A few disclaimers: 1. I made a mistake when saying that there are 2 Kmart's left globally, as there are a handful in other countries. The 2 only applies to the U.S. 2. My apologies if my breathing is very prevalent, I'm asthmatic LMAO
In total there's 6 left: Bridgehampton, NY Miami, FL Tamuning, Guam St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands (there's 2 locations there) St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
The other open location is in Bridgehampton NY (towards the far end of Long Island) and is still more or less a full location as of the time the video I watched of that one was made.
My local one was one of these! Their pizza would usually always be cooked way better than visiting a solo little ceasars location fondly remember cashing my checks for only a $1 while i would get their fresh made pizza smell. Very nostalgic now that was back in 2019-2020
They also had Slush Puppies or Icee Brand. K-Mart was my shopping place, I never heard of the mall for the longest time as it wasn't in my parent's budget.
@@freiza79 the only memory I have of Kmart is when the electronics associate looked past me to the customer behind me to help him and ignored me. All because I had just got off work and had grease on my clothes. I was going to buy a television but when they ignored me I left and went to walmart. I never walked back into a Kmart again. Piece of crap company. No wonder they went down the drain.
I miss Kmart, used to work there back in 1990 and then again in 2001 . Kmart was an American tradition a family store. It shows how everything is closing . Technology has phased kmart out out the retail business. Sad to see them close . And thank you for sharing this wonderful store
It was Eddie Lampert and his dodgy financial shenanigans (shenanigans designed to make Eddie Lampert and his mates rich at the expense of the businesses he was in charge of) that killed K-Mart (and Sears for that matter)
theres blame to be passed around everywhere but many retail chains from that time are unfortunately dying out now. society as a whole has also changed.
not technology, they did it themselves by not adapting with time. Look at walmart still doing just fine despite of struggling few times with revenue and why? coz they change while they can.
Fun Fact about this Kmart: The reason why it's so small is because it's actually the Garden section of their previous location. Because of all the closures and needing to downscale, this location decided to utilize the Garden Shop into the actual store itself. Which is actually really smart because not only now are they able to stay in business but also less products they have to worry about selling. They're able to focus on the essentials that people need.
Some info about the store: The downsized Kmart used to be the garden section of the original Kmart. The original Kmart building is now an at home store.
Kmart was the go-to place for clothes, back-to-school, Christmas shopping for my family back in the 90s. Even despite having a Walmart we would always go to Kmart. My mom would only buy her shoes there because the brand that she liked was exclusive to Kmart and she would always buy the same design
I was born in 1995, and loved to shop at Kmart, as a kid. My local store closed in 2016, and it’s sad to see how fast they have all closed. I used to love Target, as well, but it’s lost its magic.
I'm in my '60s. Kmart and Sears was where my mother bought all of our school cloths and supplies each year. I loved when we went to Kmart since they had an awesome toy department. Plus, mom would take us to go get a burger or hotdog, fries and a milkshake at their snack bar. Sears had the best cloths...and an optometrist too (which I guess Walmart does now), which is where I got my first pair of glasses. SEARS was a grand place to shop during Christmas since it was always more festive (and crowded) than anyplace else. Sears became MY go-to place as a young adult in the '80s & '90s. I'd take my car there for its regular lifetime balance & tire rotation. While waiting, I would go check out their tool department, electronics/appliances or simply pick up some new cloths. I would also go peruse the mall and all its offerings. Walmart wasn't even a destination for me back then since they were actually smaller stores located at some strip mall and they sold lower quality products than Sears and had less of a selection than a Kmart had. Then there was Montgomery Ward, but that's another story.
The Kmart blue light was on a little mobile cart. The cart was probably 3 feet high and the flashing blue lights stood up another three or 4 feet. It was mobile. I don’t know if they were plug-in or there was a battery. Probably had to plug it in somewhere. They would announce it over the store PA system. For the next 15 minutes at the flashing blue light, sliced ham will be only $1.99 a pound.
@@xismlg the flashing blue lights stuck up just high enough that you could see it if you got to that department. They would tell you what department it was in, the item, and the sale price
The blue lights were fully self-contained, battery (12 volts) with an on board charger. Our K Mart in Crystal Lake, Illinois blue light cart had a warning sign on it: "Caution, I blow fuses". Enough to deter this little guy from turning the strobe on!
@@xismlg Originally the blue light was on a self contained rolling cart. However, the blue got discontinued for a few years (late 90s/early 00s-I don’t remember exactly when or how long), but when it came back it WAS a light in the ceiling in one high traffic location (the mobile Blue Light Cart came back as well) and whatever item(s) where being featured were taken to the blue light area on blue carts for the Blue Light Event. The crazy thing about the return of the Blue Light was that all of the featured items were planned by corporate and sent to the stores for the promotion. Originally, the Blue Light items were chosen by the individual store based on what items that individual store needed to sell quickly.
My grandmother used to take me to Kmart back when I was a little kid in the 70s and 80s I remember the smell of popcorn as you walked in. Also they had a little diner inside she would get me a sandwich for lunch. Then they had those sit in horses and cars that would move around for a quarter. Miss those days now more than ever before.
I worked 35 years at KMart. From an employee to an assistant manager, then back to HR. It’s sad when I first started it was fun. We stayed in our departments. Had plenty of register operators. We helped each other. Then politics came to play. Had the executives listened to their employees we wouldn’t have closed. Sure we didn’t need mass amounts of stores in one area. We had 6 in the area I worked at. Definitely didn’t need to extend counters that high.
That is sad too. Because my local Kmart which has now been repurposed into a Target use to have a Big Lots next door from it. It closed down 10 years after Kmart closed for good. The abandoned Big Lots is being temporarily used as a Halloween seasonal store.
They moved into the former garden center as At Home took over the main building. My former Kmart in Virginia is an At Home. I was born 78 and my childhood Kmart opened in 1980 and closed in 2014
Wow I started working for Kmart the end of 1980. I was still in HS and on pay day they gave you a handwritten flapped envelope showing hours worked, deductions and it contained cash. Usually spent most of my money I made there. Bad habit, cough! But cigarettes were $5 a carton. They paid $3.50/hr. to start and time and a half on Sundays and holidays. The store would close at 5 pm on Sundays.
I miss Kmart. We had a nice Super K in Fairbanks Alaska which was closed right after Kmart declared Bankruptcy, I still remember smelling the little Cesar pizza as you entered the store. Currently one half of the building is being used for car storage, and Amazon is about to move in and use the other half.
The one in Concord California closed a few years ago around 2019 2020. My earliest memories are walking into that store and smelling the pizza and seeing the ice cream stand. Had a full on ice cream parlor inside that looks like a Baskin-Robbins. it also had a connected auto garage that you can get your car fixed at.i watched it go from a local One stop shop icon where kids would hang out buy food and play the games they had on display while Mom and Dad went shopping or got their car fixed to a husk and it was all preventable. When they ripped out the pizza parlor and the ice cream parlor that was an obvious decrease in quality when it came to the store in general. And the loss of foot traffic was immediately apparent but they never did anything about it. We saw a slight resurgence in foot traffic and people just hanging out at the store when they implemented the free to use computers but they ripped those out 3 years later and close the little internet cafe they made.
that sounds like such a fun shopping experience. it's unfortunate that so many others did that too. stores aren't what they used to be anymore. they don't care about quality or enjoyment.
I worked at KMart HQ in the 90s and the only thing I've been surprised at is that there are _any_ stores still around! The utterly boneheaded decisions by corporate were astounding. It was there that I finally truly understood what people meant by "Stepping over dollars to pick up pennies"
The whole building (where At Home is) used to be Kmart and the part you’re seeing was the garden center. The blue light special was a rolling box they had with a tall pole and a blue flashing light on top. They would pick an item to have a blue light special on and roll the light to that part of the store, turn it on and announce it over the intercom
Drove by there about a month ago. When I saw the sign, my mouth dropped and couldn't believe a Kmart still existed. The one in my town here in Tampa Bay, closed in like 2018 I believe. It sat empty for a very long time, until At Home and Sprouts Market took it over. Before it closed though, it looked very run down, dirty, and had the worst stock for the most expensive price. I wasn't surprised they went out of business.
Man, this is just sad, especially the clothing section. I used to love shopping at Kmart for clothes, even into the 10s. You could get decent stuff for pretty cheap. I still have a few cute dresses and pairs of shoes that have held up to this day. That’s fascinating they just shoved everything into the garden center, and they still don’t have many things to sell to fill it out. It looks like a particularly barren Family Dollar. Really interesting video. Not at all what I was anticipating.
I think one of the last remaining K-Marts is on Guam and I lived there when it opened back in 95. It was a HUGE opening and over half the island was there. The last time I was there was in 2008 and it was still thriving.
A kmart used to be right behind the mobile gas station my grandmother and step grandfather franchised in the 70s before he passed away in 1980. I will never forget climbing over the short wall between with my grandmother sister and brother to go for sandwiches and icees and barbie dolls for me and star wars figures for my brother while we stopped by in the day while my grandfather was running his station. My grandmother was the bookkeeper. Just a sweet memory from a time long ago. The kmart was unfortunately torn down in maybe 2005 or so.
I was born in 1997 (probably barely around the time of their peak; which was the same year Big Kmart debuted) and I do remember going to Kmart at the turn of the century (albeit just barely) and throughout at least half of my childhood in the early to mid 2000s as well as my adolescence and at the very beginning of my adulthood in the 2010s. My local childhood Kmart, which was located in Stuart, turned into a Sears Essentials in 2005, and then eventually closed in 2012. That same store had a Little Caesars until it was turned into a Sears Essentials, then the Little Caesars became the Sears Optical department all the way up until the store's closure. The Kmart/Sears Essentials is now an Old Time Pottery (which opened in either 2013 or 2014) and an Ollie's Bargain Outlet (which opened in late September of 2020). The last time I ever actually stepped foot into a Kmart was in late October of 2019 when the Vero Beach location was in the process of liquidating.
I get so emotional watching these, Kmart is where I did the majority of my school shopping when it was around. so many fond memories from my childhood. this particular Kmart looks like it used to be a Toys R Us, another fond memory from my childhood lol.
I remember looking at the parakeets in the pet section, messing with the security guards and launching walnuts off of the roof at Kmart in Concord California in the late 1970's. The building now sits vacant and unused, Kmart having shuttered in 2020.
I kind of remember my last trip to Kmart with my mom. She was devastated they were closing down the one closest to us. One of my last memories was in the electronics section, all the video games they were selling were pretty old, like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was 1/3 of their selection and that game was almost 7+ish years old and was their newest one. They just got so far behind that miracles couldn’t save them. It also didn’t help that Walmarts started popping up everywhere Kmart was and they wrecked them. 30 years ago, Walmart didn’t have as bad of a rep as it does now. I remember there used to be a smaller one before they remodeled that was actually pretty nice. It was like a dime store and this was in 97. Now, I’d rather have teeth pulled than step into that place and bear witness to how people behave in that store. Great Video!
A trip to Kmart used to feel like a trip to Walmart. We’d get everything there. School clothes, food, household stuff, decor,etc. I remember my grandparents loved Kmart, my grandma in particular would hang out there and would wait around the store for the blue light special. (Randomly in a day the intercom would announce “attention Kmart Shoppers_______ is now on blue light special” and then that item would be heavily discounted) then my grandparents would hustle over to get whatever it was that was on sale. My mom did it from time to time too, it’s how we got most of our household towels and kitchen appliances. Kmart was cool I really miss it. Target is doing a decent job filling the void though.
I'm a 90's baby. My mom used to take me to Kmart very frequently when i was a kid. They had lots of nice, affordable items for poor families. I liked kmart just as much as target and will miss it.
Ummm, we still have the largest Kmart left in the U.S, it’s on the island of Guam U. S. A. Guam is “technically” (time-zone wise) where America’s Day begins. I was shopping there last week for large swimming pools. Btw, Kmart on Guam is our Walmart, lol.
Thank you for mentioning Guam. Cause, I’ve lived on Guam for 33 years at 38 of my life. And I kid you not, Kmart is still one of those places that we still have locals and tourists that shops there. But with our recent DONKI store that just opened up, it’s gonna take awhile for the time being.
As someone who was born in 88 Kmart was the Target and Walmart! My Kmart shut down about 2 years ago. We would go for family photos in the Olan Mills, lunch at the Little Cesars, layaway for school shopping/Christmas. I remember the grand opening and throwing a fit on the floor because my mom was buying my sister a purse that I wanted😂 My first time bra shopping lol, riding my bike with my mom to Kmart, baby shopping for my daughter in 06. A lot of great memories❤
Wow! K-Mart...I recall in my childhood getting video games and toy cars & kMart was the spot to be. I recall my parents buying washers and dryers there as well. My last K-mart in the area was in Santa Rosa, before the building burned down. Bare stock, expired items and couldn't even find charcoal for the BBQ.
I remember going to this K-Mart all the time as a kid back when the store wasn’t confined to the garden section, it’s in the perfect part of Miami for a K-Mart, the area that’s further inland away from the touristy areas and not far from where the Palmetto Expressway meets I-95. A truly unremarkable area, perfect for K-Mart.
You hit the nail on the head when you said it feels like a local, corner store. K-Mart from what I remember was a legitimate competitor with Wal-Mart and Target at their peak. It wasn’t a corner store. There is something admirable to me about them going in that direction though. In my albeit limited experience, the biggest mistake that similar stores have made in the past is that they desperately try to maintain the superficial veneer of their peak. At those stores’ best, it feels fake. At those stores’ worst, they don’t have enough money left to actually get stuff to stock their shelves or serve their purpose. K-Mart does not have the money or resources that they did in their prime. It makes sense to me that any still existing K-Mart would put all of its resources into the bare essentials. It’s actually pretty admirable in my opinion!
when you said you felt like you shouldn't be there gave me flashbacks. when i was a kid back in the 90s that's where you went where i lived. i hadn't been to one in about 20 years and i decided to stop in when i was looking for something and immediately after entering i felt this urge to get the hell out.
This is both nostalgic, and depressing. A one-time retail giant now on life support. In the 70s and 80s they could hang with Walmart. Not anymore. R.I.P. Kmart..thanks for the memories.
I live near here as well. I was born in 88, & family moved from NY to Miami in 1992. I have many fond memories of this K-Mart in its heyday, getting many of my first video games & music Cd's from artists like Eminem & KoRn here. It used to be bustling with lots of products and many different sections of the store selling electronics, garden equipment, plants & furniture for indoor and outdoor, fridges, the whole 9 yards. I actually worked there in 2017, and boy was it surprisingly busy, but by then the electronic section was already gone, and they were selling really really generic washing machines and refrigerators for extremely high prices, and they were running the store with the same old IBM computers from 1995, so doing something as simple as using customer points on their purchases required magic. They wanted us to make customers buy this stupid credit card that would only work at Kmart, and it was really difficult for me to genuinely sell it. This Kmart is dying one of the slowest deaths of any store ever next to the Best Buy that is just a couple of blocks down. They be taking out like five shelves a year.
I have a clip of the store right before it was moved to the garden section. Thank you for documenting this store! ru-vid.comktjMa031Itg?si=3Ye6yYacSNNq9F7F
K-Mart had a delicious Cafe where you could get tasty sandwiches & ICEEs! Blue Light Specials were cool especially during Back to School, Halloween & Christmas
Been a while since our local Kmart closed. They had a small deli section where you could get a sub sandwich for a ridiculously low price - not great, but not enormously different from Subway. Also a great place for hunting and fishing supplies.
I went to the KMart in Miami. They had consolidated all the merchandise to, what had been the garden center, in preparation of opening a new KMart in a vacant store they were moving to.
I remember Kmart in Goleta, California from the Fall of 1983 to 2018. Nice memories. There were a good number of Kmart’s in “Little London” (AKA Colorado Springs, Colorado) and all of them were decent for the most part. I have two magnets from the Kmart that was located on North Nevada in Little London promoting Little Caesar’s Pizza inside that specific one (they say clearly in bold letters INSIDE KMART). They could become Collectors Items since it is no longer in business; but for yours truly, there is that nostalgic, sentimental feeling that I get when I see them. It was good that “Wallyworld” (AKA Walmart) got some competition from them all those years ago. Where Kmart really went south was when the corporate folks in Michigan bought up Sears and a few other companies (and sadly bankrupted them as well). Other than that, Kmart stores were alright. Thank you for the “Blue Light Special Memories” and all of the fun shopping moments, Kmart! 🛒👍👍💯😊
I worked at a k-mart in 2016 as a second job. I originally applied there because I was on a huge vaporwave-nostalgia kick at the time, and all of the old worn out signage from the late 90's and early 00's was something I genuinely vibed with. It actually felt like I was a kid again walking down the isles. That place sucked ass. The store was run like a complete scam operation. If someone returned a broken item in a box, we were told to get the item from customer service and put it back on the shelf to sell. We had items in there from 2008 still on the sale floor, and that's not an exaggeration. Old tools, duralast car batteries, and other miscellaneous items in boxes that were covered in dust, or light-damaged from sitting under the fluorescents. We had piles and piles of old Bakugan arenas with the first run branding and logos that would sit on a dirty bottom shelf behind rows of other playsets and arenas. Again, this was 2016, lol. The store itself was old, not in a vaporwavey nostalgic/analogue memories way. Just old. Rotting. Smelled like mildew and polyester. Anyway, I only worked there for a week, so I don't have a full picture of the downfall, but I still get legal letters to this day about Sears Co.'s bankruptcy filings. Fun stuff.
Back in my childhood back in the 90's. My dad used to take me shopping at my local Kmart every Saturday. We would shop for Plastic golf balls, Line for my dad's lawn edger, one gallon bubble soap for blowing bubbles, and Craftsman hardware tools. I also remember shopping at night with the whole household in the evening to by camping supplies the day before my family went camping. Oh good good times. 12 years ago was the last time I remember shopping at my local Kmart but by myself as an adult but for toiletries and other necessities only. It was so sad too because more than half the shelfs were completely empty and it would close its doors for good in 2013. It got repurposed into Target in 2018.
Thank you for sharing this man. Its comments like these I like to see because they're so personal. Your childhood sounded so fun and I love the traditioin of going every Saturday lol
where i live there was a Kmart just a couple blocks away. i’m not sure when it opened but it closed in 2019. I went there to spend my Christmas money every year up it till it closed. The sad part was every year it got worse, dirty, worse inventory, and just sad. Towards the end I didn’t even spend my money there bc it was just slop it reminded more of a bargain hunt or a goodwill more than anything.
This place feels more like a Roses or Ollie's than a K-Mart. In fact one K-Mart near me split into a Roses, an Ollie's, and a gym. There used to be 8 locations in my tri-county area in coastal Mississippi, with several locations shuttering in 2002 and replaced by other discount stores such as Big Lots. The last location in my area closed in 2019. When I was a kid, K-Mart was a worthy rival to Wal-Mart and actually had more local stores than Wal-Mart did (until 1999 there were only 5 Wal-Marts, vs. 8 K-Marts). I miss the gumball machines and the coin-operated rides in front of the store.
There used to be one next to me in nj also. My gramma would take me shopping there so seeing the last one in jersey close made me sad. Def nice to see you’re recording this! Brought back a lot of memories!
The ones in the Virgin Islands U.S. and Guam U.S. are doing good, probably because neither Target nor Walmart have decided to go there to press the issue. The Australia / New Zealand Kmarts started off as a Kresge project, but are now wholly run by the domestic partner company. It's the same with Sears in Mexico. Sears Roebuck started it up, but it's now entirely a part of the Carlos Slim retail conglomerate.
Kmart was in busines well into the 2000's. They didn't all start closing until 2018. It wasn't just a 90's thing. All the Kmart stores in my area were still around in until 2020. There was one left until about 2 years ago.
I remember seeing NES games when the N64 was out, digging through the piles of disorganized toys in the toy aisle, and checking out the bowling balls. The glory days of Kmart. Better times.
idk where this location is at (somewhere in miami i think?) but there’s a few locations in US territories like guam and the USVI that are still open if i remember correctly. also a separate and formerly related australian chain that is pretty dominant over there still exists as well
The blue light was usually on a small rolling cart by the front cash registers. Once the store turned the blue light on the sale would last for 15 minutes.
I worked at a Kmart around 2011 for about a year. They always put those sale stickers up and rotate them out weekly. We would spend one night every weekend placing sheets of stickers on a majority of the products in the store. I guess people are more likely to buy a product if they believe it is on "sale".
Kmart always felt like time traveling to the early 90s or before ( born in 94 myself) but this store doesn't resemble it other than the random selection of items
Man K-mart used to be my jam when I was a kid, we went all the time and there was this cool Little Caesar's w/ playplace in ours. I always had memories of getting the special orange Nickelodeon VHS tapes from that Kmart. It was so sad when it closed. All I have left to remember them by I found a few years ago while cleaning out the garage. I found my 2nd birthday party party hat from Little Caesar's in 1995. Nostalgia hits hard and if you really learn why K-marts and Sears' went so downhill it might just make you infuriated. That being said though, fun times.
My Mom loved and shopped at Kmart all the time. My brother worked there many years ago. The store to the right the "at Home" used to be the main building of Kmart. What you're walking in used to be just Garden and Lawn Furniture. They must have downsized the store back while ago.
This particular building looks like it might have been a different business before Kmart moved in. Mainly because of the shape of the air vents on the ceiling. Every single Kmart that was built to be a Kmart from the start has its signature "Kmart style" circular air vents on the ceiling of all of its stores. Since this store lacks those vents, I feel like this building was not always a Kmart but a different business prior to this.
Here in Australia we still have K Mart, my husband works at a K Mart store, he has been working there for 30 years. Our local K Mart store has been going for nearly 50 years, the same shopping Center, it's also the one my husband works at.
In the 90s k mart was almost like what Target is today, i faintly remember Big Kmart but i remember being smaller than wal marts but just as packed. My parents used to go to the Kmart to buy pretty much everything From clothes to jewelry, shoes, food. I also remember them having like a small food court with like pizza, popcorn and drinks like i said almost to what Target is today
I heard that the Miami KMart was downsized, but I didn't think it was going to be this small. If a department store like this is downsized, I'm pretty sure that this store will be closed in the next couple of years. It really surprises me that KMart hasn't thrown in the towel after years of decline. There are 6 stores left stateside and in the US territories. The only place where KMart is thriving is in Australia and New Zealand.
We had a Kmart but I don’t really remember it. All I can remember is that they had this thing and it was a video machine. I remember you pressed a button of a movie and it showed a preview of the movie on a screen. The building sat empty for years and now it’s a hardware store. I don’t even remember when our Kmart even closed to be honest I was still really young maybe 8 or 9 years old at the time. Plus I live in Canada and we had Zeller’s and that store was round for the longest time and was one of the best stores.
All of the K-Marts in New Jersey are even closed. The only two K-Marts in New Jersey I ever came across back in 2020 (which was a year before it shut down) was in Kearny, New Jersey and Belleville, New Jersey.
K-Mart in the 90s and early 2000's was a big competitor to Target. Both stores had nearly idential layouts, color schemes, and prices. I remember the food court that had Little Cesars and Icee. It was always packed and there were sales up the wahoo. The competition was too fierce with Target and Walmart.
I remember back in the 80's going to Kmart & my brother, mom & I would get a frozen coke. Some times we would only get one & share it. Back then I believe Kmart was the only place to get one. Also, I remember they had a horse outside that you could ride & I would ride it all the time.
One of my earliest memories is shopping in Kmart with my mom in the 80s. The blue light at that time was a revolving blue light like you would see on top of an 80s police car, mounted on top of a pole on a mobile cart. When the announcement came on and the blue light came on everyone would make a mad rush towards it to get in on the deal. Back then it was a much bigger store than in your video, not as big as a full size Walmart is today but more comparable to an average grocery store in size, with all the racks low enough that you could see the blue light flashing throughout the store.
