What happened to Kmart?

Question

When I was younger (about 15 years ago) Kmart used to be a decent place to shop. Recently going back I wonder what happened to it. It was a horror show of indifference and a mess of a place. Why did this happen? Why is this corpse of a retailer still in business?

Answer 1

their all closing down so is GAP,target, etc.

Answer 2

theres a BIG K by my house that place is nice really nice

Answer 3

I think Sears bought them.

Answer 4

They are owned by Sears now

Answer 5

they got bought by sears..but i saw 1 kmart in the suberbs though

Answer 6

alot of them r going out of business

Walmart took over

Answer 7

sears bought it i think

Answer 8

hahaha yea it's really ghetto now.

Answer 9

It got urban

Answer 10

that place smells terrible

Answer 11

Cause everyone runs to Wal Mart to support Communist China.

Answer 12

they went bankrupt and sears bought them out. Look at sears and you will understand.

Answer 13

First, a correction:  Kmart bought Sears, not the other way around.  They changed marketing strategy.  Plus, there is too much Martha Stewart influence in the store.  MSN news recently had an article stating that Martha Stewart is a "has been."  The  fad of Martha is long over... her reputation as an ex-con haunts her.

Target is steam rolling those two stores.

Answer 14

I'm not sure where you live, but the Kmart in my home town of Wasco is a wreck because it is too close to the Mexican border. (I think the border is now about 300 miles north of here!) Just kidding. Wasco is 200 plus miles north of the Mexican border, but Wasco is heavily hispanic and the shoppers are animals. Am I sure of what I am talking about? My client owns the shopping center where the Wasco Kmart is located and they also own the shopping center in Taft where their Kmart is located. In the Taft store everything is in it's place and neat and the store is clean. In Wasco it looks like the Marines hit the store on a "search and destroy" mission. Taft, California does not have hardly any hispanic citizens while Wasco does. Also, Kmart hires locals to run their stores and these are most often kids or adults who don't give a rat's a**. In Taft there is still a work ethic and a tendency to maintain some organization in society. In Wasco, and in the stores in Bakersfield there is a rape and pillage mentality that justifies throwing inventory on the floor without and consequence to the offending idiot. Case in point, 4 or 5 years ago about Christmas time I was in line to check out at the local Kmart with one family ahead of me. Their daughter who was probably 4 or 5 years old began projectile vomiting. The father had asked for a price check on a coat for his daughter and then set it aside because it was apparently too much. After his daughter puked her guts up and the soda pop and pizza was laying there still warm, the father just threw the coat on the floor to sop up the puke that his daughter had shared with everyone. Never in my wildest dreams would I try to do such an act with property that did not belong to me. But there is an attitude, at least here, that your property means nothing to me so get over it.

Answer 15

Kmart did not keep up with the times

Answer 16

So did I!!! Nothing happened to it, its just really unpopular now. They are thinking about shutting down the business. Also because Sears bought them now. But gotta admit, the other stores are wayyyyyy better! Please answer?: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...

Answer 17

Kmart is an example of a company that tried *desperately* to cut its way to growth.  It stopped investing in the appearence of the stores, the employee count in the stores and raised prices - hoping that some decent brands would make people ignore the fact that no one was around to check them out.  Bad decision making, bad upper management that was not responsive to the front lines.

Answer 18

Theyve actually been closing stores all over the place, there not doing so good. I'm nt exactly sure what happened either, i remember going to that place every weekend as a kid and now when i happen to come across one i go in, take a look around for a few seconds, and walk out. Its just dirty.

I'm know the ones around me went out of buisness about the time Martha Stewart got in all that stock trouble. Could be coincidence i guess.

Answer 19

Totally agree with you and to make matters worse Kmart is so low quality now and most of there products cost too much. I find them for cheaper at Target or Walmart. They should just close it.

Answer 20

Still in business because people need discounts.

Answer 21

Actually, contrary to popular belief, Sears does not own Kmart. It's the other way around. Several years ago Kmart began to focus on several other chains that operated under them (Sports Authority, Waldenbooks, etc.), rather than restructuring their own aging stores.

By the time Kmart focused on cleaning up in-house, their image was already tarnished, and sales had dropped. In 2002, this lead them to close many of their stores and file for bankruptcy.

2 years later, in 2004, under new management, Kmart bought out Sears, which had gone out of business. Instead of ditching the Sears name, they renamed the central corporation as Sears Holdings Corporation, since Sears still had a decent image.

But the problem with that is one failing company bought out a failed company, and now both are going under.

Answer 22

Yeah, I can't walk into a K-mart unless it's like my last resort. Ever since Sears bought them they have just been going down hill.

Answer 23

walmart is really taking over now i past kmart everday to go to walmart

Answer 24

When changes occur in such places as Kmart, it can be trace back to a change in management.  In this case, Kmart  was bought out by Sears and some know-it-all in corporate headquarters changes operating policy of the store, making it worse instead of better.

Answer 25

They filed for bankruptcy, and it's just been mismanaged.

The problem for Kmart is that they cannot compete with WalMart on price (because WalMart has a more efficient distribution system), nor can they compete with Target on quality.

About the only things I buy at Kmart are last minute Christmas gifts.  It was a 20 minute wait in line to check out at WalMart at 2 in the morning (but not a single register was idle), but there wasn't any line in Kmart.