To be clear: This video is discussing AMERICA'S Kmart. Not AUSTRALIA'S Kmart. While they both have the same origin, they are two entirely different companies and Australia's Kmart is actually still doing decently. Australia also has their own Target too, which is not the same as America's Target. It's confusing, I know.
i was going to say something around that australia kmarts are like the 2ed biggest retail stores (not food ones like coles and woolies) which the only other one i have to say that might be bigger is Big W which is another retail store.
I worked at Kmart from 1985-1995. When they announced my store was closing, my friend and I knew that the drill was for a liquidation company to come in and increase the percentage off on merchandise week by week until the final day when everything in the store would be 99% off. We hid things like SNES cartridges, a couple of car stereos, action figures, bowling balls, etc. in the store's HVAC system. On the last day, we pulled everything out and marched up to the register with two carts loaded to the top with goodies. If looks could kill, we would have died multiple deaths that day. In total, I got about $3500 worth of merchandise for $35. 😁😁😁
Honestly as someone who’s worked in the service industry for a long time I don’t blame employees who do this tbh. Like y’all know how the sausage is made and put up with enough bullshit that you deserve to stockpile and wait 😂
I remember back around 2013 when I was in a band and K Mart saved our necks. For some reason we needed an 1/8" to 1/4" adapter at like 10:30pm on a Tuesday night, and K Mart was the one place open at that time that still had AV equipment from that general era. I also lived in a housing project behind a K Mart in 2004, and I guess it says something I still only shopped there twice.
Bad management (criminal management as well). I worked for a few years at Target with a lady who had worked for over 35 years at K-Mart. She was one of the last employees left when the store closed. What did she get for 35 years of service? A pension of $100 a month. The execs looted the pension plan over the years leaving nothing for retirees.
I'll never forget the last time I was inside a Kmart. Late 2009. Store was dirty and half the lights were burned out. They were a couple weeks from closing completely and employees stopped caring (I don't blame them, I'd stop caring too if my unemployment was imminent). We had a cart full of stuff and the cashier told us just to take it. 😂
Sears had their own series of missteps long before Kmart acquired them. Having deep roots in the mail order catalog business they could have pioneered the online sales movement. But they didn't and Amazon beat them to the punch.
@@83Roboto Yeah. Missteps forced on the company by Eddie Lampert. The guy single-handedly drove Sears and K-Mart into the ground. And made TONS of $$$ doing it.
My great grandpappy LOVED Sears brand Heroin WITH syringe kit. Yes sir. Sure, originally it was marketed to women to calm down their naggin' during their ..."lady time", but ol' gran pepaw knew what was good fer the goose, was good fer the gander. Also he loved getting loaded betting on Chuck-a-Luck with his pals. That's when someone puts a woodchuck down their trousers and they bet on how long they last before removing their pants. Also, I, of course, made this up. I'm waiting for my prescription to be filled for woodchuck scratch and bite marks. ✌️
@@bartlett2335 There is a certain emotional attachment and nostalgia for places you spent a lot of time in when you were younger. Not so much for the stores themselves, but for the memories and feelings associated with them. I didn't cry when my local Kmart closed, but it did bum me out for a couple of minutes. It wasn't a surprise, we hadn't been regular shoppers there for years by the time it died, but I will still get nostalgic when someone mentions Kmart. Attachment aside, these stores employed hundreds of thousands of people, some for their entire careers. There were folks who raised families and put their kids through college working for these places. It seems reasonable to mourn that loss of employment opportunity. Also, as Americans, we are living in a commerce society. It seems natural for us to have deeper attachments to the trappings of that commerce. We're the Ferengi of Earth.
@@GTSN38 were you in one? I was literally telling people that years ago, and this is coming from someone who grew up with family trips to Kmart. It was similar to walking into a museum.
Sears was the first company to take advantage of the idea of shopping from your home. With the mail order "Sears Catalog." Which was started in the 18 friggin hundreds! The fact that this store couldn't adapt to the modern age of internet shopping. Is astonishing!
@@johnhoog8279 Yep. It's the same 'ol tale. Venture capitalists move in. Saddle the company with ridiculous amounts of debt. That benefits their own financial organizations. Then pick the bones of the carcass clean. By selling everything else off. The many, working g for the benefit of the few. Yaaaaaay! I love this game.... 🙄
I remember when some of the first online shopping came out thinking that Sears was going to have it in the bag. It really is eye opening how companies just can't shift gears. To stuck on the tracks to adjust for the obvious future.
yes. instead of investing in updating/remodeling their stores, they chose to use the money to buy other retailers. After their 2003 bankruptcy, they did not have a vision for the future. Then Eddie Lambert came and ran Kmart & Sears to the ground as we focusing on the real estate side, not the retail side.
Shoplifting doesn’t help matters. Many shoplifters try to return stolen merchandise for cash. Strange inventory counts when that happens often. When I worked there other employees would try to involve me in back door removal of high end merchandise, televisions mostly. I think these untrustworthy employees would also set other employees up for failure. As I had at least 3 false accusations that led to termination. The other employees said they all got false accusations put in writing. Their less than honest justification to lie was; Turn over as many employees as possible before they reach 12 months. To avoid benefits by law or by K mart policy. An unethical way to treat employees without respect. In my case it was a smudge on my employment record. If taken to court it would of been their word against mine. Unfortunately for them our Heavenly Father’s court recognizes lying is just as shameful as any other sin. Makes me wonder how K mart stayed in business as long as they did. It was about 20 years before I went back to shop in that unethical establishment. And I only went once. Sooo They lost costumers every time they exercised their unethical employment practices. My favorite department as a child was the live tropical fish department. Seemed like lots of different fish every visit. I even got a purple one in my own 5 gal aquarium. I felt sorry for it, it didn’t look happy.
@@davinp That was always Lamperts plan - suck every last penny of equity out of both companies, while allowing both companies to slip right into the oblivion of bankruptcy. Watched it happen with our local Sears and K-Mart - both stores were still doing rather well, against Walmart, since they were both located a good distance away from the two Walmart's we have here, and then all of a sudden both were closed. The end for Sears was actually sad, that store was THE anchor for the local mall, and once it was gone the mall itself died.
My mom worked at a K-Mart when I was a kid. I loved hiding inside the overstuffed, circular clothing racks. She’d have to page me over the intercom before I would emerge.
My dumbass did that and hid so well the kmart employees called the cops and locked the store down as they thought I was kidnapped you can imagine my parents embarrassment when I popped out of hiding...
The stores were old and dirty and the reimaging never took, but my family was a Kmart family far longer than most. Not so much me, but my mom was a loyalist from the glory days. When they lost people like her, they were doomed. I'll always have fond memories attached to it from my childhood.
I'm 54. As a kid, I remember my great grandma saying she wanted to go to Kresge's. We thought it was funny because it had long ago changed to Kmart, but that's what she called it.
I left my cabbage patch doll at the kresge lunch counter in 1986. My heart was broken till next time we went and he was sitting there on the pop machine still waiting for me. Still have the doll!
I used to work at Kmart in America. I quit because of management and I told the manager at the time the way you run this place it’ll be closed in year. They didn’t even make it nine months.😂
I had a place in worked for that I quit with very similar conversations. The way you guys run this shit, you're gonna lose contracts and eventually won't be able to keep operating. Little did I know, their biggest contract came up for renewal two weeks after I quit. They had the audacity to demand more money from them, after missing multiple deliveries to stores for events. The contract was not renewed and they folded and ceased operations the next day. The company that took over their contracts was worse. With aggressive management and no accountability. They managed to scrape along for a couple years and also folded.
The biggest failure of Kmart was to adapt to the world of computers and internet back in the 90's. First of all, they had no computerized inventory management----they were sitting on millions of dollars of merchandise that was unaccounted for. The second was no online presence, which Walmart adopted immediately. Kmart corporate at the time honestly believed that the internet was just a fad that would blow over
@@TheBigdog868 No. Management is small potatoes---this started at the very top. In fact, it was Kmart's CEO at the time that passed on computerization.
It was wild seeing then use the same cash registers to the day they closed one of the final locations left in grand rapids, by ny house aince the mid 80's. They were more-yellow than an apple II computer
justsumguy2u, you are so right! I worked as an MTM at one of the first Super K's from 1994 to 1997. They were still using an MS-DOS computer system. The sales downloads from Troy always failed and I was forced to manually change prices on the fly. A cluster.
We didn't shop at K-Mart much when I was a kid but I had to get an Icee every time we went. They were an anchor store in my small town's first "modern" mall in the late '80s and early '90s. I'd go there to get snacks with my friends a lot because it was right around the corner from the video arcade. They had stuff like pizza (not Little Caesars), pretzels, hot dogs...corn chips with Que Bueno...yum.
Same for the KMart near me, and it was the only thing keeping the KMart open. It was a surreal and sad sight -- the store was devoid of merchandise except racks between the Little Caesar's and entrance. Most of that shelving space was paper plates and napkins, plastic utensils, disposable table cloths, condiments, sodas, and desserts.
I worked at our local Kmart from 1995 to 2007 as a college job. At that time we saw a store regain with hopes to grow again. We worked hard but weren't rewarded for it. Seeing good salaried managers get fired before they could retire was the wake-up call I needed to get out of there, despite the store closures. Those old training videos sure brought me back. I sold so many of those Smart Plans. Our old Kmart converted into a farm supply store, and our old Sears became a gym.
Thank you for your service. Damn it took you 12 years to finish college though, that's pretty rough. I appreciate that Kmart workers did their damn job and always had a smile on their face, while probably getting paid lower than what they're worth wages. You all are good people. I was joking about the college thing, I hope you're doing good.
@@GTSN38 thank you for that. To be fair I finished college in 5 years. I had trouble finding a job for many years. I thought that I might go into the management process, so glad I did not. Fun fact: managers were expected to move around to different stores and to different cities. A LOT. If you wanted to build community, you were not allowed to. Maybe something that hurt Kmart that is never mentioned.
The incredible irony of any company making the “if there’s 12 days of Christmas, why do we only get one day off from work?” While also being an employer, that does exactly that…
My mother started at a KMart in northern Texas in 1968 and stayed until she retired in the late 90"s. She saw them at their peak and the demise in that area. She was laid-off a couple of times but offered a part-time position at a lower wage....she sued both times and got back pay and her job back. Due to mismanagement of the retirement funds by Lampert and bunch....after 30 years her retirement check was just shy of $200 a month! Once they went from full time to part time employees and the resulting bad attitudes....I stopped shopping there....//
The fact that the shit storm started around 1991, and they SOMEHOW managed to hang on for more than 20 years (heck, almost 30 if you consider that final rush from about 2010 - 2018 as hanging on) is impressive in a sad, disappointing, and painful way.
@@slightlyevolved our kmart didn't close until Oct 2022.sears sold there hq in the bay area and now there's just a memorial to the company their even though the Sears at the mall is still open
When I started truck driving in 2007, the company I worked for did store deliveries to Kmart and Sears. It was depressing making the deliveries. The employees would hand unload the truck using a system of conveyor rollers, taking 3-4hrs to unload. Walking in the stores felt like going into a time machine back to the 1980s. Drab and dingy and feeling like a ghost town with little to no customers inside. My company would also do temporary store deliveries for Walmart when they needed extra trucks, like leading into the holidays. It was a night and day difference. Bump the dock and leave paperwork in the back of the trailer and hook to an empty trailer. 30min process. It was so efficient and organized.
Around 2007, Kmart decided to get into the cold and frozen food market. I was delivering that stuff at the time, and I hated going there. I've never met more dispassionate, angry people than the folks working those Kmart docks. They didn't have the setup to handle frozen pallets, and a lot of them thawed in the back room. It was all done on a shoestring. Perishables need to be put away quickly, and as you said, it was all so disorganized. I hope those people retired or found a place worth working for.
I had to hang around Sears for 2 hours because no one knew how to do an online return and the in store system wasn't set up for it 😒 no wonder they died.
I worked for Kmart is the stockroom, I’m guessing ‘90, trucks came with everything of pallets and was emptied pretty quickly. So they musta changed for the worse
@GreenAppelPie For me, the freight was loaded from the floor to the ceiling...and often poorly. It was understood by store staff to expect freight to come tumbling out of the trailer as the trailer doors were opened.
When I was a kid in the 70s and early 80s, Kmart was a store that everybody shopped but nobody admitted to. If you wanted to insult somebody’s stuff you’d accuse them of getting it from Kmart. In the mid 80s it turned around a bit with the rebranding.
That reputation continued on. I was born in the late 80s and when I was going to school in the 90s, kids would say that you had the "Kmart touch" if they wanted to insult your style.
I had K-Mart 15 mins away from my home & it was the best place (for a time) to get Legos & Hot Wheels for rather good prices because it was the closest big box store, the closest Walmart was an additional 15 mins away.
Kmart was 30 minutes if I walked there, maybe 5 if I drove. And we actually had another about the same distance in the other direction. I miss Kmart, I wish they were still with us. Fck walmart, my elderly mother was robbed 3x at walmart, never at Kmart.
Same here. Ours was one of the later hold-outs, too. They held on to old inventory for a LONG time, I was still finding good brand new PS2 games and the early 2000's Godzilla figures well into 2013. The interesting finds started dwindling around 2015, and it died a few years after that.
We had a Sears Essentials store near us for a time. It was near a busy highway, good location. My mom and I went to look for a vacuum. The store was clean, bright, well stocked. *AND THERE WERE NO CUSTOMERS THERE.* Maybe us and 3 others. 6-8 employees though. The guy that rang us up was really excited to check us out. Maybe we were the only customer he had that day. Or week. Mom passed on long ago, and was sad to have watched Sears go downhill. Still have that vacuum.
@MrCookieCat the sears always looked nice but like you said, I've been to some very large sears in malls and they were always very empty compared to the rest. The reason was 24 dollars for a towel
I never liked sears, but Kmart was my place for just about everything. I feel bad for the workers, I can't see how they would have a good attitude at a big box store. They're probably faking their attitude, but that's as hard as working. I'm thankful to everyone who has ever worked in retail, you are appreciated.
the way you narrate these vids, i feel like im in the garage with my buddies having a few beers and somehow we just start talking about the downfall of Kmart. love the channel
"Trapped in the past" is a very apt description of KMart, coming from an older person here. I recall when Target started to be known in the US, Kmart really should have taken their cue from them and freshened up their appearance, but they refused to. Target and KMart was the EXACT SAME, so for Kmart to no longer be here is entirely their faul
Target was an anchor store in my town's mall when I was growing up, with the KMart literally next door to it. Walmart wasn't even a thing there until about 1997, and with all the traffic, they still were pretty meh by then. Surprisingly, the Kmart actually survived over the Target by almost two decades. The Target closed down in 1997, Kmart closed in 2016. Go figure.
Where I live Kmart and Target were across the street from each other. Remember when the whole Tickle Me Elmo craze was going on. Kmart had a HUGE stack of them right by the entrance doors. Still no one knew because everyone was shopping at Target and the mall that was a seven min walk from them. The Kmart always looked dingy and dated compared to the Target. About seven years after Kmart closed Car Max tore it down to build their new lot.
I always thought so too. My family and I have ancient K-Mart clothes that are still holding up and being worn to this day. They were also the only place in town that sold unedited CDs.
My Kmart was one of the last stores in the US. They were still using the gray IBM cash registers in 2021. Everytime you went there a whole section was taken out. It got smaller and smaller over the years. On the very last day, there was only some miscellaneous kids clothes and the ice freezers that must have been 50 years old What a slow and painful demise
Kmart was run into the ground by Eddie Lampert after a disastrous Sears Merger. There was little investment in the brand and the stores became in awful condition, and this destroyed the brand. For a while some of the merchandise they carried became just low quality junk, when compared to Target and Walmart.
@@stphinkle Kmart's bad management led to it's own bankruptcy filing back in 2002. Kmart also had several bad investments in other retailers. They once owned Walden Books and Boarders bookstores. They invested in these two retailers when people were starting to buy e-books online. Kmart owned Payless Drug Stores, and Sports Authority. It was Eddie Lambert who invested in Kmart back in 2002 to bring them out of bankruptcy. Kmart did not merge with Sears until 2005. Sears was a cash rich corporation at the time of the merger. After the merger the two retailers continued to operate the two retail companies under the Sears Holdings Corporation banner. That was their biggest mistake. The two retailers had higher operating expenses marketing the two. Both should have shut down, and the Sears Grand concept that was run successfully at the beginning of it's launch should have taken over. When Kmart's management took over Sears they went down hill fast. Most Sears stores were remodeled before the merger. Kmart stores before the merger were not remodeled, and were falling apart with deferred maintenance. Then Walmart had a price war with Kmart, and Amazon entered the scene. Sears was once the largest Appliance retailer. Home Depot, and Lowes then started to expand and open more stores where they also sold tools and appliances. The competition became too intense for these two retailers to survive.
@@jameskeefe1761 You are right. Certainly in the early 1980s and earlier, Kmart had its place. But in the mid to late 1990s, their quality tanked. Target and Walmart beat them to the punch.
@@jameskeefe1761 Yes Kmarts appeal was not as strong as it was in the 70's and 80's. But the company was still doing decent business throughout the 90's. Really wasn't till Fast Eddie took over when things started spiraling downhill. Especially after the merger. He wasn't trying to save either Kmart or Sears instead he was doing a Gordon Gecko blue star on them. He burned them down to the ground , While he made billions.
Eddie bought Sears for its assets. Sears owned most of its property. He made his own real estate company, sabotage….i mean seritage which bought Sears property at way below market value, then leased back to the stores till they couldn’t afford to operate. He did this until there was no Sears property left. Then Eddie had Sears’ core brands kenmore craftsman diehard in sight. Sold those off leaving Sears completely helpless. Make no mistake Eddie isn’t some hero he is a con man and the reason why both stores failed. He bled the company dry.
@@joshmaier18 Sound like a carbon copy of what happened to Eastern Airlines. Assets sold then leases back at high rates until all the money is bled away.
Nothing will ever beat Kmarts layaway program. I know I got many a coat, and Christmas's because they had that program and my mom could pay over time. #RIPLayaway 😢
My mother also loved layaway at Kmart. I still remember her taking me to a Kmart to dispute some discrepancy with an item she had on layaway. The woman who was at the desk listened carefully and made the necessary corrections. As we left she called out, *_"Next victim!"_* My mother said, _"Wow, she's great!"_
@@GatheringAshes Core memory of mine as well...my sister and I would play in the adjoining aisles and once she went into the main room we couldnt snoop lol😏😁
Walmart with groceries is called Walmart Supercenter. Almost all of them have groceries now but they also used different names for different sized stores like Kmart did. Not quite as bad though.
@@a7x5631 I think it had 2 do with the auto part of it 2. Auto and groceries made it super if I can remember correctly I was a teen when walmart stopped putting super on their signs in the 00s if I can remember correctly
The last time I went into a Kmart, and it was the last time before it closed down forever, I went inside for a trek to see what it looked like and it looked like a flea market that hasn’t been maintained since the mid-90s. The Kmart cafe was totally emptied and stripped and it was being used as a storage. The hair products was wedged with the electronics, the grocery section (I use that word grocery loosely) was like a crappier less stocked version of Target’s food aisles. I saw in the soda section a bra and two bottles of nail polish. A whole bunch of merchandise that looks like it hasn’t been updated since January 2000, it was all around depressing and drab. I also found a skateboard in the middle of the floor which I picked up and put on a shelf - that was a lawsuit waiting to happen and that was the last thing Kmart could afford. The checkout lines still used cash registers with black screens and green text - technology from the 80s to 90s.
I remember the beginning of their very slow fall. At the start of the 1990's the decided to save money on electricity by turning the air conditioner up. You were lucky if it was only 76 degrees F in the summer. Nothing like convincing your customers not to spend so much time in your stores by making it unpleasant for them inside.
I got to do Operation Santa Clothes in elementary school, and all I remember was we got to pick out two outfits, a pack of socks, undershirts, underwear, and shoes. We also got cookies, hot chocolate, and took a picture with Santa. Only a few kids got to go and I was one of the lucky ones
I remember walking into the K-Mart of my childhood back in the 70's, just a year or so before they closed a decade or so ago and it literally looked exactly the same. Literally, nothing had changed!
Dude, most every store I go into today still looks like my childhood 70s memories. What are people expecting to change ? They have aisles of merchandise, shopping carts, and registers. Did the store have old 1970s sales posters up, I really doubt that but I guess it's possible. Did they have old creaky wooden floors, or perhaps they had torches instead of fluorescent lights. I only look at the merchandise and the people helping me, so maybe I'm missing something.
@GTSN38 Most big box retailers remodel periodically, put up some fresh paint, new flooring when it gets old, new shelves at least once per decade etc. It freshers things up and makes for a better shopping experience. Kmart, whom I loved, did none of that. Ever. Went into several that never updated or changed. Still had the same dirty floor with cracks throughout, the same fading old paint, same layout, same dirty and falling apart ceiling tiles with missing tiles throughout, parking lots full of pot holes, same old outdated cash registers and last but not least, the exact same shelves that had been in those stores for decades, sagging and falling apart. One Kmart I went to when it was closing I actually caught a glimpse of a sticker on the back of an old shelf that had been emptied out. The sticker was dated 1982. That store hadn't been maintained or updated in 36 years. While it is only one issue, it is one of the big issues involving Kmarts downfall. Most shoppers want a pleasant experience when shopping and want to walk into a clean, organized and maintained store.
@GTSN38 you would assume that, over the course of 40 years, the old conveyor belts would be replaced, the tile floors updated, etc. Just general renovations which most large companies can afford to do every 20 or so years just to keep from seeming out of date. Logos change, lighting changes, tech is updated, etc.
@@rabbit9905 I don't even see the need for any conveyor belts at a general merchandise store unless they sell groceries. Even then, does that really matter ? I put all my sht up there, make sure other people's items don't mix with mine, pay the lady, and leave.
@@katelynbrown98mine closed 2020, I worked there 17-19. I miss K mart for sure but not the constant 40mi commute one way through the canyon or down a giant mountain. It's better driving that a few times a month more enjoyable and you don't drive your car into a heap of junk.
Five star analysis. Kmart was actually dead years before the body fell. As you noted, Walmart pushed heavy data connectivity and had an extremely tight grasp on what was selling where. Kmart only grudgingly had barcode scanner registers and never had any idea about real-time inventory. Purchasing would buy stuff and ship it to the stores. But the stores has no idea what was being shipped, where it was, or where it was supposed to go. A lot of sale merchandise sat in backrooms instead of being put out for sale. Walmart repeatedly beat the hell out of Kmart with data. That's where the war was fought and Kmart stood no chance. Sears had similar data issues so they were no help at all. Two decrepit data systems did not fix anything. Anyway, one minor correction. Walmart didn't begin pushing the Supercenter concept until the 90s and they were still converting old stores to Supercenters well into the 2000s. Walmarts pre Supercenter were much more like Kmart. But Walmart aggressively updated those stores or replaced them. Things Kmart never did. Ever.
Kmart is bitter sweet for me. We used to go to super K because it was one of the only stores open on Christmas Eve. My parents have passed but it does bring back memories. Towards the end you could go in there and most things were on clearance it's been years since they shut down and the building remains empty.
We gave K-mart one last chance in the 2010s for Christmas shopping. They were having a toy sale that was SUPPOSED to result in about 30% off. But it was a tricky one, in which they could manipulate the calculation and we only got about 12% off, which was still MORE than Target or Walmart. They just couldn't get it together.
I was born in 1970 to a blue collar dad and a stay at home mom. I lived in Kmart clothes and shoes through 8th grade when I started working and buying my own stuff. There was a sentimental attachment for me. Until the early 2000s. I owned stock and part of their reorganizing was that all old stock became worthless. I have not been in one since and will be happy when they disappear.
My grandma worked at our local Kmart for something like 40 years, she still receives a pension check from them despite the company no longer existing. When I was a kid they had a childcare center in the store so I have a lot of memories there.
In the 80s, when I was in middle school, there was no bigger insult than having someone ask if you got your clothes at Kmart. "Where'd you get those jeans? Kmart? Hahahaha."
@@cathystaley3131 To Quote Christopher "Play" Martin on Class Act(1992) "We gotta flip your wardrobe. You can't be wearing that Lame, played out KMart." Christopher "Kid" Reid Retorts "What are you talking about? This ain't KMart, this is JC Penny Top of the Line Buddy".
My mom loved K-Mart, I have fond memories of going to the one in Enola, Pennsylvania during the early 2000's, it's actually where I got my first PS2 and DS
I used to go to one all the time in Lebanon, PA. It ironically got replaced with a Target sometime in 2017/2018, I think? It was one of the last Kmarts near me, so it was honestly sad to see it go. I was there during the last month of operation and it was just depressing to see a store I had loved be so empty, left with barely anything on the shelves…
Just subscribed after watching this. Great sense of humor and I really appreciate all of the research and footage you incorporate!! Will definitely be watching more of your content 👌
My family shopped Kmart a lot. My Grandmother was an amateur photographer and used their photo lab exclusively. My older sister who graduated in ‘87 (as well as her husband) worked at the local Kmarts while in high school and then their first few years of college. So sad to see them go.
I grew up in a suburb of west Houston that got a FedMart a year or two before a Kmart in the early 60s. The FedMart was closer (0.9 vs 1.4 miles). Then to add insult to injury a Woolco was opened in later 60s that was maybe a quarter mile closer than the Kmart. Result: I probably didn't set foot in Kmart but a half dozen times during the 60s and 70s whereas several hundred times between the other two including working a few months at FedMart in 1975. I purposely shopped at a Kmart in the 90s just as a protest against Walmart.
Walmart sucks and still sucks today. I live in chicago and it's a hassle to get to one and you usually spend over 10 minutes in line. Oh ya, the parking lots suck too and you have a very good chance of getting robbed at walmart.
@@GTSN38 When your police department is demonized and is short-staffed by 2,000 or more officers, and your local government has supported no cash bail that allows a criminal to return to the streets before the ink is dry on his fingerprint chart, there are going to be significant problems. Worse, the rampant shoplifting and enormouse taxes make Walmart's position untenable, which is why they close their stores. Additionally, the state of Illinois has employed policies that are driving away downstate residents to places such as Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, Texas, and Florida. This means the support for city improvements that was financed by on the backs of locations such as Rock Island, Moline, and Galesburg is shrinking. The state's bailout of Chicago's public sector pensions in the late 90s has rendered the state utterly insolvent, and, not having been corrected since, is once again on the point of bankrupting the city. Here in the Quad-Cities, we have four that serve 300,000+, and we would have had five, if not for one city's mismanagement. I hope things improve for the city of Chicago, and that you break with you century long tradition of single party rule.
And they called their new loyalty plan "Shop Your Way". Well shopping "My Way" doesn't involve dodging buckets of leaking roofs all over the store and trouncing around on the same flooring from 1962 in 2015. You'll never find a more profound story of mismanagement.
14:20 This is one of the big downfalls of large companies. When their business is either struggling or stalled they'll buy up other major chains (sometimes in other countries and markets they know nothing about) because it makes things look great in their reports. "Our company grew by 25% this year!" Enron was probably the most extreme example of this.
K-mart sponsored a couple of well know NASCAR drivers. Darrell Waltrip drove a #66 K-mart car in 1999 and 2000. K-mart also sponsored the NASCAR Cup series races at Michigan Speedway in the 1990s.
Kmart actually had a whole CART (Indycar nowadays due to the split ending) Team which is basically, Michael Andretti and also Christian Fittipaldi for a while called Newman-Hass and yeah, once Michael Andretti left the team and afterwards with Cristiano DaMatta won the Cart title at one point in time, when CART became ChampCar Kmart was gone and their secondary sponsor of Texaco/Havoline was gone too... It's over after that.
We had a K-Mart in my town first. In the late 90s, Wal-Mart moved into a building right next door. Both normal stores. No supercenters. Wal-Mart had groceries, so more people went there. 5 years later, Wal-Mart moved down the street into a new supercenter. And that was the end of K-Mart in our town. It just sat there.
Another note about the Lampert years at K Mart is his management style. Lampert had divisions within the company compete AGAINST EACH OTHER for funding. So if Marketing wanted a bigger budget, they had to create a presentation and basically beg Lampert (the largest shareholder) for enough money to do what they need to do. This meant any decision had to go through the process of begging Lampert, him giving them something, then doing it, which he could defund/override at any time. It also discouraged cooperation between divisions (they were all competing against each other for the same ever-shrinking pool of budgetary funds. Marketing wants money, Business Ops wants money, why would they work together so each side gets less? They didn't. Lampert didn't fix this flawed system for YEARS.
What I recall as a child of the early 80s, was that the K Mart on the southside of Chicago suburbs were literally falling apart. My mom was a frequent flyer well into the 90s. I often went with. I recall her complaining that the store was 'a mess' with tiles falling off the ceiling, and many lights were out. Items were thrown in areas that they didn't belong and employees couldn't tell you when out of stock items would be available again. Many of the higher end electronics came in boxes that were damaged, so people wouldn't buy those, but order another. That doesn't fair well for inventory. I must say the same was for Sears of the time. My dad and I shopped there specifically for the Craftsman brand, eventually switching over to Sears Hardware, which was good for a time, but same time, mom stopped shopping at both sears and KMart for clothing etc. So we're talking 2003 here. Once the Sears Hardware stores closed, I've not bought another Craftsman tool since.
I'm old enough that the KMart Eatery (their cafeteria name in my area) was a part of my childhood. My mom and a couple of her friends would take me to the Eatery to have a midday meal. I think they wanted the extra in-store time to possibly take part in a Blue Light Special. It was almost always a good time and I remember the food was always good. It was cafeteria food, sure, but it was a strange time when you could get a baked steak with mashed potatoes while shopping for socks and hoping to hit the blue light lottery for a vacuum cleaner... don't figure we'll ever see those days again.
Our K-Mart in Clarksville Indiana opened in March 1965 and looked the same when it closed in November 2000. Now personally, I thought that was cool because I don’t like change. K-Mart was retro before retro was cool. I can see why people would be turned off though and prefer to shop at other stores.
I agree. My local store was one of the last to close. The aesthetic of K-Mart never bothered me and I never realized how outdated they really were till watching this video. On the other hand, I hate the design changes Wal-Mart has made and their new logo. Not sure why, it just all looks super bland, cheap, and overly corporate.
I worked at kmart in almost every store position from 2014-2017... which was their real foray into the "buy online, pickup in store" arena. A lot of stores like walmart and target were doing that already too, but kmart wanted to scale it up and make it the norm, and they could've been great at it too. But in typical kmart fashion, greed took over instead. One thing about kmart is, they did NOT price-match other retailers, which is not really the end of the world at first glance... but they took it to another level. In order to try to push for more online sales, a lot of the time any given item's price on kmart's website would be less than the price in store, and guess what... the stores would NOT match the online price on their OWN website either! Imagine being an entry level hourly employee and telling the customer that they have to purchase the item online, select the in-store pickup option, wait for an employee to pick/pack the order, and wait in line to "pick up" the same item at a slightly lower price that they are currently holding in their hand... because that is EXACTLY how that scenario played out on a regular basis. Utter nonsense and despicable customer service just to try to over-blow the exec's "multi-channel" strategy so they can say in their board meetings "look at all these online sales we're making!" Some bargain-hunters actually played along and did just that to get the lower price, but I guarantee you it was the last time they ever set foot in a kmart. Others just walked out in disbelief, leaving full shopping carts behind. I just remember thinking to myself, why is kmart alienating their customers like this???
I'm always going to miss Kmart. I was born in 83, grew up in & still live in North East Ohio so there were quite a few Kmarts around. One of my older sisters worked in the Super Kmart around the painesville/mentor area when I was a kid too. Kmarts always hooked me up with toys & even if one store was out of whatever I wanted, another Kmart would have it. Not to mention, back then, we only had 1 Walmart. But from wherever my family members were living at, we could drive past 2,3, even 4 Kmarts just to get to the 1 Walmart. So yeah, just like Blockbuster, they are apart of my childhood. You and your team try to have a good day/night. : )
I went to the Kmart in heisley which is close to Painesville, I’ve lived and still do in Painesville since I was 6 years old and I am 27 now, I miss Kmart I have so many memories there, me and my friends went exploring in the abandoned Kmart before the building was tore down and turned into a meijers.
Anyone else have this experience? I still remember the overwhelmingly toxic smell of plastic every time I walked in to my local Kmart. It was a distinct smell, had a strangely very slight sweet hint to it, almost like artificial cherry? Whatever it was, it was present every time I walked in for the 20 years I occupied that store. I wonder if anyone else had the same experience.
I remember the death-throes of the Kmart in my area back in the mid-2010's. I remember the electronics section basically never had any staff (when before, there were always one or two employees at the electronics counter). Eventually, some of the lights in the store started failing, and they seemed to just not bother to fix it, leaving large areas of the store dimly lit to an honestly comical degree, and adding to the dingy atmosphere. I think they locked off the outdoor goods section at one point and never reopened it. Then, at some point, they seemed to sort of just... stop stocking the shelves, leaving them barren for months until they started their closing sales.
That's exactly how I remember the one in my town. Towards the end they usually had only one register open, sometimes 2 or 3 if it was around the holidays. Never saw any other employees in the store besides the cashiers, when before there were always people working in electronics, sporting goods, the cafe, etc. Really sad to see it go down.
I used to be the electronics lead in my Kmart (which means I was the only one working in that department who worked 40 hours.) Most of the time, I was the only one working in my department and still sometimes had to help in other departments. I worked my ass off and basically had to quit eventually because my salary hadn't gone up in years & the work was just too much eventually.
Does anyone remember Ventures? They were Kmarts competition. They were like Walmart and Target of today! KMart was already going downhill before Sears brought it.
In the mid-80s, my grandmother moved into an apartment. Her apartment complex was right across the street from a strip mall. My grandmother never learned to drive, and of course, she didn't have a car. This strip mall was very convenient for her. It had a grocery store like a Mars grocery store on one end and a K-mart on the other end. There was a bank in the shopping center. And a Rax Roast Beef fast food restaurant, too. When my brother and I would visit my grandmother at her apartment, she would take us to K-mart to shop around.
29 years old here, my hometown had one of the last open Big Kmarts in the region before it shutdown. I remember when I was young and going to the food court for Icees. Then as years went on, the food court shutdown, collected dust and storage. Lights always off, but always in plain view as a reminder of what it once was. And then slowly over time Kmart's isles became quiet. More people started shopping at Walmart that was built up nearby. It was always lovely to shop at that Kmart, they carried my favorite socks, I bought all my Bionicles at Kmart....my first airsoft pistol. The day that finally came for the last sales of Kmart, I bought up some nice kitchen ware and misc items. Taking one last nostalgic walk down those quiet isles of the past. Now that building is still an empty husk. Sitting there for many years. Once a season it'll come alive when the Spirit of Halloween store occupies it in the fall. It had closed in the late 2010s. Batavia, NY. I still have that airsoft pistol, it still shoots strong.
Kmart is still a thing in Australia, & very marginally a step above Target, both chains here are only licenced, no operational connection to their US namesakes.
My mom worked for Laprino Foods. Walmart regularly didn't pay their bills, but they were so large companies didn't want to potentially lose them. I worked for one of the last Kmarts that stayed in the green from 2014-2015. We generated ~$100k-$200k a week in our store alone. Our store was ran so well that all but one person who quit to go work for the new Walmart came back within two weeks. Walmart treated their employees so poorly and paid them so poorly that people came back to a failing store. Make no mistake, we knew we were dying. It was no secret.
My dude, I'm new to your content (1st video) but enjoyed it. I like your humour but didn't laugh out loud until your read out one of your channel member names at the end. Huge shout out and massive respect to 'Your mom liked it' which I am still laughing about as I type this. What an excellent handle X
As a child I remember going to an S. S. Kresges in the middle of small town. Other general merchandise big box stores that died were Zayre, Roses and Two Guys.
Zayre is kind of still around, under different names. TJ Maxx, Homegoods, and Marshall's are all run by the old Zayre company. BJs Warehouse Club was another brand they started but it was spun off later. So Zayre survives hiding in plain sight.
Roses still exists but it's different than it was in the 80s when there were several around me. There's a Roses in the Middlesboro KY mall that moved into the old Kmart space. So Roses is still around and I don't think most people would guess that Roses is going to outlive Kmart and even Sears, possibly even JC Penney's.
I absolutely loved the Kmart cafeteria. I had never seen anything like it. I mean yeah there has been a McDonald's in Walmart pretty much ever since I could remember, but the Kmart cafeteria was really unique because it was its own thing.
The worst part about going to K-Mart as a kid in the 80s was the bare toy shelves. It was always the leftover LEGO, Transformers, and GI Joe toys that no one wanted. Always plenty of Gobots and Hot Wheels, though. When the Wal-Mart opened, my mom was only too happy to go there instead, even though it was over twice as far away.
I watched that Kmart as it was being built in Garden City, Michigan. People were so excited about it and flocked to it! I was 19 years old then. It's long gone but im still here.
I have to wonder... where are the 6 remaining stores getting merchandise from now? They can't have a distribution network any more with so few locations in wildly different areas. Is there any real umbrella management in the company, or are they each independent?
I can't say for sure but I am guessing there is either a warehouse full of old back stock being shipped to them OR they are operating like early Big Lots used to, where inventory is case lots bought from distribution center auctions where you just buy semi truckloads of random stuff.
As someone who worked at Sears right after Kmart bought it, the management that came in from Kmart was cutthroat. They immediately started selling off land, which can be a sign of trying to get cash out of a business (a strategy many private equity firms have done and are currently doing); the work environment became extremely hostile and managers began to see each other as competition, instead of teammates, which the owners encouraged; and they started enacting harsh policies for their lower-level employees with zero leeway. Working there was like watching your parent get stabbed everyday while you tried to apply bandages. I feel really bad for the older employees who had so much tied into the company but it was also nice to hear that some monsters in upper management got humbled. I'd bet something similar happened with Kmart's last days
In 2020, Brian Cornell became the raider CEO of Target. Staff was halved and all jobs became stock. Thanksgiving night was mandatory. The Target story is the Sam Wahl story. These guys are crooks.
In the 1980's everything bad or low quality was called "K-Mart Special". I do remember driving across state lines to get a radar detector from K-mart in the neighboring state. Police gave loads of speeding tickets back then. So that Big K was really nice in my eyes.
as a british person who grew up in the early 2000s, i have never even heard of kmart or sears until i was watching vids on ppl walking through dead malls and kept seeing both stores with either their shutters closed or looking eerily abandoned and rundown (yet still functioning??), its nice to finally get some understanding of what was going on with that
And then there was one... The Bridgehampton, NY store will be closing on October 22nd of this year, leaving Miami as the lone survivor in the continental U.S.
1:07 Target competes with Walmart!? In Canada its much-heralded 'invasion' was a mega-disaster, soon to collapse - leaving expensively renovated sites ripe for others, e.g. Canadian Tire, to pluck.
When I was a kid growing up in the 90s my parents never went to K-mart unless there was no other option. They hated how "cheap" everything felt and how stuff was never put on the shelves, just sitting around on pallets.
I remember hearing about the dinginess of the K-Mart in my hometown... And for a place whose biggest store is a Wal-Mart, that's saying a lot. On a side note, all of this suddenly answers a very big question of mine i've been having: "Which big box store was the TV show Kim Possible parodying with their store 'Smarty-Mart'? Looks like it was both Wal-Mart AND K-Mart!
@@haydendegrow945 It felt like a mix of both and Target. The Club Bannana store was a take on Banana Republic but I also felt it was similar to other clothing stores like Old Navy.
Thank you for addressing the merchandise distribution problems Kmart had for many many years. I worked at one for 1997-2000. I could tolerate the ancient cashier technology, occasionally weird customers, and the revolving door of store managers (makes one not fear authority after a while). It was the lack of sale merchandise on the shelves. After a while my product substitutions, that we were empowered to do, were likely below cost for the store and…I didn’t care. And our 24-hour film development guarantee we had with the terrible local lab? You better believe they lost a lot of money on that! Free photos for all today ‘cause it says so in the fine print. We were set up to fail so screw ‘em.
To be clear: This video is discussing AMERICA'S Kmart. Not AUSTRALIA'S Kmart. While they both have the same origin, they are two entirely different companies and Australia's Kmart is actually still doing decently. Australia also has their own Target too, which is not the same as America's Target. It's confusing, I know.
You can tell them apart 'cause the Aussie logos are all upside-down :^)
@@alexhajnal107 rude
i was going to say something around that australia kmarts are like the 2ed biggest retail stores (not food ones like coles and woolies) which the only other one i have to say that might be bigger is Big W which is another retail store.
@@TrainChaserAndy I remember Woolworth's. Another great American staple consigned to the dustbin of history.
I thought this was for the Antarctica chain of department stores.
I worked at Kmart from 1985-1995. When they announced my store was closing, my friend and I knew that the drill was for a liquidation company to come in and increase the percentage off on merchandise week by week until the final day when everything in the store would be 99% off.
We hid things like SNES cartridges, a couple of car stereos, action figures, bowling balls, etc. in the store's HVAC system. On the last day, we pulled everything out and marched up to the register with two carts loaded to the top with goodies. If looks could kill, we would have died multiple deaths that day. In total, I got about $3500 worth of merchandise for $35. 😁😁😁
Sure you did. FWIW, I'm 7 ft tall, better looking than Brad Pitt, and hung like a donkey.
@wadechilds6671 I think everyone did. At my store, they hid 50 in tvs.😄
Honestly as someone who’s worked in the service industry for a long time I don’t blame employees who do this tbh. Like y’all know how the sausage is made and put up with enough bullshit that you deserve to stockpile and wait 😂
I mean, if you're not getting severance pay then you gotta do what you gotta do
Good on you for beating capitalism :). That is what they get for offering less than a livable wage and no benefits. Good on you!
Kmart was a time machine. The Kmart stores of 2010 looked exactly like the Kmart stores of 1970. But with less stuff. Ouch.
I saw pack of cassettes and VHS tapes sold as late as 2014. These guys were stuck in the late 90s.
I remember back around 2013 when I was in a band and K Mart saved our necks. For some reason we needed an 1/8" to 1/4" adapter at like 10:30pm on a Tuesday night, and K Mart was the one place open at that time that still had AV equipment from that general era.
I also lived in a housing project behind a K Mart in 2004, and I guess it says something I still only shopped there twice.
@@thepurrfectionist365 Now when you find a pack of new unused VHS or cassette tapes you have to jump on it. They're so hard to find now 😭
Those stores never looked like they were well maintained.
@@CurtisAlfeldyep, the nearby k-mart looked very rundown and at times didn’t even have functioning AC
Bad management (criminal management as well). I worked for a few years at Target with a lady who had worked for over 35 years at K-Mart. She was one of the last employees left when the store closed. What did she get for 35 years of service? A pension of $100 a month. The execs looted the pension plan over the years leaving nothing for retirees.
The Uniparty is fighting for the right to loot. President Trump got in their way, we all need to help keep Trump out to save "Our Democracy."
Only 100 bucks a month?! 😅that's nothing!!😂
Private pensions in company control should be illegal. It should be paid as wages or put in an irrevocable trust. I can't believe this stuff is legal.
@@gregorymalchuk272 in Australia its controlled by an outside entity.
@@JenniferinIllinois I’m guessing none of them are in prison for that?
I'll never forget the last time I was inside a Kmart. Late 2009. Store was dirty and half the lights were burned out. They were a couple weeks from closing completely and employees stopped caring (I don't blame them, I'd stop caring too if my unemployment was imminent). We had a cart full of stuff and the cashier told us just to take it. 😂
While the death of K-mart is sad, what is truly depressing is the demise of Sears and their associated brands.
Sears had their own series of missteps long before Kmart acquired them. Having deep roots in the mail order catalog business they could have pioneered the online sales movement. But they didn't and Amazon beat them to the punch.
@@83Roboto Yeah. Missteps forced on the company by Eddie Lampert.
The guy single-handedly drove Sears and K-Mart into the ground.
And made TONS of $$$ doing it.
My great grandpappy LOVED Sears brand Heroin WITH syringe kit. Yes sir.
Sure, originally it was marketed to women to calm down their naggin' during their ..."lady time", but ol' gran pepaw knew what was good fer the goose, was good fer the gander. Also he loved getting loaded betting on Chuck-a-Luck with his pals. That's when someone puts a woodchuck down their trousers and they bet on how long they last before removing their pants.
Also, I, of course, made this up. I'm waiting for my prescription to be filled for woodchuck scratch and bite marks.
✌️
Americans literally mourn the bankruptcy of… stores. Lol
@@bartlett2335 There is a certain emotional attachment and nostalgia for places you spent a lot of time in when you were younger. Not so much for the stores themselves, but for the memories and feelings associated with them. I didn't cry when my local Kmart closed, but it did bum me out for a couple of minutes. It wasn't a surprise, we hadn't been regular shoppers there for years by the time it died, but I will still get nostalgic when someone mentions Kmart.
Attachment aside, these stores employed hundreds of thousands of people, some for their entire careers. There were folks who raised families and put their kids through college working for these places. It seems reasonable to mourn that loss of employment opportunity.
Also, as Americans, we are living in a commerce society. It seems natural for us to have deeper attachments to the trappings of that commerce. We're the Ferengi of Earth.
My mom and dad met each other and started dating when they worked at kmart together. My mom calls my dad her “blue light special” 😂❤
That's actually adorable though.
@@nikolasincorporated at least something lasted from Kmart 😝
I threw up a little in my mouth when I read this.
@@nikolasincorporated Are you sure it wasn't the blue pill special?
Ahhh so adorable, wishing them the best...
I walked into one about 5 years ago right before it closed, and it was like going 30 years into the past. Smelled like it too.
How so ? All stores look and smell the same to me. Someone put that bs in your head and you're running with it.
@@GTSN38 huh
@@GTSN38 bs troll
@@GTSN38shut up, retard
@@GTSN38 were you in one? I was literally telling people that years ago, and this is coming from someone who grew up with family trips to Kmart. It was similar to walking into a museum.
Sears was the first company to take advantage of the idea of shopping from your home. With the mail order "Sears Catalog." Which was started in the 18 friggin hundreds! The fact that this store couldn't adapt to the modern age of internet shopping. Is astonishing!
At company HQ the stores undermined the catalog moving to online. They cared more about their bonuses/ego than the company.
@@johnhoog8279 Yep. It's the same 'ol tale. Venture capitalists move in. Saddle the company with ridiculous amounts of debt. That benefits their own financial organizations. Then pick the bones of the carcass clean. By selling everything else off. The many, working g for the benefit of the few. Yaaaaaay! I love this game.... 🙄
My city in the late 70s/early 80s only had a Sears catalog store. The city was too small for a regular Sears store.
I remember when some of the first online shopping came out thinking that Sears was going to have it in the bag. It really is eye opening how companies just can't shift gears. To stuck on the tracks to adjust for the obvious future.
bad management killed Kmart. the great kind of management that probably paid themselves bonuses after for the job well done.
yes. instead of investing in updating/remodeling their stores, they chose to use the money to buy other retailers. After their 2003 bankruptcy, they did not have a vision for the future. Then Eddie Lambert came and ran Kmart & Sears to the ground as we focusing on the real estate side, not the retail side.
Shoplifting doesn’t help matters.
Many shoplifters try to return stolen merchandise for cash. Strange inventory counts when that happens often.
When I worked there other employees would try to involve me in back door removal of high end merchandise, televisions mostly.
I think these untrustworthy employees would also set other employees up for failure. As I had at least 3 false accusations that led to termination. The other employees said they all got false accusations put in writing. Their less than honest justification to lie was;
Turn over as many employees as possible before they reach 12 months. To avoid benefits by law or by K mart policy. An unethical way to treat employees without respect.
In my case it was a smudge on my employment record.
If taken to court it would of been their word against mine.
Unfortunately for them our Heavenly Father’s court recognizes lying is just as shameful as any other sin.
Makes me wonder how K mart stayed in business as long as they did.
It was about 20 years before I went back to shop in that unethical establishment. And I only went once.
Sooo
They lost costumers every time they exercised their unethical employment practices.
My favorite department as a child was the live tropical fish department. Seemed like lots of different fish every visit. I even got a purple one in my own 5 gal aquarium. I felt sorry for it, it didn’t look happy.
@@MK-of7qw Zionists killed Kmart
@@davinp That was always Lamperts plan - suck every last penny of equity out of both companies, while allowing both companies to slip right into the oblivion of bankruptcy.
Watched it happen with our local Sears and K-Mart - both stores were still doing rather well, against Walmart, since they were both located a good distance away from the two Walmart's we have here, and then all of a sudden both were closed. The end for Sears was actually sad, that store was THE anchor for the local mall, and once it was gone the mall itself died.
You know for sure they paid themselves an undeserving payout and left everyone else to hold the bag
My mom worked at a K-Mart when I was a kid. I loved hiding inside the overstuffed, circular clothing racks. She’d have to page me over the intercom before I would emerge.
@@cupcakeordeath those racks were like a whole other world lol
My dumbass did that and hid so well the kmart employees called the cops and locked the store down as they thought I was kidnapped you can imagine my parents embarrassment when I popped out of hiding...
This unlocked such happy childhood memories. Those racks were like stepping into Narnia
The stores were old and dirty and the reimaging never took, but my family was a Kmart family far longer than most. Not so much me, but my mom was a loyalist from the glory days. When they lost people like her, they were doomed. I'll always have fond memories attached to it from my childhood.
I'm 54. As a kid, I remember my great grandma saying she wanted to go to Kresge's. We thought it was funny because it had long ago changed to Kmart, but that's what she called it.
@@TheBigdog868 I fondly remember the kresge’s lunch counter.
@@One-Crazy-Cat ditto
@@TheBigdog868
Yes, I went there also as a kid. They had everything and a place to eat the best burgers. Fond memories.
👍
I left my cabbage patch doll at the kresge lunch counter in 1986. My heart was broken till next time we went and he was sitting there on the pop machine still waiting for me. Still have the doll!
I used to work at Kmart in America. I quit because of management and I told the manager at the time the way you run this place it’ll be closed in year. They didn’t even make it nine months.😂
I had a place in worked for that I quit with very similar conversations. The way you guys run this shit, you're gonna lose contracts and eventually won't be able to keep operating.
Little did I know, their biggest contract came up for renewal two weeks after I quit. They had the audacity to demand more money from them, after missing multiple deliveries to stores for events. The contract was not renewed and they folded and ceased operations the next day.
The company that took over their contracts was worse. With aggressive management and no accountability. They managed to scrape along for a couple years and also folded.
The biggest failure of Kmart was to adapt to the world of computers and internet back in the 90's. First of all, they had no computerized inventory management----they were sitting on millions of dollars of merchandise that was unaccounted for. The second was no online presence, which Walmart adopted immediately. Kmart corporate at the time honestly believed that the internet was just a fad that would blow over
So, in essence, what you're saying is... their management sucked.
@@TheBigdog868 No. Management is small potatoes---this started at the very top. In fact, it was Kmart's CEO at the time that passed on computerization.
When Martha finally had enough of them and left. That's when it went down hill
It was wild seeing then use the same cash registers to the day they closed one of the final locations left in grand rapids, by ny house aince the mid 80's. They were more-yellow than an apple II computer
justsumguy2u, you are so right! I worked as an MTM at one of the first Super K's from 1994 to 1997. They were still using an MS-DOS computer system. The sales downloads from Troy always failed and I was forced to manually change prices on the fly. A cluster.
The kmarts by me had a little caesars in it. The whole store smelled like crazy bread ❤
We never had any lil Ceasars in my area at all growing up until the one opened up inside of the Kmart in the mall.
We didn't shop at K-Mart much when I was a kid but I had to get an Icee every time we went. They were an anchor store in my small town's first "modern" mall in the late '80s and early '90s. I'd go there to get snacks with my friends a lot because it was right around the corner from the video arcade. They had stuff like pizza (not Little Caesars), pretzels, hot dogs...corn chips with Que Bueno...yum.
Ours always smelled like popcorn. They sold popcorn. And hotdogs. Maybe ice cream cones too. I don't remember.
@@Metal_Horror the popcorn was usually stale at the ones we went to...
Same for the KMart near me, and it was the only thing keeping the KMart open. It was a surreal and sad sight -- the store was devoid of merchandise except racks between the Little Caesar's and entrance. Most of that shelving space was paper plates and napkins, plastic utensils, disposable table cloths, condiments, sodas, and desserts.
I worked at our local Kmart from 1995 to 2007 as a college job. At that time we saw a store regain with hopes to grow again. We worked hard but weren't rewarded for it. Seeing good salaried managers get fired before they could retire was the wake-up call I needed to get out of there, despite the store closures.
Those old training videos sure brought me back. I sold so many of those Smart Plans.
Our old Kmart converted into a farm supply store, and our old Sears became a gym.
@@elpegaso was that sears turned into a plant fitness gym?
@@bryantxbox360 Planet Fitness is nearby in another location.
Actually, I don't think the old Sears is anything anymore.
Thank you for your service. Damn it took you 12 years to finish college though, that's pretty rough. I appreciate that Kmart workers did their damn job and always had a smile on their face, while probably getting paid lower than what they're worth wages. You all are good people. I was joking about the college thing, I hope you're doing good.
@@GTSN38 thank you for that. To be fair I finished college in 5 years. I had trouble finding a job for many years. I thought that I might go into the management process, so glad I did not. Fun fact: managers were expected to move around to different stores and to different cities. A LOT. If you wanted to build community, you were not allowed to. Maybe something that hurt Kmart that is never mentioned.
@@bryantxbox360 The sears I lived by turned into a Planet Fitness 👀
The incredible irony of any company making the “if there’s 12 days of Christmas, why do we only get one day off from work?” While also being an employer, that does exactly that…
lol I was thinking the same exact thing lol
Especially in retail your lucky if your shift doesn't start at 12am on the 26th 😂
My mother started at a KMart in northern Texas in 1968 and stayed until she retired in the late 90"s. She saw them at their peak and the demise in that area. She was laid-off a couple of times but offered a part-time position at a lower wage....she sued both times and got back pay and her job back. Due to mismanagement of the retirement funds by Lampert and bunch....after 30 years her retirement check was just shy of $200 a month! Once they went from full time to part time employees and the resulting bad attitudes....I stopped shopping there....//
The fact that the shit storm started around 1991, and they SOMEHOW managed to hang on for more than 20 years (heck, almost 30 if you consider that final rush from about 2010 - 2018 as hanging on) is impressive in a sad, disappointing, and painful way.
@@slightlyevolved our kmart didn't close until Oct 2022.sears sold there hq in the bay area and now there's just a memorial to the company their even though the Sears at the mall is still open
When I started truck driving in 2007, the company I worked for did store deliveries to Kmart and Sears. It was depressing making the deliveries. The employees would hand unload the truck using a system of conveyor rollers, taking 3-4hrs to unload. Walking in the stores felt like going into a time machine back to the 1980s. Drab and dingy and feeling like a ghost town with little to no customers inside. My company would also do temporary store deliveries for Walmart when they needed extra trucks, like leading into the holidays. It was a night and day difference. Bump the dock and leave paperwork in the back of the trailer and hook to an empty trailer. 30min process. It was so efficient and organized.
Around 2007, Kmart decided to get into the cold and frozen food market. I was delivering that stuff at the time, and I hated going there. I've never met more dispassionate, angry people than the folks working those Kmart docks. They didn't have the setup to handle frozen pallets, and a lot of them thawed in the back room. It was all done on a shoestring. Perishables need to be put away quickly, and as you said, it was all so disorganized. I hope those people retired or found a place worth working for.
They basically looked the same in 2010 as they did in 1990
I had to hang around Sears for 2 hours because no one knew how to do an online return and the in store system wasn't set up for it 😒 no wonder they died.
I worked for Kmart is the stockroom, I’m guessing ‘90, trucks came with everything of pallets and was emptied pretty quickly. So they musta changed for the worse
@GreenAppelPie For me, the freight was loaded from the floor to the ceiling...and often poorly. It was understood by store staff to expect freight to come tumbling out of the trailer as the trailer doors were opened.
When I was a kid in the 70s and early 80s, Kmart was a store that everybody shopped but nobody admitted to. If you wanted to insult somebody’s stuff you’d accuse them of getting it from Kmart. In the mid 80s it turned around a bit with the rebranding.
That reputation continued on. I was born in the late 80s and when I was going to school in the 90s, kids would say that you had the "Kmart touch" if they wanted to insult your style.
Rocking those Kmart kickers bro
I had K-Mart 15 mins away from my home & it was the best place (for a time) to get Legos & Hot Wheels for rather good prices because it was the closest big box store, the closest Walmart was an additional 15 mins away.
Kmart was 30 minutes if I walked there, maybe 5 if I drove. And we actually had another about the same distance in the other direction. I miss Kmart, I wish they were still with us. Fck walmart, my elderly mother was robbed 3x at walmart, never at Kmart.
then they put 1 next door to you.
Same here. Ours was one of the later hold-outs, too. They held on to old inventory for a LONG time, I was still finding good brand new PS2 games and the early 2000's Godzilla figures well into 2013. The interesting finds started dwindling around 2015, and it died a few years after that.
I worked for a Kmart back in 2010. It was so backwards, required a lot human corrections in the computer system which lead to A LOT of mistakes.
We had a Sears Essentials store near us for a time. It was near a busy highway, good location. My mom and I went to look for a vacuum. The store was clean, bright, well stocked. *AND THERE WERE NO CUSTOMERS THERE.* Maybe us and 3 others. 6-8 employees though. The guy that rang us up was really excited to check us out. Maybe we were the only customer he had that day. Or week.
Mom passed on long ago, and was sad to have watched Sears go downhill.
Still have that vacuum.
@MrCookieCat the sears always looked nice but like you said, I've been to some very large sears in malls and they were always very empty compared to the rest. The reason was 24 dollars for a towel
I never liked sears, but Kmart was my place for just about everything. I feel bad for the workers, I can't see how they would have a good attitude at a big box store. They're probably faking their attitude, but that's as hard as working. I'm thankful to everyone who has ever worked in retail, you are appreciated.
the way you narrate these vids, i feel like im in the garage with my buddies having a few beers and somehow we just start talking about the downfall of Kmart. love the channel
"Trapped in the past" is a very apt description of KMart, coming from an older person here. I recall when Target started to be known in the US, Kmart really should have taken their cue from them and freshened up their appearance, but they refused to. Target and KMart was the EXACT SAME, so for Kmart to no longer be here is entirely their faul
Then Target decided to become groomers and lost a lot of customers.
Target was an anchor store in my town's mall when I was growing up, with the KMart literally next door to it. Walmart wasn't even a thing there until about 1997, and with all the traffic, they still were pretty meh by then.
Surprisingly, the Kmart actually survived over the Target by almost two decades. The Target closed down in 1997, Kmart closed in 2016. Go figure.
@@slytlygufy Never let people forget it.
Where I live Kmart and Target were across the street from each other. Remember when the whole Tickle Me Elmo craze was going on. Kmart had a HUGE stack of them right by the entrance doors. Still no one knew because everyone was shopping at Target and the mall that was a seven min walk from them. The Kmart always looked dingy and dated compared to the Target. About seven years after Kmart closed Car Max tore it down to build their new lot.
@@slytlygufySure, but most of us don't really care about politics, so they didn't lose that many customers. Walmart is too depressing.
I miss Kmart because their clothes are actually very high quality compared to Walmart. Sometimes the clothes would out last my Target clothes.
My mom said the same thing.
I always thought so too. My family and I have ancient K-Mart clothes that are still holding up and being worn to this day. They were also the only place in town that sold unedited CDs.
They just used a different Chinese sweat shop than Walmart. That's all.
I have a t shirt and sweatpants I got from my KMart in 2013-2014 and they are still kicking 10 years later.
@@ravenfawnasmr5196 my mom has some towels and sheets she got when Kmart was going out of business around here in 2009
I worked for Kmart 2011 to 2015/16, can confirm, it was like working in the early 80s.
More like the 60s. Kmart was already showing its age in the 80s and looked dated
kmart was fine, people just come to buy and leave. you're exagerrating.
My Kmart was one of the last stores in the US. They were still using the gray IBM cash registers in 2021. Everytime you went there a whole section was taken out. It got smaller and smaller over the years. On the very last day, there was only some miscellaneous kids clothes and the ice freezers that must have been 50 years old
What a slow and painful demise
Kmart was run into the ground by Eddie Lampert after a disastrous Sears Merger. There was little investment in the brand and the stores became in awful condition, and this destroyed the brand. For a while some of the merchandise they carried became just low quality junk, when compared to Target and Walmart.
@@stphinkle Kmart's bad management led to it's own bankruptcy filing back in 2002. Kmart also had several bad investments in other retailers. They once owned Walden Books and Boarders bookstores. They invested in these two retailers when people were starting to buy e-books online. Kmart owned Payless Drug Stores, and Sports Authority. It was Eddie Lambert who invested in Kmart back in 2002 to bring them out of bankruptcy. Kmart did not merge with Sears until 2005. Sears was a cash rich corporation at the time of the merger. After the merger the two retailers continued to operate the two retail companies under the Sears Holdings Corporation banner. That was their biggest mistake. The two retailers had higher operating expenses marketing the two. Both should have shut down, and the Sears Grand concept that was run successfully at the beginning of it's launch should have taken over. When Kmart's management took over Sears they went down hill fast. Most Sears stores were remodeled before the merger. Kmart stores before the merger were not remodeled, and were falling apart with deferred maintenance. Then Walmart had a price war with Kmart, and Amazon entered the scene. Sears was once the largest Appliance retailer. Home Depot, and Lowes then started to expand and open more stores where they also sold tools and appliances. The competition became too intense for these two retailers to survive.
He bought K-Mart and Sears for the real estate and brands he could sell off. He is a vulture and a criminal.
It was being run into the ground long before that. Already in the 80s Kmart was already unpopular compared to what was popular in the 80s.
@@jameskeefe1761 You are right. Certainly in the early 1980s and earlier, Kmart had its place. But in the mid to late 1990s, their quality tanked. Target and Walmart beat them to the punch.
@@jameskeefe1761 Yes Kmarts appeal was not as strong as it was in the 70's and 80's. But the company was still doing decent business throughout the 90's. Really wasn't till Fast Eddie took over when things started spiraling downhill. Especially after the merger. He wasn't trying to save either Kmart or Sears instead he was doing a Gordon Gecko blue star on them. He burned them down to the ground , While he made billions.
I will always miss Kmart. Back in the 70s-80s they had the best merchandise for the lowest prices consistently. I was truly sad to see them go.
It's sad when corporate greedy such can do to a beloved store..😞😞 they'll always hold a nostalgic place in my heart 🥹🥹💚💚💚
Eddie bought Sears for its assets. Sears owned most of its property. He made his own real estate company, sabotage….i mean seritage which bought Sears property at way below market value, then leased back to the stores till they couldn’t afford to operate. He did this until there was no Sears property left. Then Eddie had Sears’ core brands kenmore craftsman diehard in sight. Sold those off leaving Sears completely helpless. Make no mistake Eddie isn’t some hero he is a con man and the reason why both stores failed. He bled the company dry.
@@joshmaier18yeah, basically Private Equity SOP 🤢
@@joshmaier18 Sound like a carbon copy of what happened to Eastern Airlines. Assets sold then leases back at high rates until all the money is bled away.
@@johnhoog8279 this happened to Red Lobster as well when they were acquired by Golden Gate Capital in 2014.
@@christiangonzales7429 And Montgomery Ward in 1975 when Mobil brought them out.
@@Tornado1994 And then GE outright tore Montgomery Ward to shreds when they bought them out of bankruptcy.
Nothing will ever beat Kmarts layaway program. I know I got many a coat, and Christmas's because they had that program and my mom could pay over time. #RIPLayaway 😢
@@Witch_of_TheWood yes my mom did the same layaway for Christmas toys and school clothes.
My mother also loved layaway at Kmart. I still remember her taking me to a Kmart to dispute some discrepancy with an item she had on layaway. The woman who was at the desk listened carefully and made the necessary corrections. As we left she called out, *_"Next victim!"_*
My mother said, _"Wow, she's great!"_
I can’t tell you how many hours I spent waiting in layaway lines with my mom, truly a core memory and a life saver for low income families 😢❤
Yep. What happened to that?
@@GatheringAshes Core memory of mine as well...my sister and I would play in the adjoining aisles and once she went into the main room we couldnt snoop lol😏😁
Walmart with groceries is called Walmart Supercenter. Almost all of them have groceries now but they also used different names for different sized stores like Kmart did. Not quite as bad though.
@@a7x5631 I think it had 2 do with the auto part of it 2. Auto and groceries made it super if I can remember correctly I was a teen when walmart stopped putting super on their signs in the 00s if I can remember correctly
The last time I went into a Kmart, and it was the last time before it closed down forever, I went inside for a trek to see what it looked like and it looked like a flea market that hasn’t been maintained since the mid-90s.
The Kmart cafe was totally emptied and stripped and it was being used as a storage.
The hair products was wedged with the electronics, the grocery section (I use that word grocery loosely) was like a crappier less stocked version of Target’s food aisles. I saw in the soda section a bra and two bottles of nail polish. A whole bunch of merchandise that looks like it hasn’t been updated since January 2000, it was all around depressing and drab.
I also found a skateboard in the middle of the floor which I picked up and put on a shelf - that was a lawsuit waiting to happen and that was the last thing Kmart could afford.
The checkout lines still used cash registers with black screens and green text - technology from the 80s to 90s.
When was this?
@@AnHebrewChild back in 2018
@@andrewguerra9343 heh. Cool. Man I miss that store! There was something extra magical about their ICEEs, am I right ?
Have a good one
I remember the beginning of their very slow fall. At the start of the 1990's the decided to save money on electricity by turning the air conditioner up. You were lucky if it was only 76 degrees F in the summer. Nothing like convincing your customers not to spend so much time in your stores by making it unpleasant for them inside.
0:19 I relate to that
I got to do Operation Santa Clothes in elementary school, and all I remember was we got to pick out two outfits, a pack of socks, undershirts, underwear, and shoes. We also got cookies, hot chocolate, and took a picture with Santa. Only a few kids got to go and I was one of the lucky ones
The good old days 👍
@@GTSN38 I remember being sad that we didn't get pizza. I still remember the smell lol
@@princesskristanthat’s a great memory. I remember they used to sell hot dogs, subs and I think nachos back in the 80s 😂
I remember walking into the K-Mart of my childhood back in the 70's, just a year or so before they closed a decade or so ago and it literally looked exactly the same. Literally, nothing had changed!
Dude, most every store I go into today still looks like my childhood 70s memories. What are people expecting to change ? They have aisles of merchandise, shopping carts, and registers. Did the store have old 1970s sales posters up, I really doubt that but I guess it's possible. Did they have old creaky wooden floors, or perhaps they had torches instead of fluorescent lights. I only look at the merchandise and the people helping me, so maybe I'm missing something.
@GTSN38 Most big box retailers remodel periodically, put up some fresh paint, new flooring when it gets old, new shelves at least once per decade etc. It freshers things up and makes for a better shopping experience.
Kmart, whom I loved, did none of that. Ever. Went into several that never updated or changed. Still had the same dirty floor with cracks throughout, the same fading old paint, same layout, same dirty and falling apart ceiling tiles with missing tiles throughout, parking lots full of pot holes, same old outdated cash registers and last but not least, the exact same shelves that had been in those stores for decades, sagging and falling apart.
One Kmart I went to when it was closing I actually caught a glimpse of a sticker on the back of an old shelf that had been emptied out. The sticker was dated 1982. That store hadn't been maintained or updated in 36 years.
While it is only one issue, it is one of the big issues involving Kmarts downfall. Most shoppers want a pleasant experience when shopping and want to walk into a clean, organized and maintained store.
@GTSN38 you would assume that, over the course of 40 years, the old conveyor belts would be replaced, the tile floors updated, etc. Just general renovations which most large companies can afford to do every 20 or so years just to keep from seeming out of date. Logos change, lighting changes, tech is updated, etc.
@@rabbit9905 I don't even see the need for any conveyor belts at a general merchandise store unless they sell groceries. Even then, does that really matter ? I put all my sht up there, make sure other people's items don't mix with mine, pay the lady, and leave.
@@GTSN38 My thoughts exactly. Remodeling is usually painting the walls and rearranging the stock so you can't find anything.
A local Kmart was only 6 minutes away from me and not surprisingly it closed its doors in 2016. I think bad management caused the downfall
@@csxtrainfan319 I'm shocked it lasted that long. The one we loved closed in like 2013? I think
@@katelynbrown98mine closed 2020, I worked there 17-19. I miss K mart for sure but not the constant 40mi commute one way through the canyon or down a giant mountain. It's better driving that a few times a month more enjoyable and you don't drive your car into a heap of junk.
it was either that or bad management
I remember as a kid remembering K-Mart like this, "More expensive than Walmart, but not as good as Target." And due to that, we never went.
Same here.
kmart is better
Five star analysis. Kmart was actually dead years before the body fell. As you noted, Walmart pushed heavy data connectivity and had an extremely tight grasp on what was selling where. Kmart only grudgingly had barcode scanner registers and never had any idea about real-time inventory. Purchasing would buy stuff and ship it to the stores. But the stores has no idea what was being shipped, where it was, or where it was supposed to go. A lot of sale merchandise sat in backrooms instead of being put out for sale. Walmart repeatedly beat the hell out of Kmart with data. That's where the war was fought and Kmart stood no chance. Sears had similar data issues so they were no help at all. Two decrepit data systems did not fix anything. Anyway, one minor correction. Walmart didn't begin pushing the Supercenter concept until the 90s and they were still converting old stores to Supercenters well into the 2000s. Walmarts pre Supercenter were much more like Kmart. But Walmart aggressively updated those stores or replaced them. Things Kmart never did. Ever.
Kmart is bitter sweet for me. We used to go to super K because it was one of the only stores open on Christmas Eve. My parents have passed but it does bring back memories. Towards the end you could go in there and most things were on clearance it's been years since they shut down and the building remains empty.
We gave K-mart one last chance in the 2010s for Christmas shopping. They were having a toy sale that was SUPPOSED to result in about 30% off. But it was a tricky one, in which they could manipulate the calculation and we only got about 12% off, which was still MORE than Target or Walmart.
They just couldn't get it together.
I remember the old Rosie O'Donnell and Penny Marshall Kmart commercials... they sang " put your arms and your shirt... it doesn't even hurt" lol
I was born in 1970 to a blue collar dad and a stay at home mom. I lived in Kmart clothes and shoes through 8th grade when I started working and buying my own stuff. There was a sentimental attachment for me. Until the early 2000s. I owned stock and part of their reorganizing was that all old stock became worthless. I have not been in one since and will be happy when they disappear.
I like your comment
What is your email?
My grandma worked at our local Kmart for something like 40 years, she still receives a pension check from them despite the company no longer existing. When I was a kid they had a childcare center in the store so I have a lot of memories there.
Kmart and Sears the slowest liquidation in history
In the 80s, when I was in middle school, there was no bigger insult than having someone ask if you got your clothes at Kmart. "Where'd you get those jeans? Kmart? Hahahaha."
@@robinmichel9048 or where'd you get your shoes? Blue light special?
@@cathystaley3131 To Quote Christopher "Play" Martin on Class Act(1992) "We gotta flip your wardrobe. You can't be wearing that Lame, played out KMart." Christopher "Kid" Reid Retorts "What are you talking about? This ain't KMart, this is JC Penny Top of the Line Buddy".
My mom loved K-Mart, I have fond memories of going to the one in Enola, Pennsylvania during the early 2000's, it's actually where I got my first PS2 and DS
Your mom sounds like a great person, I love Kmart too.
I went to the one in Hummelstown PA when I was a kid. When they got rid of the video games, I was sad
Where did you find the memories?
I used to go to one all the time in Lebanon, PA. It ironically got replaced with a Target sometime in 2017/2018, I think? It was one of the last Kmarts near me, so it was honestly sad to see it go. I was there during the last month of operation and it was just depressing to see a store I had loved be so empty, left with barely anything on the shelves…
@@recessional5560 meant to say fond
Just subscribed after watching this. Great sense of humor and I really appreciate all of the research and footage you incorporate!! Will definitely be watching more of your content 👌
My family shopped Kmart a lot. My Grandmother was an amateur photographer and used their photo lab exclusively. My older sister who graduated in ‘87 (as well as her husband) worked at the local Kmarts while in high school and then their first few years of college. So sad to see them go.
Oh wow. That man’s line at the start about there being twelve days of Christmas but only one day off work hit me so hard.
I grew up in a suburb of west Houston that got a FedMart a year or two before a Kmart in the early 60s. The FedMart was closer (0.9 vs 1.4 miles). Then to add insult to injury a Woolco was opened in later 60s that was maybe a quarter mile closer than the Kmart. Result: I probably didn't set foot in Kmart but a half dozen times during the 60s and 70s whereas several hundred times between the other two including working a few months at FedMart in 1975. I purposely shopped at a Kmart in the 90s just as a protest against Walmart.
Walmart sucks and still sucks today. I live in chicago and it's a hassle to get to one and you usually spend over 10 minutes in line. Oh ya, the parking lots suck too and you have a very good chance of getting robbed at walmart.
@@GTSN38
When your police department is demonized and is short-staffed by 2,000 or more officers, and your local government has supported no cash bail that allows a criminal to return to the streets before the ink is dry on his fingerprint chart, there are going to be significant problems. Worse, the rampant shoplifting and enormouse taxes make Walmart's position untenable, which is why they close their stores.
Additionally, the state of Illinois has employed policies that are driving away downstate residents to places such as Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, Texas, and Florida. This means the support for city improvements that was financed by on the backs of locations such as Rock Island, Moline, and Galesburg is shrinking. The state's bailout of Chicago's public sector pensions in the late 90s has rendered the state utterly insolvent, and, not having been corrected since, is once again on the point of bankrupting the city. Here in the Quad-Cities, we have four that serve 300,000+, and we would have had five, if not for one city's mismanagement.
I hope things improve for the city of Chicago, and that you break with you century long tradition of single party rule.
Your history reporting on these retailers are both informative and nostalgic. Thank you sir! Subbed!
And they called their new loyalty plan "Shop Your Way". Well shopping "My Way" doesn't involve dodging buckets of leaking roofs all over the store and trouncing around on the same flooring from 1962 in 2015. You'll never find a more profound story of mismanagement.
Floor was actual linoleum, not vinyl.
I got a bag with that branding on it at a mall Christmas event in 2015. The closest kmart was already closed.
14:20 This is one of the big downfalls of large companies. When their business is either struggling or stalled they'll buy up other major chains (sometimes in other countries and markets they know nothing about) because it makes things look great in their reports. "Our company grew by 25% this year!" Enron was probably the most extreme example of this.
K-mart sponsored a couple of well know NASCAR drivers. Darrell Waltrip drove a #66 K-mart car in 1999 and 2000. K-mart also sponsored the NASCAR Cup series races at Michigan Speedway in the 1990s.
I'm pretty sure at one point had Mayfield
@@Tonymeows43 and John Andretti
Kmart actually had a whole CART (Indycar nowadays due to the split ending) Team which is basically, Michael Andretti and also Christian Fittipaldi for a while called Newman-Hass and yeah, once Michael Andretti left the team and afterwards with Cristiano DaMatta won the Cart title at one point in time, when CART became ChampCar Kmart was gone and their secondary sponsor of Texaco/Havoline was gone too... It's over after that.
So ? Who watches Nascar ? Boring ! Unless there's a big giant accident and people are on fire running, it's boring 😴
@@GTSN38 lot of folks.
We had a K-Mart in my town first. In the late 90s, Wal-Mart moved into a building right next door. Both normal stores. No supercenters. Wal-Mart had groceries, so more people went there. 5 years later, Wal-Mart moved down the street into a new supercenter. And that was the end of K-Mart in our town. It just sat there.
I worked at a little Caesars in a Kmart in 1999. Everyone that worked there shopped across the street at Walmart. Everyone
Another note about the Lampert years at K Mart is his management style. Lampert had divisions within the company compete AGAINST EACH OTHER for funding. So if Marketing wanted a bigger budget, they had to create a presentation and basically beg Lampert (the largest shareholder) for enough money to do what they need to do. This meant any decision had to go through the process of begging Lampert, him giving them something, then doing it, which he could defund/override at any time. It also discouraged cooperation between divisions (they were all competing against each other for the same ever-shrinking pool of budgetary funds. Marketing wants money, Business Ops wants money, why would they work together so each side gets less? They didn't. Lampert didn't fix this flawed system for YEARS.
What I recall as a child of the early 80s, was that the K Mart on the southside of Chicago suburbs were literally falling apart. My mom was a frequent flyer well into the 90s. I often went with. I recall her complaining that the store was 'a mess' with tiles falling off the ceiling, and many lights were out. Items were thrown in areas that they didn't belong and employees couldn't tell you when out of stock items would be available again. Many of the higher end electronics came in boxes that were damaged, so people wouldn't buy those, but order another. That doesn't fair well for inventory. I must say the same was for Sears of the time. My dad and I shopped there specifically for the Craftsman brand, eventually switching over to Sears Hardware, which was good for a time, but same time, mom stopped shopping at both sears and KMart for clothing etc. So we're talking 2003 here. Once the Sears Hardware stores closed, I've not bought another Craftsman tool since.
I'm old enough that the KMart Eatery (their cafeteria name in my area) was a part of my childhood. My mom and a couple of her friends would take me to the Eatery to have a midday meal. I think they wanted the extra in-store time to possibly take part in a Blue Light Special. It was almost always a good time and I remember the food was always good. It was cafeteria food, sure, but it was a strange time when you could get a baked steak with mashed potatoes while shopping for socks and hoping to hit the blue light lottery for a vacuum cleaner... don't figure we'll ever see those days again.
Our K-Mart in Clarksville Indiana opened in March 1965 and looked the same when it closed in November 2000. Now personally, I thought that was cool because I don’t like change. K-Mart was retro before retro was cool. I can see why people would be turned off though and prefer to shop at other stores.
I agree. My local store was one of the last to close. The aesthetic of K-Mart never bothered me and I never realized how outdated they really were till watching this video. On the other hand, I hate the design changes Wal-Mart has made and their new logo. Not sure why, it just all looks super bland, cheap, and overly corporate.
My sister worked at K-Mart as an early job in High School, I on the other hand shoplifted from K-Mart with my friends as young teens.
I worked at kmart in almost every store position from 2014-2017... which was their real foray into the "buy online, pickup in store" arena. A lot of stores like walmart and target were doing that already too, but kmart wanted to scale it up and make it the norm, and they could've been great at it too. But in typical kmart fashion, greed took over instead.
One thing about kmart is, they did NOT price-match other retailers, which is not really the end of the world at first glance... but they took it to another level. In order to try to push for more online sales, a lot of the time any given item's price on kmart's website would be less than the price in store, and guess what... the stores would NOT match the online price on their OWN website either!
Imagine being an entry level hourly employee and telling the customer that they have to purchase the item online, select the in-store pickup option, wait for an employee to pick/pack the order, and wait in line to "pick up" the same item at a slightly lower price that they are currently holding in their hand... because that is EXACTLY how that scenario played out on a regular basis. Utter nonsense and despicable customer service just to try to over-blow the exec's "multi-channel" strategy so they can say in their board meetings "look at all these online sales we're making!"
Some bargain-hunters actually played along and did just that to get the lower price, but I guarantee you it was the last time they ever set foot in a kmart. Others just walked out in disbelief, leaving full shopping carts behind. I just remember thinking to myself, why is kmart alienating their customers like this???
Internet bro.
Most companies committed this sort of hari kiri suicide to be cool and net
I'm always going to miss Kmart. I was born in 83, grew up in & still live in North East Ohio so there were quite a few Kmarts around. One of my older sisters worked in the Super Kmart around the painesville/mentor area when I was a kid too. Kmarts always hooked me up with toys & even if one store was out of whatever I wanted, another Kmart would have it. Not to mention, back then, we only had 1 Walmart. But from wherever my family members were living at, we could drive past 2,3, even 4 Kmarts just to get to the 1 Walmart. So yeah, just like Blockbuster, they are apart of my childhood. You and your team try to have a good day/night. : )
I went to the Kmart in heisley which is close to Painesville, I’ve lived and still do in Painesville since I was 6 years old and I am 27 now, I miss Kmart I have so many memories there, me and my friends went exploring in the abandoned Kmart before the building was tore down and turned into a meijers.
I think it's ironic that Sears started as a mail in catalog. You might imagine that they could have been Amazon.
Anyone else have this experience? I still remember the overwhelmingly toxic smell of plastic every time I walked in to my local Kmart. It was a distinct smell, had a strangely very slight sweet hint to it, almost like artificial cherry? Whatever it was, it was present every time I walked in for the 20 years I occupied that store. I wonder if anyone else had the same experience.
I remember the death-throes of the Kmart in my area back in the mid-2010's. I remember the electronics section basically never had any staff (when before, there were always one or two employees at the electronics counter). Eventually, some of the lights in the store started failing, and they seemed to just not bother to fix it, leaving large areas of the store dimly lit to an honestly comical degree, and adding to the dingy atmosphere. I think they locked off the outdoor goods section at one point and never reopened it. Then, at some point, they seemed to sort of just... stop stocking the shelves, leaving them barren for months until they started their closing sales.
That's exactly how I remember the one in my town. Towards the end they usually had only one register open, sometimes 2 or 3 if it was around the holidays. Never saw any other employees in the store besides the cashiers, when before there were always people working in electronics, sporting goods, the cafe, etc. Really sad to see it go down.
I used to be the electronics lead in my Kmart (which means I was the only one working in that department who worked 40 hours.) Most of the time, I was the only one working in my department and still sometimes had to help in other departments. I worked my ass off and basically had to quit eventually because my salary hadn't gone up in years & the work was just too much eventually.
Does anyone remember Ventures?
They were Kmarts competition. They were like Walmart and Target of today!
KMart was already going downhill before Sears brought it.
In the mid-80s, my grandmother moved into an apartment. Her apartment complex was right across the street from a strip mall. My grandmother never learned to drive, and of course, she didn't have a car. This strip mall was very convenient for her. It had a grocery store like a Mars grocery store on one end and a K-mart on the other end. There was a bank in the shopping center. And a Rax Roast Beef fast food restaurant, too. When my brother and I would visit my grandmother at her apartment, she would take us to K-mart to shop around.
29 years old here, my hometown had one of the last open Big Kmarts in the region before it shutdown. I remember when I was young and going to the food court for Icees.
Then as years went on, the food court shutdown, collected dust and storage. Lights always off, but always in plain view as a reminder of what it once was.
And then slowly over time Kmart's isles became quiet. More people started shopping at Walmart that was built up nearby. It was always lovely to shop at that Kmart, they carried my favorite socks, I bought all my Bionicles at Kmart....my first airsoft pistol.
The day that finally came for the last sales of Kmart, I bought up some nice kitchen ware and misc items. Taking one last nostalgic walk down those quiet isles of the past.
Now that building is still an empty husk. Sitting there for many years. Once a season it'll come alive when the Spirit of Halloween store occupies it in the fall.
It had closed in the late 2010s. Batavia, NY. I still have that airsoft pistol, it still shoots strong.
Kmart is still a thing in Australia, & very marginally a step above Target, both chains here are only licenced, no operational connection to their US namesakes.
Kmart australia is not the same company.
@@kazanyemmi Yes, that is what I said "no operational connection to their US Namesake"
My mom worked for Laprino Foods. Walmart regularly didn't pay their bills, but they were so large companies didn't want to potentially lose them. I worked for one of the last Kmarts that stayed in the green from 2014-2015. We generated ~$100k-$200k a week in our store alone. Our store was ran so well that all but one person who quit to go work for the new Walmart came back within two weeks. Walmart treated their employees so poorly and paid them so poorly that people came back to a failing store. Make no mistake, we knew we were dying. It was no secret.
"if theres 12 days of christmas why do we get one day off of work"
Felt
My dude, I'm new to your content (1st video) but enjoyed it. I like your humour but didn't laugh out loud until your read out one of your channel member names at the end. Huge shout out and massive respect to 'Your mom liked it' which I am still laughing about as I type this. What an excellent handle X
As a child I remember going to an S. S. Kresges in the middle of small town. Other general merchandise big box stores that died were Zayre, Roses and Two Guys.
Zayre is kind of still around, under different names. TJ Maxx, Homegoods, and Marshall's are all run by the old Zayre company. BJs Warehouse Club was another brand they started but it was spun off later. So Zayre survives hiding in plain sight.
@@LatitudeSky Roses is still around too
Rinks, Shoppers Fair, Gold Circle and Whitehall's.
Roses still exists but it's different than it was in the 80s when there were several around me. There's a Roses in the Middlesboro KY mall that moved into the old Kmart space. So Roses is still around and I don't think most people would guess that Roses is going to outlive Kmart and even Sears, possibly even JC Penney's.
Your way of story telling is amazing, it’s actually raw and doesn’t seem like you are trying to be someone you’re not, it’s great 👍
I absolutely loved the Kmart cafeteria. I had never seen anything like it. I mean yeah there has been a McDonald's in Walmart pretty much ever since I could remember, but the Kmart cafeteria was really unique because it was its own thing.
Been obsessed with these videos lately. They’re good stuff!
The worst part about going to K-Mart as a kid in the 80s was the bare toy shelves. It was always the leftover LEGO, Transformers, and GI Joe toys that no one wanted.
Always plenty of Gobots and Hot Wheels, though. When the Wal-Mart opened, my mom was only too happy to go there instead, even though it was over twice as far away.
😐 There was always only ONE GI Joe action figure in the aisle and it was always "Quick Kick". Lol. The GI Joe action figure that nobody wanted.
@@TRAININGPORPOISEWhich is weird cause I would have liked him. I mean, he knew martial arts.
My local kmart was my first experience with liminal spaces. I hated it as a kid but I miss it so much now. It was so creepy
God yeah...Kmart always gave me a liminal spaces vibe whenever it was really slow or when I was working after the store closed.
I watched that Kmart as it was being built in Garden City, Michigan. People were so excited about it and flocked to it! I was 19 years old then. It's long gone but im still here.
I love this channel. Love the nostalgic commercials that are included
I have to wonder... where are the 6 remaining stores getting merchandise from now? They can't have a distribution network any more with so few locations in wildly different areas. Is there any real umbrella management in the company, or are they each independent?
I can't say for sure but I am guessing there is either a warehouse full of old back stock being shipped to them OR they are operating like early Big Lots used to, where inventory is case lots bought from distribution center auctions where you just buy semi truckloads of random stuff.
As someone who worked at Sears right after Kmart bought it, the management that came in from Kmart was cutthroat. They immediately started selling off land, which can be a sign of trying to get cash out of a business (a strategy many private equity firms have done and are currently doing); the work environment became extremely hostile and managers began to see each other as competition, instead of teammates, which the owners encouraged; and they started enacting harsh policies for their lower-level employees with zero leeway. Working there was like watching your parent get stabbed everyday while you tried to apply bandages. I feel really bad for the older employees who had so much tied into the company but it was also nice to hear that some monsters in upper management got humbled. I'd bet something similar happened with Kmart's last days
In 2020, Brian Cornell became the raider CEO of Target. Staff was halved and all jobs became stock.
Thanksgiving night was mandatory.
The Target story is the Sam Wahl story. These guys are crooks.
In the 1980's everything bad or low quality was called "K-Mart Special". I do remember driving across state lines to get a radar detector from K-mart in the neighboring state. Police gave loads of speeding tickets back then. So that Big K was really nice in my eyes.
Glad I found your channel,I like your approach to the subject matter. Subbed
I miss that blue raspberry ICEE machine
as a british person who grew up in the early 2000s, i have never even heard of kmart or sears until i was watching vids on ppl walking through dead malls and kept seeing both stores with either their shutters closed or looking eerily abandoned and rundown (yet still functioning??), its nice to finally get some understanding of what was going on with that
I was thinking I'd like to go back in time but even back then I was shaking my head every time I went into a Sears or Kmart
And then there was one...
The Bridgehampton, NY store will be closing on October 22nd of this year, leaving Miami as the lone survivor in the continental U.S.
1:07 Target competes with Walmart!? In Canada its much-heralded 'invasion' was a mega-disaster, soon to collapse - leaving expensively renovated sites ripe for others, e.g. Canadian Tire, to pluck.
When I was a kid growing up in the 90s my parents never went to K-mart unless there was no other option. They hated how "cheap" everything felt and how stuff was never put on the shelves, just sitting around on pallets.
I remember hearing about the dinginess of the K-Mart in my hometown... And for a place whose biggest store is a Wal-Mart, that's saying a lot. On a side note, all of this suddenly answers a very big question of mine i've been having: "Which big box store was the TV show Kim Possible parodying with their store 'Smarty-Mart'? Looks like it was both Wal-Mart AND K-Mart!
@@haydendegrow945 It felt like a mix of both and Target. The Club Bannana store was a take on Banana Republic but I also felt it was similar to other clothing stores like Old Navy.
The cinematography in the intro ad was actually amazing
Good video. You earned a sub. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for addressing the merchandise distribution problems Kmart had for many many years. I worked at one for 1997-2000. I could tolerate the ancient cashier technology, occasionally weird customers, and the revolving door of store managers (makes one not fear authority after a while). It was the lack of sale merchandise on the shelves. After a while my product substitutions, that we were empowered to do, were likely below cost for the store and…I didn’t care. And our 24-hour film development guarantee we had with the terrible local lab? You better believe they lost a lot of money on that! Free photos for all today ‘cause it says so in the fine print. We were set up to fail so screw ‘em.