The Real Reason Kmart Failed…

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The real real reason Kmart failed…
References:
www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local...
fortune.com/2022/03/01/kmart-...
www.fundinguniverse.com/compan...
www.britannica.com/topic/Kmart
www.detroitnews.com/story/bus...
projects.flowingdata.com/walm...
flowingdata.com/2023/02/13/gr...
www.forbes.com/sites/michaell...
www.walmartcanada.ca/about-us...
www.walmartmuseum.com/content....
corporate.homedepot.com/sites...
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web.archive.org/web/200902270...
www.nytimes.com/1988/12/04/ma...
books.google.com/books?id=lxA...
Billboard, Maura K. Obrien
corporate.walmart.com/about#:....
www.upi.com/Archives/2000/12/...
www.fundinguniverse.com/compan...
www.metv.com/lists/7-discount...
www.wsj.com/articles/SB125209...
costco-business-report-courtn...
corporate.lowes.com/sites/low...
www.deadanddyingretail.com/201...
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www.bizjournals.com/boston/st...
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www.deadanddyingretail.com/201...
Images:
"Kmart" by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
“photos of wal mart parking lot duarte california august 2005” by SALAAM ALLAH is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"U-Pak Kmart No Frills Supermarket Pontiac, Michigan 1979" by Phillip Pessar is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Binghamton Kmart 29" by Random Retail is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Kmart Store on Highway 24 in Independence, MO" by Robert Stinnett is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Kmart" by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Kmart - Chantilly, VA" by Robert Stinnett is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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27 дек 2023

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Комментарии : 1,3 тыс.

@davinp 6 месяцев назад

After their 2002 bankruptcy, Kmart didn't have a vision for the feature. They made the big mistake of buying Sears instead of focusing on improving their stores

@irefusetoaskmydoctorifyour6401 6 месяцев назад

Yup! Once Eddie Lampert took over, the vision for the future was to slowly liquidate the companny for its real estate value.

@Skulllywag 6 месяцев назад

Chuck Conaway began fleecing the company years before Lampert. He made loans to himself which he never repaid, and at one point was even investigated by the FBI. All sorts of shady dealings were happening during this time, one being reporting consigned (and not yet sold) inventory as profit, as a way to "cook the books". Fun fact: Eminem bought the mansion Charles Conaway owned when CEO of Kmart. The company was making VERY stupid decisions, and was hemorrhaging because of them. Eddie Lampert was an opportunist, who came in to cannibalize the company to keep it afloat (while enriching his investment company).

@steveherr450 6 месяцев назад

i was a stockholder then and it didn't set well with me that they filed bankruptcy, got rid of us stockholders and emerge from bankruptcy 6 months later with all kinds of money now that they could buy out sears but nothing to us stockholders and we got the shaft instead. I never shopped there again after that at least with my own money. not sure how it worked but they kept putting kmart cash on my rewards account i had with them that was supposed to build as you use it but i would refuse to shop there because of the bankruptcy and what they did to us. so to get me back in the store every little while they would add kmart cash to my account to intice me to shop there again. i would leave them build until right before expiring date and go find something for the $20.00 or whatever the amount built up to every time. i know i brought lots of my yellow straps there for my trailers or should say they gave me lots of free straps over the years until the store disappeared here but they still offered me reward points online(never used) but now i dont get nothing from them. I always wondered how many others just shop with the free rewards points they got just to get them back in the store besides me? that had to add up.

@steveherr450 6 месяцев назад

up until they filed bankruptcy, kmart was my to go to store. once they crapped on us stockholders, i avoided that place, my way of getting a little satisfaction back. did the same thing with that one new restaurant chain about the same time frame, they filed bankruptcy to get rid of us stockholders that built the new chain up and then reissued new stocks and was bigger than ever because they didn't have to pay for their own stores, we did so i never ate at that place ever again in the last 30 years or however long it has been and we ate there twice a week usually back then.. actually i think they are gone for good too now come to think of it, i havent seen any around anymore.

@Scott__C 6 месяцев назад

@@irefusetoaskmydoctorifyour6401 Yes, private equity never bodes well for a company.

@markalexander832 4 месяца назад

Kmart buying Sears was like slamming two clunkers together and expecting a shiny new Mercedes-Benz to emerge out of the debris.

@gmaureen 3 месяца назад

Sears should have restarted their catalog business. Look what Amazon did using the old Sears model.

@OldGeezerstoolbox 3 месяца назад

That merger was actually an act of vulture capitalism designed to strip both companies like a chop-shop strips a car. It was VERY profitable for the vultures, saddling the stores with huge unserviceable debt and putting the cash from taking out that debt into their own slimy pockets. Same with Interstate Bakeries (hostess) and many others also. Many of those vulture practices were illegal until banking and financial rules were changed under Reagan, as well as Reagan (and later Presidents) no longer enforcing the various anti-trust acts which would have blocked such mergers.

@Thrunabulax10 3 месяца назад

Sears SHOULD HAVE been turned into Amazon. But poor management had no vision

@jimcrawford3185 3 месяца назад

Two drunks helping each other across the street Like Packard and Studebaker

@williamhaynes7089 3 месяца назад

@@Thrunabulax10 Eddie Lampert tried to do an online site called ShopYourWay... it obviously failed

@acclaimedhousecleaning7555 6 месяцев назад

My Mother worked at KMart for some 15 Years, from the early 80's to the late 90's. She made a little over Minimum wage when she started to nearly double the Minimum wage when she 'Retired'. She could dictate her hours, as a Mother who worked, claimed Unemployment nearly every January when retail employees had their hours reduced, and the overall job wasn't too physically exhausting on her. She was offered $1,000 for every Year she worked there to leave the Company. My Father, who never made my Mother work, supported her and said to quit. KMarts thought was, we can get 2 employees for nearly the price of 1! Oh, the Older Housewives who did not need employment left in droves! The newer, Minimum Wage Employees of the late 90's and Early 2000's became a Constant Turnover. It never seemed the same to me without the Longtime Ladies who were always there growing up. Sadly, WalMart has taken over, Self-Checkouts and all!

@TheBatugan77 5 месяцев назад

Um, so what?

@TPaine1776 5 месяцев назад

Walmart is trying to be Kmart now.

@LemThurdy420 5 месяцев назад

Getting unemployment while being employed? Wow, I have a lot of thoughts on that, none of them very positive. People who legitimately need it have to starve for 90 days before they will even take a look at your case.

@hia5235 4 месяца назад

i remember the housewife workers back in the day. good times. they would work part time for 20 years and always smiled.

@maggiegarber246 4 месяца назад

The last Kmart still open in Kansas was 1/2 mile from me in Kansas City Ks. The store is vacant. I miss Kmart. There were things I thought were poor choices. 1) they added a food section to try to mirror Walmart, but it was a small food section with few selections. 2) They brought in seasonal plants which were kept outside in front of the store, and which were largely neglected. There were 2 hardware stores very close by with a much better selection of plants, and were not withering away. Why didn’t Kmart stop carrying something that wasn’t selling anyway?

@JerseyJeff84 6 месяцев назад

Kmart was a part of my childhood, as an 80's and 90's kid. The store was never anything worth bragging about, BUT it will always hold a place in my heart due to the fact that their offering of Lay-A-Way saved by parents many Christmases.

@TheBatugan77 5 месяцев назад

You were never anything worth bragging about. Still ain't. Pssssh.

@fluffbuck3t 4 месяца назад

@@TheBatugan77eat shit

@67marlins 3 месяца назад

JerseyJeff84 - You're absolutely right, like Ames it holds fond memories for many of us who shopped and worked there. Their cost structure helped the middle class tremendously.

@67marlins 3 месяца назад

@@TheBatugan77bye.

@rodneykingston6420 3 месяца назад

I never understood the concept of layaway, unless it's for people who know they live in a house full of thieves: otherwise, why don't you "lay away" the money in your sock drawer until you can afford your desired purchase? I once worked in a cigarettes-lottery-newspaper-magazine store in a blue collar, alcoholic neighborhood. The owner decided we might have more luck selling the VCRs, walkman's, police scanners and disc cameras [guess the era?] in the electronics case if we instituted a layaway plan. It started out as a roaring success. I had a notebook full of customers with deposits on stuff, but then Saturday night rolled around and most of these people asked for their money back so they could go out and drink. I was doing a lot of extra work keeping track of this for nothing. We stopped the program.

@chrisbillups3632 6 месяцев назад

Don’t forget the Former CEO spending millions of the company’s money on his self.. That didn’t help Kmart either..

@johnkozlovich5519 5 месяцев назад

Yeah. I had the unfortunate experience of being a vendor to Kmart. I was full of bad attitudes and horrible executives. On the upside I did meet my wife at Kmart. She was a vendor there too.

@sirthom3275 4 месяца назад

Yup the (((CEO))).

@bigmacattk 3 месяца назад

@@johnkozlovich5519 And then those corporate knuckleheads went to others chains

@nadogrl 3 месяца назад

@@johnkozlovich5519- *It?

3 месяца назад

Yes, he moved to Miami and bought a 60’ yacht with a helipad. I think this was deliberate to fail these companies.

@IndianOutlaw1870 6 месяцев назад

K-Mart was awesome in the 1970s, especially if you were a boy. They had so many fishing lures, it boggled my mind whenever I went there with my grandmother. It was pretty much fishing heaven.

@JClark-oe2rr 3 месяца назад

I was softlines manager at KMart In late 1970s. In the mid 1980s KMart changed to become more like JCPenneys -- lots of name brand young women's clothing, Martha Stewart dishes, glasses and cookware. They quit carrying the household goods most people depended on. It was downhill from there.

@bvm3925 3 месяца назад

That's what I always thought. As soon as they started bringing in the big name brands, like the Jaclyn Smith line, the prices soared.

@billolsen4360 3 месяца назад

In KMart's final years, I'd still go there once in a while, but they never carried the items I was looking for, at any price.

@jasonharrison25 3 месяца назад

I see Target going down the same path

@user-wf9ce2uk3l Месяц назад

I worked as a softlines manager in the late 80's. The big problem was Antonini who doubled his salary and doubled the homeoffice. Draining the profits. He started to upgrade to compete with the Targets popping up in Michigan but then couldn't complete in price with the Walmarts popping up in the south till Kmart just became a big mishmash of cheap low price stuff mixed with some higher end stuff. They also didn't keep up with the electronics dept. which was a money maker. There are other reasons too.

@cjempire1188 4 месяца назад

I loved how k mart had a food Court where u could get hot dogs, corn dogs,. nachos, ice cream and icee .. good old days

@longagoandfaraway7868 Месяц назад

The Kmart I went to as a kid had a cafeteria at the back of the store where you slid your tray down the rail to choose things already on display or you could order a burger and fries at the front of the line and it would be ready at the end where you paid for it. This was also where I had my first experience with a self-serve soda pop fountain. Had Coke and Sprite and all the assorted Fanta flavors, including root beer. Now this is quite commonplace, but I heard McDonald's is talking about removing their self-serve fountains and eliminating free refills. Most likely others will follow. Hope Circle K don't take out their Polar Pop fountains.

@jimfinigan1681 26 дней назад

@@longagoandfaraway7868All the Circle K stores in my area still have their self-service soda fountains.

@jimfinigan1681 26 дней назад

Kmart always smelled like fresh buttered popcorn.

@cjempire1188 23 дня назад

@@jimfinigan1681 i swear u ain't lying.. man that popcorn was One of the best popcorns i ever bought.. I rather have their popcorn than theater popcorn... I'm pissed now, I want k mart popcorn.. we should go find Those k mart bastards and Tell them they're gonna reopen k mart yesterday 😂

@jimfinigan1681 23 дня назад

@@cjempire1188 That Kmart popcorn was the best! You could get a popcorn and an Icee for less than a dollar.

@EmmyJune212008 6 месяцев назад

Fun fact: Guam has long been home to the world’s biggest K-Mart. I think it’s still open. It helps that there’s no competition from Walmart or Target.

@TiltedTripodMedia 6 месяцев назад

If only I had $$$$$$ to move to Guam and rid myself of the Walmart overlords 🤣🤣🤣

@jonniez62 6 месяцев назад

Built after I left. Would have been nice.

@tyeralexander7346 6 месяцев назад

Yes it's open in Guam

@Jennifer_Lewis_Beach_Living 6 месяцев назад

K-Mart is also open in Australia as well.

@princessnodak 6 месяцев назад

@@Jennifer_Lewis_Beach_Living that's a different company entirely, just same name and logo

@williamhild1793 6 месяцев назад

Eddie Lampert. There's your reason.

@realSamAndrew 6 месяцев назад

Eddie was the final blow. The video says the true killer happened 2 decades before Eddie, or certainly from the bankruptcy in 2002.

@borrellipatrick 6 месяцев назад

Eddie seeing the real estate that the stores sat one being more valuable than the stores. So he decided to purposely kill the company

@thisshouldbeentertaining3386 6 месяцев назад

@@realSamAndrewThat's just the person's opinion. For that was the start of the DECLINE of Kmart. What and who killed Kmart and sears was Eddie lampert. With his blue star tactics. Kmart without Eddie could've survived much longer. And had Kmart found a genuine investor who wanted the company to succeed they could've came out of bankruptcy and made some changes.

@taylorcameronvfl 6 месяцев назад

Plain and simple

@jessmcafee2557 6 месяцев назад

The real estate yes. As Sears owned most of their properties. Eddie wanted to sell off the brands as well

@rickh8380 3 месяца назад

I bought my first firearm at a K-Mart. A Marlin model 60 in .22LR with a 4X scope for around $65.00 new that I saw in one of their local ads in my hometown paper. I still have that rifle and I'm 67.

@boisfrancs 3 месяца назад

Mine cost $34 at K-Mart in 1976.

@keithburchart6419 3 месяца назад

I'm 58 and my 1st gun was a Marlin Model 60 .22LR. I got it for Christmas when I turned 12 and was old enough to get a small game license and hunt squirrels with my dad. He bought the same gun for himself so we could hunt together. They were bought at Kmart and I have both mine and my dad's. He passed away in 2004. I have great memories of our hunts together. I also worked at Kmart from 1984-2002 when our store closed.

@Fred-uc4eo 2 месяца назад

My first gun was a Marlin .22 from K Mart. No scope. You can't hide money.

@andersdottir1111 2 месяца назад

You could buy a gun at Kmart??!! That’s the most American thing I’ve ever heard 😂

@ctfan1486 2 месяца назад

Do you remember JC Penneys and Montgomery Wards selling guns? Ah the good ol days

@jaycoleman8062 6 месяцев назад

Eddie Lambert was there to slowly liquidate two brands...I worked there 10 years and saw it first hand..

@Mayaisawesome91 2 месяца назад

😢😢😢

@edsloan8535 2 месяца назад

Yep....loaning them money with unmanageable rates with undervalued property as collateral.

@keithmchugh5403 6 месяцев назад

I worked at a KMart in my teenage years and the store manger spent 4 hours a day in the on floor cafeteria smoking with the other 30 year employees of the store. Many teenagers ran the store multiple hours a day. I knew way back then in the late 80's they were doomed even before I even heard the word Walmart.

@dh2profit 4 месяца назад

Exactly right. It was not old stores, it was poor personnel management.

@ms.annthrope415 3 месяца назад

Being desperate for work after I left the army as an officer, I already had my BA degree from UC Santa Barbara. I joined the Kmart management training program. The managers I saw were the bottom of the barrel. Suckers who couldn't make it anywhere else. No ambition or higher education, just a bunch of cow college losers. I left after about 9 months for another retailer. I left that after about a year. Sent to law school and never looked back.

@SybilKibble 3 месяца назад

Were you an 01? :( I worked for K-Mart in the Little Caesars to help pay for college. Not much of a set schedule, they called me in at random times like at 9AM on a Sunday. I took the hours, sure why not I needed the $$$, they overworked me and threatened to fire me if I did not "WORK FASTER! WORK FASTER!". After two and a half weeks, they let me go. Maybe they mistook me for a robot. Manager should have bought a few from Tyrell Corp.

@scottabc72 3 месяца назад

that also happens at Walmart

@blockmasterscott 3 месяца назад

I saw that too at the Kmart I worked at in 1990. Those veteran employees who had been there for decades were mean. I remember once one of them made me work in the women’s section as punishment and reported me when I told her that I grew up with 4 sisters, so the women’s section did not bother me.

@marinhusky8863 6 месяцев назад

Growing up in California in the 80s there were no Walmarts there as the video showed. My first experience with Walmart was when I visited relatives in Kansas City, and they called it Hypermart which I guess was the first version of a super center. My family shopped at Kmart. My mom liked the blue light specials and the fact that you could order a sub sandwich and an Icee while you shop.

@DugrozReports 5 месяцев назад

Sometimes they had a Pizza Hut in the store!

@randymack2222 4 месяца назад

We always got the "cheeper" bag of popcorn!

@brynpookc1127 3 месяца назад

Yes! First Hypermart was in my neighborhood in KC. They had @ 30 checkout lanes or something, but only 5 or 6 lanes open at a time. There were no more options for products, but if you wanted 100 of something, you were in the right place. And, the noise! Huge ceilings, no sound buffering, just noise bouncing around a great big barn. Took about an hour to even locate a few item you’d come for and at least another hour or hour-and-a-half to check out. Then you transported your purchases across an enormous parking lot. Sucked!

@Ballaurena13 2 месяца назад

Yeah, being a Washingtonian, my cousin used to make fun of Walmart commercials since we didn't have one in our whole state. My first Walmart experience was actually in Anchorage, Alaska.

@KatB69 28 дней назад

@@DugrozReports Little Ceasars

@BillinHungary 6 месяцев назад

On a recent "bucket list" trip to Australia, I visited a Kmart in a small mall in the city of Cairns. It was modern and quite popular. I can only assume that it is some kind of franchise agreement that allows the name to be used overseas. As it turns out there are over 300 Kmarts in Australia/New Zealand. They started as a join venture between Kmart and Coles a mega grocery store chain there. Eventually Kmart corporation divested themselves of the partnership, but it seems as though these stores are prospering. I made two trips to the store in Cairns, and it was modern with good customer service.

@steviebboy69 6 месяцев назад

My brother lives way up north near cairns, I am way down in North eastern Victoria and there has been a Coles/Kmart as one building although now 2 seperate entities. In the early 80's they were as 1 and Kmart here does well and the supermarket is always busy. They in fact ripped up and re-did the car park and that must have cost a lot of coin.

@tyeralexander7346 6 месяцев назад

Kmart in Australia and the us are two different companies

@tyeralexander7346 6 месяцев назад

Kmart in Australia is totally different than us they are not the same

@Novusod 4 месяца назад

Australia has many what could be considered fossil brands. They still have Whoolworth's in Australia. The last Whoolworth in America closed 30 years ago but they are still hanging on in Australia.

@tyeralexander7346 3 месяца назад

@@Novusod yes they are famous in Australia

@David-yu9iz 4 месяца назад

In '93, Kmart did away with employees selling certain merchandise for a commission, such as electronics. Consequently, the employees generating the most sales, left the company and sales took a major hit. 16 year old girls were trying to sell shotguns and senior citizens had to explain electronics. Then staff was slashed, which is another way of saying customer service was slashed. Furthermore, Kmart was incapable of competing with Walmart and Target. It takes truly incompetent management to destroy a successful company, yet it happens constantly.

@garryferrington811 3 месяца назад

Many CEO's come from America's ownership class, that club we can't join, as George Carlin said. "Buffy needs something to do. Let's put him in charge of X." "X is tremendously successful. But isn't Buffy an idiot?" " Yes, but he must do something. He keeps getting underfoot." "Very well, then. Another martini?"

@worldtraveler930 3 месяца назад

The True Plague of the corporate world is Micromanagement!!! 🤠👍

@lightweight1974 3 месяца назад

To put it in today's corporate lingo...'Their main competency was incompetence....box checked'

@Mustang5458 3 месяца назад

I busted a Sears store because of the sales people was writing up sales to peoples sears account for the commission . 99% of the people did not know until I called regarding their warranties on those products and the service contract.

@dougfromsoanierana 2 месяца назад

Didn’t Walk-Mart embrace technology much faster than K-Mart? By that I mean using computers to track sales and restock items automatically? I read that K-Mart continued to rely on managers making these stocking decisions and using paper for orders.

@hildeschmid8400 3 месяца назад

I grew up in Michigan and worked at Kresge, K Mart's parent company. Yes, the K stood for Kresge! I remember going to one of the first K Marts. This is sad for me, but I realize life goes on.

@irefusetoaskmydoctorifyour6401 6 месяцев назад

In the 1980's, Kmart focused on merchandising; hiring "merchants" to run the company, Walmart focused on logistics, hiring 'tech' people to make sure the merchandise flowed quickly to the stores. Also Kmart lost its focus, buying up specialty chains like Borders Books, Sports Authority while Walmart stayed focused on its discount stores and Sam's Club. Also, Kmart had a CEO named Joseph Antonini (sp?) - - from what I read in trade publications at the time, he was one to explode in anger upon being given bad news, so his underlings became afraid to tell him bad news he would NEED to be aware of as CEO.

@janibeg3247 6 месяцев назад

Joseph E. "Joe" Antonini was a disaster as CEO of Kmart. He was an uneducated very poor choice as CEO.

@billolsen4360 3 месяца назад

Wonder where they found that Antonini clown...maybe at The State Home For The Mentally Spent Managers?

@davidradel4834 6 месяцев назад

I worked for Kfart as a Manger in the 80's and they treated everyone poorly. I knew when I left after 5 years of insanity, it would fail. They came out with Mini/ Max and they thought this would save the empire. Ordering was very tedious and ads were another headache. Always moving stuff around which ate up labor hours and no time to keep the place fresh looking.

@mplsmark222 5 месяцев назад

My uncle was a store GM starting in the 1960’s until his retirement. He really was a “company man”, until he wasn’t. He carries a lot of bitterness about how he was treated at the end, how the company was run into the ground and he probably had too much of his retirement fund invested in the company. We used to joke with him, disparaging the company to get a rise out of him. Other times he would ask me if I shopped at Kmart, or Target, in a mocking way. I think he was an honest, hard working guy that did his best for the company, too bad they didn’t stay profitable.

@josephpacelli3691 4 месяца назад

We will always remember K-Mapart

@ExiledWolf84 3 месяца назад

Straight to the point, not 45 minutes long, no long speeches about how the universe was formed and K-Marts founders early childhood... Honestly a damn good video!

@l.palmer6747 3 месяца назад

@50PullUps 6 месяцев назад

I used to work at the Kmart in Forest Park, IL. Inventory was kept in a large basement that also led to a series of underground tunnels (not owned by the company) that appeared to also double as some kind of long-abandoned military barracks. Creepy stuff that’s prime content for RU-vid urban explorers 😉

@bartman1238 6 месяцев назад

I think forest park was a old venture store

@bobr511 6 месяцев назад

Where was this store? I grew up near Forest Park and can’t recall where it would have been.

@50PullUps 6 месяцев назад

@@bobr511 How old are you? Do you remember the Venture?

@bobr511 6 месяцев назад

In my seventh decade. I do remember Venture but again not in Forest Park. There was one by Harlem and Irving and on by Harlem and Foster. On what street was the Kmart in Forest Park?

@50PullUps 6 месяцев назад

@@bobr511 Des Plaines and Roosevelt.

@harrymaciolek9629 6 месяцев назад

I remember thinking how dated Kmart looked in the early eighties.

@mk84ldb 3 месяца назад

Ah, but who could forget their legendary ''flashing blue light specials?"

@Gametester110-qf8vs 3 месяца назад

Funny you mention that. I liked how all the K-mart's i've been to had that old-fashioned 'feel' about them. As in, walking around a k-mart made it easy for me to imagine how department stores were 30 or so years earlier. Going to a K-mart right after visiting a something like a target, was like taking a trip in a time machine. It gave K-mart a more, "down to earth" vibe.

@JeffSherlock 2 месяца назад

Has nothing to do with it.

@powellmountainmike8853 6 месяцев назад

When he was looking to establish his business, a chain of low cost department stores, Sam Walton went to New England and got advice from the head of a chain of stores called Ann & Hope, which had started out in the old Ann& Hope textile mill building in Rhode Island, a Mr. Chase. There was a gentleman's agreement that, for his advice and help, Walmart would not expand into the New England area, an agreement which held true until after Sam Walton died. Once Walmart DID expand into the area, it spelled the death knell of Ann & Hope, which is very sad, because they were great stores.

@marilynwillett804 2 месяца назад

I recall Ann and Hope on Post rd. Warwick R.I.

@powellmountainmike8853 2 месяца назад

@@marilynwillett804 I shopped there but always liked the ORIGINAL in the old mill up in Cumberland, RI. They had so much great stuff at extremely reasonable prices. My family bought most of my clothes there when I was a kid.

@jimfinigan1681 26 дней назад

So many changes (NOT for the better) happened to Walmart after Sam Walton died. His kids inherited the corporation and they sold it as soon as they could. I remember how Walmart used to have banners hanging from the ceiling declaring that they sold only goods that were made in the USA. That was in the 80s. Now, you would be hard pressed to find ANYTHING in a Walmart that is NOT MADE IN CHINA. Sam Walton would be livid.

@ronhoover5516 6 месяцев назад

I never understood the merger of KMart and Sears. The two chains really didn't have that much in common - KMart was the "pre-Walmart" big box discount store while Sears was a mid-market, middle-America everyman store which had its strengths in hardline goods like tools and appliances. On paper, the merger might have made sense but the two chains didn't need each other and it really just seemed like a hasty attempt to build a powerhouse that never worked. The failure of both chains is really another example of 2 companies that took their eye off the ball.

@robertswift6101 6 месяцев назад

on paper it made sense for there real estate value that they could liquidate after

@mrcryptozoic817 5 месяцев назад

And Sears could have been Amazon, but like many other companies, the computer was considered an expense by management, not an asset. Lack of vision by entrenched management killed a lot of companies.

@jamesodell3064 3 месяца назад

@@mrcryptozoic817 Sears originally sold mail order from their catalog so in many ways they were the Amazon in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

@Oliver-1755 2 месяца назад

@@mrcryptozoic817 Re: Sears. We found out here in Rochester NY that Steve Jobs asked Kodak in 1984 to collaborate on digital photography and they declined, sticking with film.

@rampar77 Месяц назад

Sears failed because they never grew out of blue collar mold. Their prices also could not complete with other brand name.

@77gmcnut 6 месяцев назад

Comedian Blake Clark said it best about Kmart. "your best friend won't admit to shopping at Kmart. But sometimes they're the only solution to your problem. You have $8 and you need snow tires"

@40intrepid 6 месяцев назад

I once worked in a Penske that was attached to a K Mart, we sold tires, oil changes repairs etc.

@scarpfish 6 месяцев назад

Some people forget that Kmart had it's own warehouse membership club called PACE. At one time it was the second largest membership chain behind Sam's. Eventually Sam's would buy them out.

@andyroid5028 5 месяцев назад

*Yep. You are 100% correct.* *_I definitely remember a 'Pace Warehouse' being built in Marietta, GA back in the early 1980s. It was one of the largest (or covered the most square footage) buildings in the metro Atlanta area at that time._*

@irefusetoaskmydoctorifyour6401 6 месяцев назад

You forgot to mention Caldor as one of the competitors that went out of business, extending Kmart's life. For a time, Caldor was the "4th largest discount store" by sales. Although Caldor only had about half as many locations as Ames, they were much higher volume stores in the densely populated Northeast corridor, Caldor often had the most desirable locations in the more affluent areas around New York / Long Island / Connecticut / Northern New Jersey. (Another company mis-managed into bankruptcy, but that's another topic.)

@bartman1238 6 месяцев назад

Venture down fall help

@AdrienneM13 6 месяцев назад

I loved Caldor. I got my school clothes there. I also bought a bad ass super soaker with my birthday money. 😄

@giantgeoff 4 месяца назад

A friend's brother was in charge of Caldor's sports and automotive line at the corporate level at Caldor's zenith. He passed away way too early both he and his brother were and are personal heros of mine.

@ocstrangeness 2 месяца назад

And Jamesway.

@classrockin 6 месяцев назад

At one time, there were 4 K Mart stores here. One that opened in the early 90s, then a Wal-Mart was built about a half mile down the road in the late 90s, which sealed that K Mart's fate. All 4 buildings still stand today, repurposed as a movie theatre, a grocery store, a divided building that is several businesses, and the last one to close in 2018 was renovated into an Amazon warehouse in 2020, but has not opened for some reason. Congratulations on 50k subscribers, love this channel

@DB-xp9px 6 месяцев назад

i knew a # of employees that worked for kmart over the years and they were treated so poorly by the company that none of them had any loyalty to kmart. having a staff of unhappy workers definitely contributed to their downfall. myself personally, i hated how they shared their parking lot w/ 5 other businesses, making parking a constant hassle, not to mention they never updated their stores when their competition did.

@evog35viii 6 месяцев назад

I grew up with Ames and K-Mart nearby. Well, before Ames, the building was occupied by Zayre.

@lightweight1974 6 месяцев назад

Same where I live. And before Zayre, the store was a Grand Way.

@tdog4344 6 месяцев назад

I remember going to Kmart and they were selling a 32gb thumb drive for $30 I went to a Walmart, less than a 5 minute drive away, they were selling the exact same thumb drive (same brand and all) for $10

@kotzer71 2 месяца назад

yeah basicly any thing electronic was more expensive at kmart's i noticed that even as a kid

@ocstrangeness 2 месяца назад

I remember buying something like a 32mb ridata thumb drive from circuit city back in '06. It was purple.

@edvaira6891 6 месяцев назад

What pisses me off is that Kmart dragged Sears down with it, strangling it of whatever life it had left…

@josecontreras2997 6 месяцев назад

Eddie Lampert did most of the cause.

@7mileDem 6 месяцев назад

I miss Sears! They had nice deals on there Tools and Appliances.

@schwenda3727 6 месяцев назад

Was Sears starting to lose their focus (if not outright THROWING 💩 AT THE WALL) right before most of GenX was ever born? I read in more than one retail oriented site or fb group that some point in the 70s, corporate basically took a “top-down” enough approach where store managers had increasingly less control of their particular store among other things that people who know next to nothing about how companies are ran could easily tell “OHH; they’re starting to f things up!” Them literally bailing on their catalog business THE VERY SAME YEAR that Amazon started selling its first books online was probably the beginning of the end. If Sears truly gave one iota at that point, they would’ve done the VERY obvious technological AND logistical investments and rebranded their paper catalogs VERY accordingly.

@Skulllywag 6 месяцев назад

LOL Sears screwed themselves.....the PIONEER of catalog sales, dumped their catalog sales in 1993 (long before Lampert). Sears was driven under by online sales (Amazon), which is basically.....online catalog sales. In the 90's so many companies failed to do internet sales right. Amazon started by selling nothing but BOOKS online...but they knew the internet sales game....and look at them now.

@scotthewes2431 3 месяца назад

@@7mileDem at least Eddie Lambert made BILLIONS selling off the real estate Sears and Kmart owned………. It’s as if that was his plan all along……MuHaHa…….

@chargermopar 6 месяцев назад

I loved the vintage look of Kmart and was disappointed when they changed it in the 1990's. Wal mart is a dump compared to what Kmart was.

@topherbec7578 5 месяцев назад

I got a job at Kmart when I was 18 in the late 80's. I received no training and didn't know what to do when they put me on the layaway desk by myself. I remember customers being frustrated due to the fact I couldn't help them. After a couple more days of being yelled at. I quit. So lack of customer care would also be a contributing factor.

@marilynwillett804 2 месяца назад

why couldnt you figure out how to take their layaway things and money and give them a receipt for it?

@topherbec7578 2 месяца назад

No access to the cash register. But looking back I could have given them a hand written receipt and stapled the money to the item.

@kevenpinder7025 6 месяцев назад

KMART pioneered what I've come to call the "KMART answer." I'm sure you could get it in other stores, but it was a quintessentially KMART phenomenon. If you asked ANYONE in KMART, "do you carry electric can openers?" You'd get, "if we do, they'll be in our housewares department." ""Do you carry motor oil?" "If we do, it'll be in our automotive department." Total waste of breath.

@marks3680 6 месяцев назад

I use to work for Kmart in my my late teens. Just a gig until I found something better. After the announcement that a lot of stores were being shut down, all the management just really let the place go to crap. While it was popular in the area I lived, Wal-Mart opened their Super Center down the road and killed it. But yes you're right, they never upgraded the store but kept it running until they closed it. I left before they closed it due to mistreatment of the employees by certain management. But overall was not a bad place to work.

@gkiltz0 6 месяцев назад

Remember from the late 1950s to the late 1970s K-mart was essentially a side-project of SS Kresge, and it got the top management attention and middle management resources that would be expected of a side project to a major retailer at that time, SS Kresge was in every downtown large and small and making ham handed efforts to expand into the newly establishing- suburbs. K Mart was SUPPOSED to be a part, but not really the focus of that strategy. That was where it started to go wrong and it just ran farther and farther off the rails from there. Soooo they essentially started out with one hand tied behind their back next to WalMart and Target!

@sidvicious332 3 месяца назад

I paid my rent and all my bills for years just dumpster diving behind their store. Kmart threw away perfectly good merchandise for decades. Insane.

@randomtask26 3 месяца назад

I worked there in the 80s for a few months. They would have us put together furniture for sale displays. Then when it went off sale they had us throw it in the garbage compactor. They. wouldn’t mark it down or let the employees take it. Just toss it .

@kotzer71 2 месяца назад

@@randomtask26 they do the same at home depots

@josephsuiter6137 Месяц назад

I worked at the K for a few years and saw so much merchandise thrown away it would make you sick 🤮!

@Larry660 3 месяца назад

Desert Storm joke: "Did you hear that there are no more K-Marts in Baghdad?" "Really?" "Yeah, they're all Targets now."

@blockmasterscott 3 месяца назад

😂😂😂

@vgovger4373 2 месяца назад

My local Kmart was offered a buy out by local investors who didn't want the workers to lose their jobs. Kmart said no and went out of business anyway with 3 months prepaid yet on their contract with the mall.

@7mileDem 6 месяцев назад

K-Mart world headquarters campus (Troy, MI) is being demolished as of now. It's sad I used to drive by a lot. The buildings on that campus could've been renovated.

@mls515 6 месяцев назад

On Big Beaver Road!

@7mileDem 6 месяцев назад

@@mls515 🎯

@hildeschmid8400 3 месяца назад

That is sad to hear. But I shouldn't be surprised.

@hildeschmid8400 3 месяца назад

@@mls515 I used to work at Oakland Mall. How is that doing?

@7mileDem 3 месяца назад

@@hildeschmid8400 It's not what it used to be! Macy's and JC Penny is still there.

@DasMuse 6 месяцев назад

This is sad. There were plenty of KMarts in my area and I almost always found them more useful than Walmarts or Targets. Good memories of a department store only go so far, but it was the place my grandmother preferred to shop so I was in there alot, especially after Ames went under. I will say this though. As I grew into an adult I couldn't help but feel like the people working there never took it too seriously. I rarely needed assistance in a store, but when I did it was like pulling teeth. I was never treated rudely, but I also could tell it was a workplace that the workers didn't really respect.

@Scott__C 6 месяцев назад

I went into a Walmart for the first time in a long time fairly recently and hated the experience. I'll never go in one again.

@lightweight1974 6 месяцев назад

Our local Walmart has clean restrooms. If we're in the area and I have to take a crap I'll stop there... otherwise I try my damndest to shop elsewhere... not always successful, but they're my last choice.

@richardkendall6746 5 месяцев назад

I worked with a KMART developer in the late seventies. My impression of their management was arrogance personalized. That's why their clock got cleaned.

@cotyplus 2 месяца назад

Bro, Kmart was my first job back in 2004. I loved working there. It was so laid back. Then the whole Sears-Kmart thing happened and it was all downhill from there. Sears Essentials had all the weaknesses of both but none of the strengths.

@ocstrangeness 2 месяца назад

The last thing I bought from Kmart was a can of dill pickle Pringles, this was...I don't know, 2008? Now it's a plasma donation center.

@DonLounsbury 2 месяца назад

For every employee who who cared, there were three who didn’t. Additionally, price tags were frequently missing resulting in 15 to 20 minute delays checking out. Lousy customer service killed Kmart.

@jasonrodgers9063 6 месяцев назад

One of our local Kmarts wasn't able to keep the A/C operating (Kentucky in July!). They got a bunch of 20" box fans out of inventory, set them up near the checkouts. Not long after, they closed.

@Fred-uc4eo 2 месяца назад

The snack bar in K Mart was the first time I ever saw a self serve Coke fountain. How cool it was to fill your own cup.

@JosephKulisics 4 месяца назад

Before playing the video, I had already guessed the answer. I'm from Louisville, KY, and I vividly remember Walmart displacing Kmart. In my hometown, the change happened while I was in college in the late eighties. I came back home for the holidays, and suddenly my family were all shopping at the new Walmart location. In the area where I lived, there had been one nearby Kmart, maybe a mile away, and another somewhat farther away, maybe three miles, and no one seemed at all interested in going to either one ever again. The close one closed, remained vacant for a little while, and eventually turned into a bingo parlor. The farther one eventually turned into a Big Kmart, but I don't think that we ever went. Walmart just suddenly dominated the discount retail scene.

@Oliver-1755 2 месяца назад

Walmart was built on so many lies, as they say, it isn't funny.

@dindog22 6 месяцев назад

I remember a K mart being built near us when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old and I don't think they ever updated that store. We're talking a lot of decades because I'm old. it eventually closed and now it's a Meijer grocery store. Meijer is the bomb

@pauldietz1325 4 месяца назад

Does Meijer still have that funky radiation sterilized ground beef?

@missyd0g2 4 месяца назад

Living in Troy Michigan near the Headquarters of KMart. The executives were out of date. Their Computers technology was so outdated and IBM mainframes based. No way to quickly find out sales or inventory.

@johnmcclanahan2272 3 месяца назад

When Kmart opened a store in my city in 1962 it was huge. When it closed, it was small compared to Walmart and Target.

@trollhunter8842 6 месяцев назад

I live in the Northern VA area and there was no Walmart or Target until the early 2000s. Kmart was everywhere though and very popular. Such a shame.

@boblangill6209 3 месяца назад

I recall taking an economics class in the early 70's. The professor asked us for an explanation of a chart that showed items with decreased purchasing as income rose above a certain level. I volunteered "shopping at Kmart." He stated it was the purchase of inferior goods. Increasingly, the level at which you're not longer purchasing inferior goods seems to be climbing steeply and that's spreading to a larger area of stuff you buy.

@broadcastmyballs 4 месяца назад

Yeah I knew K-Mart was going down in the mid-90s when Wal-Mart finally broke into the Northeast. When Wal-Mart opened near me (Fairless hills PA) my family never went to K-Mart again

@aljay2955 2 месяца назад

"Blue light" specials were the craziest thing ever. People making a mad dash in the store to make sure they got the "Blue Light" specials. Lots of fun!!!

@ocstrangeness 2 месяца назад

They had a dialup internet service called bluelight. I kinda remember seeing the sign up cards.

@mangrove 6 месяцев назад

Around 1990, they built a K-Mart in Acme, next to Traverse City. My parents ran a small town hardware store 20 miles away, and that K-Mart put a dent into not only our shop, but into other places in town, too. All of these shops in that town are long-gone; our hardware was the oldest continously-running store in the town, and the last time i visited in 2005, it had been converted into a little hobby shop. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club did the same thing to that K-Mart, which has also closed.

@irefusetoaskmydoctorifyour6401 6 месяцев назад

. . . . and today Walmart / Sam's are fighting to keep Amazon from doing the same thing to THEM! Its sad and bittersweet, but time marches on I suppose, can be quite fascinating to watch (unless you're one of the people who loses their livelihood in the wake of 'progress'.)

@daler.steffy1047 3 месяца назад

Having been born in 1948, I was able to experience shopping in some of the small-town family businesses before they slowly went away. That is a sad part of our commercial/retail history here in America. I miss the small, family-operated businesses and the quaint downtowns, like what I remembered Petaluma, California being like before its own "functional" downtown also succumbed to strip malls and big box stores. (In these old, small, downtown centers, how many antique stores and thrift shops do we need?)

@Maki-00 6 месяцев назад

The outdated interior was a big issue for me. In the early 2000s, there was a K-Mart in Manhattan, but when you went inside, it felt like you had stepped back into the 70s. I went there out of necessity, but I was never excited to go there. Even with the competition, a little modernization and rebranding may have helped. I liked the modernized JC Penny’s in the Manhattan Mall. It had modern fixtures and vibrant colors and it didn’t feel like the typical anchor store that you find in suburban malls. I really enjoyed shopping there.

@mangrove 6 месяцев назад

I think that was the same K-Mart that U2 had a press conference to announce their PopMart tour? It was all tongue-in-cheek.

@mustangthings 6 месяцев назад

If you’re thinking of the Astor Place location, that thing stuck around until at least 2021. I last went in there in 2016 and it was very bizarre, especially the lower level. Got a decent pack of white t shirts there, though.

@Maki-00 6 месяцев назад

@@mustangthings The one I remember was somewhere around 34th St. I moved out of NYC in 2015, and I don’t remember if it was still there then. I just Googled and that JC Penny’s has closed. 😢

@colinschmitz8297 6 месяцев назад

Kmart seemed to pick highly populated areas in close proximity to malls. Walmart picked very rural areas with the largest community in a regional area being around 5000 people. The advantage of the Walmart strategy was it was the go to store for that town for nearly everything (groceries, clothing, electronics, car parts, pharmacy, photo development, basic car service, etc). The problem with Kmart's strategy was there were never the only game in town and nothing about them stood out other than having a couple items Walmart didn't have which was few and far between. The merger with Sears never made sense. If the strategy was to start learning from Walmart's strategy to expand in rural areas not reached yet by Walmart, be the go to location while selling craftsman, Kenmore, Die Hard, and other Sears brands for a rural community too small for Sears. I could see that possibly working, but the way they did it, never made sense to me.

@trevonpernell0814 6 месяцев назад

I always the Sears/Kmart merger made sense. It was the execution of it (LAMPERT!) that killed it.

@irefusetoaskmydoctorifyour6401 6 месяцев назад

The ONLY purpose of the Sears / Kmart merger I was for Eddie Lampert to gain control of all that real estate and the trademarks like Kenmore Diehard etc. so he could slowly sell it off to line the pockets of himself and the investors in his hedge fund. Lampert gained control of Kmart during the 2002 bankruptcy by buying up Kmarts outstanding debt for pennies on the dollar. Sears had been struggling for decades by that point, Kmart emerged from that bankruptcy with a clean balance sheet and Lampert was able to buy Sears on the cheap. Had Kmart (and Sears) not been financial trainwrecks to begin with, Lampert never would have got his foot in the door. I believe to my core that Lampert NEVER had any intention to operate Sears / Kmart as a going concern. He kept the stores open (never updating / remodeling) as long as they were cash flow positive . . . as competition intensified and they turned cash flow negative, he began shutting them down and selling off the assets, real estate, and trademarks. When the Board of DIrectors of Sears voted to sell the company to Kmart, it was the equivalent to throwing up their hands, saying "i give up" and selling it off for spare parts while it still had some value to salvage.

@Skulllywag 6 месяцев назад

@@trevonpernell0814 Lampert picked the bones....Kmart was making STUPID decisions years before him, and the person who STARTED Kmart's downfall was Chuck Conaway (pre-bankruptcy). Kmart installed "self checking" long before Walmart, but none of them worked properly. In the decade before bankruptcy, Kmart was building a LOT of new stores.....across the street from Walmarts (sometimes in the same shopping centers). I shopped at a Sam's club, which was in the same shopping center as a Walmart and Kmart...which made ZERO sense any way you looked at from a Kmart or Walmart point of view. Kmart was also fudging their books with vendor/consignment inventory, and laying out millions in store and warehouse upgrades that never saw the light of day because of the impending bankruptcy. I worked at a Kmart Distribution Center pre and post bankruptcy (until 2003).... let me tell ya, Kmart was going down the toilet lonnnnggg before Lampert.

@mls515 6 месяцев назад

My first real job was at Kmart in 1996. $4.85 an hour to start. But you could still get a McDonald’s value meal for $2.99. At the time, the Kmart where I worked was a fixture of our part of town. Busy on the weekends with long checkout lines. Too many a-holes still paying by personal check. The Walmarts nearest us were okay but much smaller, nothing like the Supercenter but they still held their own. The store where I worked changed to the Big Kmart concept in the year I worked there. They wanted to increase the grocery offerings and added a lot of refrigerators and freezers, which pinched out some of the offerings from other departments. For example you could no longer find spark plugs in automotive. Obviously didn’t work in the end, 90’s suburban soccer mom never showed up to buy the high margin limited grocery selection because she still had to go to the supermarket for everything else and dad got pissed and went to Walmart for spark plugs. The location where I worked only lasted a short time when a Walmart Supercenter opened a few miles away, replacing the previously small dumpy Walmart that was a few miles farther away. My last visit to Kmart was when we lived in Chicago in ‘17-‘18. That last location on W. Addison Street was a mess. Not organized at all, lots of empty shelf space. The cashier asked me for my phone number at checkout. I laughed. “No. I’m not giving it to you.”, I replied, as politely as possible.

@zlonewolf 6 месяцев назад

so much copium in one post 😂😂. Walmart in the 90s have walmart auto and huge electronic section as well as acquired Sams clun.🙄. Meanwhile Kmart was about to acquire Sears in 10 years and about to declare bankruptcy twice in 2002 and 2012 😂😂😂.

@mls515 6 месяцев назад

@@zlonewolf You have the reading comprehension of a tiktok watcher. My post isn't propping up Kmart versus Walmart. Go back and reread. Also Walmart in the early to mid 90's the electronics section was a small square in the middle of the store, nothing like today. Certainly not spectacular compared to competitors of the time.

@JohnWilson-wg4gk 4 месяца назад

Man ! You take me back to a happier time ! The Kmart automotive department. Now, I never looked at the spark plugs or oil filters, but let me tell you about the... CAR AUDIO EQUIPMENT DISPLAYS ! It was dreamland for nineteen year old guys ! PIONEER receivers and tape decks. JENSEN 150 watt Triax speakers. 200 watt power boosters. Graphic equalizers. If I could only go back to those days and give myself just some of the money I have today...

@johnsonpaul1914 3 месяца назад

I am a present day A Hole because you take my check or you dont get my business.

@daler.steffy1047 3 месяца назад

I know: The cashier wanted your phone number to, at some point later, ask you out on a date! Am I right? I love your comment about the people paying by personal check. I used to be one of "those" irritating people back in the 1970s and 1980s, until, reluctantly, I got an ATM card. But I know what it is to get behind somebody who has to pay by check. It is a pain in the ass!

@derekheim8172 6 месяцев назад

Dustin Hoffman is why K-Mart failed. When he said "K-Mart sucks" as Rain Man, it was all down hill...

@danielbowden6330 6 месяцев назад

Love the shot of the closed K-mart at 1:14. Look at the donuts someone did in the parking lot. Where I grew up, K-Mart had competition from Bradlees/Sears, JC Penney and Zales-Ames. Our Bradlees replaced Kings, if anyone remembers that store.

@chargermopar 6 месяцев назад

That's like the Kmart near me in Miami. It is on Tamiami Trail.

@brettmason1942 6 месяцев назад

Not to mention it was a well known fact that you could shoplift very easily out of any Kmart

@worldtraveler930 3 месяца назад

That's how they earn the nickname of Crime-Mart!!! 🤠👍

@ocstrangeness 2 месяца назад

Oh hell..CDs and tapes were in these plastic protectors that a butter knife could cut through. Walkmans were a bit more difficult, needed scissors. One time, me and a friend made off with a pile of CDs and some teenagers who worked there came all the way out to our car (Why they did this is beyond me, given the potential danger) and asked for their stuff back. We also nabbed VHS tapes, those were easy.

@hunterericson6782 Месяц назад

i knew of a guy who was obsessed with K-Mart. he drove a crown victoria, and wore k-mart employee clothes, and also collected tons of fixtures from the store. he was so obsessed, actually, that he walked in one day, told the manager he was supposed to start work today, and he just started working there.

@rEdf196 6 месяцев назад

K-Mart's were once iconic and commonplace here in western Canada until 1992 when our local KM workers went on strike which lasted for over a month then the stores were boarded up for good with K-Mart pretty much removed from our lives.

@TiltedTripodMedia 6 месяцев назад

Been documenting and making videos on Kmart for years. Been to hundreds of locations in my life. My family and myself grew up in the Detroit area. We remember seeing kressgees become Kmart and still remember the wooden floors in the original Kmart in garden city Michigan. Walmart didn’t create or build the first super center but rather while Kmart was building and planning their first super center in Medina Ohio they sent in spies to survey and steal the concept. They the. Built the first Walmart super center nearby. I despise Walmart and want my Kmart back.

@dindog22 6 месяцев назад

do you think Walmart will eventually out live Target?

@Alcofoamer 5 месяцев назад

I'm from the Buffalo-area and remeber going into a Wal-Mart for the first time in my life. Prior to that we either went to Ames, Hills (unique to the Pittsburgh and Buffalo areas) or K-Mart. Our local Wal-Mart opened in 1996, but Toronto got its first Wal-Mart two years earlier, so I remember thinking that Wal-Mart was actually a Canadian company at first. Its humourous to look back on thinking that the most American place on Earth was Canadian, but it shows how these chains wern't always an omnipresent behemoth. The same thing happened with Home Depot and Lowe's.

@tolfan4438 6 месяцев назад

I remember a huge Kmart opening across from the housing projects around 1968. It did killer business and was one of the last open. It had a 70s ghetto vibe that you just could not beat.

@mark5846 6 месяцев назад

I worked with Kmart, Walmart and Venture associates merchandising products for a otc division of a pharmaceutical company. The department managers of Kmart and Venture were not empowered. They had little ability to tailor their departments to local demand, Walmart could. Walmart could put a fast moving product on an endcap of an isle increase sales of that product. Venture was the least empowered and they failed first, Kmart was a little more empowered and they declined more slowly. Walmart won.

@DavidLimofLimReport 6 месяцев назад

Kmart is still alive and kicking in Australia and NZ. Although I think that company is no relation to the one in the US and Canada

@mountaineernews2 6 месяцев назад

It doesn’t have any affiliation with the US company. The international ones are completely separate.

@fttcec 6 месяцев назад

it used to@@mountaineernews2

@stephenholloway6893 6 месяцев назад

@mountaineernews2 Not anymore but originally it did. From 1968 to 78 it was the majority owner then in 78 minority owner then in 1994 it sold that stake to it's other partner Coles and Company later known as Cole Myer. Today Wesfarmers owns the chain.

@fttcec 6 месяцев назад

@@stephenholloway6893 the aus k mart logo loooks like the older logo but the k is huge

@jimoconnor6382 6 месяцев назад

If you go into the ones in the Melbourne area its like going back to the 80s! Same garbage they sold in the U.S is being sold there, even the deli is the same. The one in the Dandenong mall is 2 floors and it was actually crowded when I was there.

@BlueJay6441 6 месяцев назад

I'm so glad you mentioned how Walmart was once far less ubiquitous. I clearly remember when they started showing up in my area, southwest Ohio. It was 88 or 89. There were only a couple and we had to drive out to them. So funny to think of Walmart being a destination trip, lol

@davidnorris1093 6 месяцев назад

Walmart jacked prices through the roof in all the towns to fund expansion & compete with big city stores like Kmart and Sears….

@RedWingsninetyone 6 месяцев назад

In the area I grew up, Walmart and Kmart were the only two major stores for about 50 miles around. Meijer was built and Walmart remodeled and added a grocery section. Kmart converted a couple of aisles and called it good. I think this was probably the single biggest thing that killed our particular location even though it wouldn't close for another 10 years or so.

@markevanger4791 6 месяцев назад

My favorite name for this stre was "Came -Apart" They sold alot of junk tools that didnt last. For example; had reduced prices on tools that were made much cheaper by using a lot of plastics that were not very strong. Quality took a sideline for quantity. Walmart is heading that a way as well.

@josephpacelli3691 4 месяца назад

yes K-Mapart

@willmack5909 6 месяцев назад

I feel saddened and destroyed :'(

@dittohead7044 3 месяца назад

Our family was a Kmart faithful. Grew up right next door to Troy Michigan. My new husband worked there. It was sad how they didn’t see the progress around them. I used to like Sears too. Bought a lot of our appliances there too. I used to wonder who their buyers were. Sad

@sdlcman1 5 месяцев назад

Even today, when I look in my fishing tackle box, I see items with the Kmart logo. They had a sign back then that read, if we don't have it, you don't need it. Back in the late 80s or early 90s, they built a Super K right behind their current store, and then tore down the old one. It was an amazing store that included a grocery store and had a food court. I loved it. I'd often go in there for lunch. But when Walmart came town, I watched their slow decline and demise. Roses and Sky City also folded in short order.

@scorpiouk5914 6 месяцев назад

I had an "old style" Kmart and Walmart in my medium sized Southern town. Worked at both from 1993-1997. In my opinion, Kmart cut their own throat with their severely outdated computer system. Walmart had the kind of computer set up where it a customer bought an item, it was automatically placed on "reorder". Kmart didn't have that type of set up. Also, the sale price downloads from Troy, MI were always incomplete, leaving the staff to have to manually change the prices. Pissed off customers to no end. Still using MS DOS in 1997. Need I say more?

@darylmorning 3 месяца назад

I worked at #3735 from 1999-2003, I had the store down to where, when asked, I could tell a customer from my service desk the aisle, how far down, and the shelf to find their sought after item. In the time I worked, I learned every sales position, every operation, was sent to other stores, and saw the mismanagement of the keys to success. Cliques were created and self-promoted, major rules were overlooked for personnel, and in the end, I always felt that the #1 reason was disconnected management. The regional manager and up had no idea what they were doing, but they were yelling at us to fix things like we had any power to solve problems. My wife said it had to be bad as I had symptoms similar to PTSD. I can still recite the end of day announcements 20+ years later. 😅

@jerryrichardson2799 6 месяцев назад

I remember when Kmart and Albertson's left Texas. In both cases, the stores left because people here bought on prices, and neither chain wanted to compete on prices. Both chains left the Houston area within around the same time, if memory serves me correctly. On a related note, a number of restaurant chains that left Houston over the years, have come back. A representative for one of the chains said "If you can't compete in Houston, eventually, you can't compete, anywhere, ultimately".

@alexandermarquardt597 3 месяца назад

This so fun for me: I know the name of those stores, but this fills the names with stories and information. Nice job.

@txryder79 2 месяца назад

When Walmart came to my town, the decline of Kmart was immediate and hard. Then when Target came to town, it only took a few short years for Kmart to close. Before all that, Kmart was busy AF. Seems pretty simple to me, notwithstanding prior bad corporate decisions.

@alexbatchelor8285 6 месяцев назад

The Kmart nearest to me in Toms River, NJ closed in 2019. It was the last one in ocean county. My parents think the steady clientele from the neighboring gym kept it open as long as it was.

@donblaise 3 месяца назад

I used to manage college recruiting and saw a major difference in what Kmart and Walmart emphasized in their management candidates way back in the 70s. It caught up with them.

@1968CudaGuy 3 месяца назад

So many mistakes were made over the years at Kmart and Sears. I never understood why Sears didn't embrace the direct to consumer model of Amazon. Everything was in place with fulfillment centers all over the country, established methods of shipping products, ship to store or home options, beautiful catalogs that could have been digitized for the web... It was all right there within the grasp of Sears and Kmart executives..

@Pilot.Lindsay 4 месяца назад

Love Your Videos. Short and To the Point. Thanks for Sharing.

@Akito_gachaglobe 8 дней назад

Kmart May have failed in USA, but here in Australia and NZ, it’s like our very own Target.

@johnjones393 6 месяцев назад

The real reason Kmart failed is Eddie Lampert.

@daler.steffy1047 3 месяца назад

When I made the move from being a full-time RVer, living in a 33 ft., 2-bedroom trailer, one that had almost everything built in, and subsequently moved into a one-bedroom apartment, I was in need of furnishings. So I went to our local Kmart store, and I was able to purchase a very solid cherry wood-top dining room table and six matching chairs, and all kinds of lamps that looked classy but with a simple elegance that doesn't yell out "cheap!" I also bought clothes and other essential items there over the years because the variety of stocked merchandise was extensive, and the prices were really good. I am not a shopper--I actually hate shopping, but I do miss that Kmart store for what I consider a proper place to purchase some of life's essentials.

@general5104 3 месяца назад

KRESGIES 5 and Dime, started it and it grew into one of the first big stores! They were in our neighborhoods, onstead of downtown, which was nice! I hated going down-town because of the traffic on 2 lane streets, one-way streets, parking meters, pickpockets, parking tickets, and just a pain in the butts

@VOAN 6 месяцев назад

I remember back in the 90s when Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target were all almost the same. They offered similar services and had similar selection of products. The change really happened around the 2000s when Wal-Mart and Target started expanding to food and groceries with their stores cause as far as I remember back in the 90s Wal-Mart and Target were more just novelty or sweat shop selling the basic clothes, accessories, toys, electronics, and home equipments but when the 2000s arrives they started added groceries to the selections causing long lines and major shift in customers. Kmart was the only store I remember that doesn't had grocery as part of their store and even if they did the grocery section feel more like a convenient store than a supermarket. While there are a small selection of food and drinks, it's really not a place to find fresh produce, frozen poultry, or gourmet dinner entree and by not adding groceries to Kmart's business I think that may be what brought it down a bit.

@jwilburn4712 6 месяцев назад

I vivly remember as a kid in the mid 80s the nearby Walmart was clean (the floor in the clothing area had carpet) in contrast the k-mart store was at best bland if not dirty. Yet there was a time in Topeka, KS there was 3-4 k-mart stores and ZERO Walmarts. Today, there are ZERO kmarts but 4 Walmarts, 1 Walmart Marketplace, and 1 Sam's Club

@smoceany9478 4 месяца назад

the one near me closed, was a strange site to be in, was basically empty, in the amount of people there and the stocking on the shelves

@gokux75 6 месяцев назад

Last time I went into a Kmart was in 2016 and it felt so depressing inside. With the exception of food it felt like it was just a store for products ordered a long time ago and were never bought.

@WeSRT4 6 месяцев назад

They could have survived if they had started investing in new and better stores way back in the 80s. Basically they sat there with those store from the 60s and 70s while Wal-mart came in with new stores and took over. They were reactive instead of proactive.... poor business leadership 101

@kenthuang436 2 месяца назад

I thought it was insane when I discovered a Kmart existing and still operating inside Grand Central Station back in 2019. I thought every Kmart was shut down but here this store was and it had the Kmart logo all over the store.

@Valpo2004 3 месяца назад

I remember going to K-Mart all the time as a small child. Then Wal-Mart came to town and I think I stepped foot in that K-Mart like 5 times at most after that. And that includes one time when I as a grown adult married with a baby went there to see if we could snatch up any baby clothes for a good price since they were shutting down the store. Quite frankly I was amazed that it hung around as long as it did.

@williamf.buckleyjr3227 2 месяца назад

Seriously, you're right. Walmart is in the movie "Christmas Vacation" (1989), and in Pennsylvania we thought it was a made-up store.

@buckodonnghaile4309 2 месяца назад

Now I'm 1:56 picturing William F Buckley on a road trip in the Griswolds wagon to go shopping at Wally World.

@ocstrangeness 2 месяца назад

*lightbulbs in cart* *Ol' Roy dog food on top of them*

@texastreker 2 месяца назад

When a Home Depot and Walmart opened near my Sears store, our sales dropped and a nearby Kmart went out of business. Eventually my Sears closed as well.

@mudhutproductions 6 месяцев назад

Our Kmart was across the street from an Orchard Supply Hardware. Both were pre mall institutions around here. Now even the mall is dying. Audios to Sears and Emporium Capwell.

@opossumlvr1023 2 месяца назад

The next big thing is Meijer, started in Michigan and is in 6 surrounding States. Walmart's are dumpy stores in comparison, Meijer has a far better meat selection and the Produce is much fresher.