert combined Sears and Kmart and pledged to return them to their former greatness, but Amazon’s recession and growing dominance helped derail those goals. Sears annual revenue has it was reduced to $ 16.7 billion after store closures and shoppers drop out of rivals like Target and Walmart. The company had also split or sold some of its major brands, such as Land’s End and Craftsman.

Sears presented for Chapter 11 in 2018 and currently has a handful of stores left in the US where it used to have thousands. Lampert resigned as CEO of Sears after leading the company to bankruptcy, but remained president.

In 2019 he bid $ 5.2 billion for the companygenerating strong opposition from labor advocates and unsecured creditors, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., as well as laid-off workers who pressured the billionaire to unpaid compensation.

A New York bankruptcy court judge upheld Lampert’s bid for Sear’s in February 2019.

“If I’m a gambler, I would say we’d be public again at some point,” Lampert told the Wall Street Journal in February 2019 about his vision for Sears.

In April 2019, Sears Holdings Corp. filed a lawsuit against the former CEO, alleging that the billionaire stripped the formerly iconic retailer of more than $ 2 billion in assets during his tenure at the helm of the holding company. Three years later, the legal battles have not yet been resolved. A federal bankruptcy judge has recently appointed mediators to resolve the ongoing dispute, according to the Wall Street Journal’s “Pro Bankruptcy” site.

And then there were three

Meanwhile, three remaining Kmarts continue to operate in Westwood, New Jersey; Bridgehampton, Long Island New York and Miami.

That wasn’t the end of it, according to Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University in New York and a former CEO of Sears Canada. Trying to compete with Walmart for the price was a silly strategy, he said, and Lampert was criticized for not having a business background and seem more interested stripping assets of the two chains for their cash value.

“It’s a study of greed, greed and incompetence,” Cohen said. “Sears should never have disappeared; Kmart was in a worse state, but not fatally. And now they’re both gone.

“Retailers sometimes get in the way because they sell things that people don’t want to buy,” he continued. “In the case of Kmart, everything they used to sell, people are buying but they buy it at Walmart and Target.”

Transformco, which owns Kmart and Sears, did not respond to an email requesting comments and a phone number from the company did not receive messages.

Nationwide, some old Kmarts remain vacant, while others have been replaced by other large stores, fitness centers, self-storage facilities, and even churches. A former location in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is now a popular movie theater for dinner.

Avenel Kmart employees learned last month that the store would close.

Unlike 20 years ago, when news of Kmart’s imminent closure across the country drew strong support from loyal shoppers and a Detroit radio station even set up a campaign to try to save a local store, the closure of the location of Avenel was fulfilled mainly with an air of resignation.

“It may be a little nostalgic because I’ve lived my whole life in this area, but it’s just another retail store closure,” said Jim Schaber, a resident of nearby Iselin who said his brother worked in the department. of shoes at Kmart for years. “It’s just another sign that people are shopping online and not going out to retail stores.”

The closing was a little more exciting for Mike Jerdonek, a truck driver who remembered shopping at Kmart in Brooklyn and Queens in his youth.

“It’s like the story is happening right in front of our eyes,” he said as he sat in his car in front of the Avenel store. “When I was younger I didn’t have money, so it was a good place to buy because the prices were cheap. And to see it right now is a little sad.”