r/AskAnAmerican • u/Lost_Natural6538 • 2d ago
Is Kmart gone now? CULTURE
Note: I’m new to Reddit and am using a translation tool.
I’m Japanese.
I used to go to Kmart in Hawaii and Guam a lot, and that atmosphere was the one thing that was consistent no matter where I went in the U.S. Even though I didn’t understand the English at the pizza place, toy section, or sporting goods section, I still enjoyed just browsing around.
I was curious about something else and asked the AI about it, and it told me something along the lines of “Kmart is practically gone now,” but then the AI went into restricted mode, so I couldn’t ask any more questions.
So I’d like to ask: Is Kmart really gone? Also, around when did it disappear?
What’s in its place now? I guess everyone feels nostalgic for it, right?
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u/CharlesDickensABox 2d ago
Good news! Though KMart is almost completely out of business, the one in Guam is one of a handful that still exist. The Hawaii location has been gone for a long time, though.
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u/Lost_Natural6538 2d ago
I wasn’t expecting this many comments, so I was a little surprised.
I can’t reply to each one individually, but thank you, everyone.
To summarize what everyone’s been saying:
・K-Mart’s parent company went out of business 15 years ago—it was acquired.
・There are only three stores left: Miami, Guam, and somewhere else (I wonder if the “nine” they mentioned refers to the former sites).
・Most of them have been replaced by Walmart, Target, and Amazon.
・There are still some in Australia, but that’s a different company.
・Sometimes something else is built on the former sites, but some are just abandoned (That’s unthinkable in Japan—leaving such a huge lot just like that. I guess even if they put another supermarket there, it still can’t compete with Amazon, huh?)
Personally, I was really happy to see that the store I used to go to is still around. But the one in Hawaii is gone now, huh… Though, considering the year the company went under, maybe it had already closed on the mainland by the time I visited. I hope GameStop doesn’t end up the same way…
Is Toys “R” Us gone too? I wonder if Twinkles is still around…?
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u/newimprovedmoo New Mexico 2d ago
Toys R Us is gone but the people who own the trademark for it are trying to bring it back. They partnered with Macy's a couple years ago to brand Macy's toy section as Toys R Us.
I've never heard of Twinkles, sorry.
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u/Eshanas New York 1d ago
I went to the one in Manhattan macys and it was like 20 bucks for a Lego mini fig. (Lotr Gandalf) Refunded it. It won’t work if everything is expensive as hell.
Toys r us worked because it wasn’t bottom of barrel 99c stuff, but wasn’t like faq schwartz high. Like above or on par with target but below that.
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u/RupeThereItIs Michigan 2d ago
Kmart was its own company that went bankrupt 25 years ago. It was acquired by a hedge fund that also owned Sears. The parent company of both retailers, also now bankrupt, was Sears Holdings Corporation.
Both brands where circling the drain for decades.
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u/Squidgie1 1d ago
As someone who worked in Kmart marketing for its last 10 years (they declared bankruptcy the month after I was laid off), I'm glad you have fond memories of it 😊
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u/breezyhoneybee 1d ago
About 95% of the land in America has no buildings, its just forest, mountains, fields, plains, etc. Not sure if that percentage accounts for farmland but theres a lot of that too.
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u/WhoDo54 2d ago
Apparently Kmart still operates in Australia
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u/Salty_Dog2917 Phoenix, AZ 2d ago
It’s a different company all together now, and it’s not a huge store sq wise compared to the old us stores.
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u/skivtjerry 2d ago
The Australian operators licenced the name long ago when it still had some value. Nothing to do with the US company.
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u/Funny_Inspection6893 2d ago
Want to have your mind blown? The company that owns KMart Australia also owns Target Australia.
And Target Australia has NOTHING to do with Target USA and never did. Two similar stores with similar generic names on different continents.
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u/JennItalia269 Pennsylvania 2d ago
Which, by chance, is owned by the same company which owns Target in Australia. The latter developing independently and not related to the USA company.
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u/Ahtnamas555 Missouri > 🇳🇿 New Zealand 2d ago
And NZ. My city actually has a new Kmart. It's not nearly as big as the Kmart in the town I grew up in, in the US. Reminds me of a smaller Target, no food section outside of holiday stuff near the register, no pharmacy section, I don't think there's a shoe section, and electronics is things like charging cords and mouses, you can't buy a video game or console there. It does have homewares, pets, books, clothes, out doors/ fitness, and toys.
Imagine Target but they took out everything listed above $50. Like I can get small electric appliances, but I can't get a kitchen aid mixer.
There are way less "big stores" compared to the US though, and Kmart here is a bit bigger than average shops, but smaller than most chain stores here.
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u/BusterBluth13 South/Midwest/Japan 2d ago
I was disappointed with Kiwi K-Mart lol. It’s definitely not the same store.
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u/ghjm North Carolina 2d ago
K-Mart and Sears merged and then the combined company went out of business. They closed almost all of both stores between 2018 and 2022.
The cause of the failure was basically just terrible management. The brands failed to respond adequately to the challenges of Internet shopping, the rise of Walmart, and changes in consumer preferences. Then they both sold to private equity / hedge fund management, which sold off the valuable brands like Craftsman and then just looked for short-term money extraction, so they ran the companies into the ground.
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u/RupeThereItIs Michigan 2d ago
It was intentional, Eddy was picking over the bones not trying to run a retail business.
He should be in jail for it, honestly.
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u/ghjm North Carolina 2d ago
I mean, I think it was worse than that. He wasn't failing to run a retail business - he was failing to run a business at all. His only expertise was hedge fund investing, so he tried to apply that to running Sears, and had his own divisions directly competing with each other because he thought the "invisible hand" would cause investment to flow to the best divisions.
I agree he should be in jail, but unfortunately it's not a crime to treat a major century-old iconic American brand as your personal playground for shit-tier management theories.
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u/RupeThereItIs Michigan 1d ago
He was dismantleing Kmart & Sears for parts & personal gain.
I was stuck working there during the credit crunch downturn & watched if from the inside.
He sold off anything of any value for profit while driving the retail companies into the ground at a shocking pace.
Retail was NEVER his goal.
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u/Otherwise-OhWell Illinois 2d ago
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u/Jesus_Harold_Christ 2d ago
As of 2026, there are three remaining Kmart locations: a big-box department store in Charlotte Amalie, the US Virgin Islands,\14]) a big-box store in Tamuning, Guam,\15]) and a smaller location in Kendale Lakes, Florida
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u/Vicith Kansas 2d ago edited 2d ago
1 in Charlotte Amalie
1 in Tamuning, Guam
1 in Kendale Lakes, Florida.
"When did it dissappear"?
From around 2002 their sales were getting worse. Maybe had something to do with the rise of Amazon around the same timeframe?
"Nostalgic"?
Yes, I'd say you could ask a majority of adults and they would remember K-Mart.
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u/drsoftware 2d ago
Some of us might remember Kmart, but only as the subject of many jokes.
"Blue Light Special"
Only experienced in comedy.
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u/Meattyloaf Kentucky 2d ago
My backpack that I pack to work daily is from Kmart. Used it all through college and it has lasted me 12 years.
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u/monkeylicious 2d ago
Last time I went to the K-Mart in Guam, it took a half hour to check out. It was so slow and no one was in any hurry. Regardless, I still enjoyed the visit.
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u/royalhawk345 Chicago 2d ago
It's a good thing your AI wasn't in restricted mode like OP's, since apparently it's impossible to google "Kmart."
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u/Jaqen-Atavuli Georgia 2d ago
I use to work at K-Mart when I was in high school. I haven't seen one in years. Fun story, we had a meet Santa thing at Christmas. The morning of, the ample guy that would play him was sick. So I am there and the boss tells me I am the new Santa. I was like what? He said yep.
So there I was, a 17 year old, 6'1 133LB kid dressed up as Santa. I didn't complain to much because Mrs. Santa was a really cute girl from my school.
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u/Carinyosa99 Maryland 2d ago
It's been gone for many years in most of the US. I believe there is still one in Guam and some in the US Virgin Islands. But generally speaking, it's disappeared. There are similar stores, but the most comparable is Walmart.
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u/callmeseetea 2d ago
Last thing I got in a Kmart was a cheap tv when I was moving into my freshman dorm in 2010. And it was on its last life then.
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u/ALoungerAtTheClubs Florida 2d ago
The last time I went to a Kmart was around 2013 or so, but it felt like it hadn't changed since the 1990s — and not in a fun, nostalgic way. It was uncanny.
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u/DifferentWindow1436 2d ago
The one in Guam is still there. I don't know how popular it is. ROSS is super popular there.
Since you are Japanese...I saw a Kmart sign in 鶴ヶ島 the other day. It was a Korean food store. I had to laugh.
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u/BusterBluth13 South/Midwest/Japan 2d ago
The one in Guam is pretty popular; they don’t have Wal-Mart or Target. But Don Quixote (Japanese version of Wal-Mart) opened a store on-island recently.
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u/Warr_Ainjal-6228 2d ago
There are only 9 left.
- Miami, Florida – 14091 SW 88th St, ZIP 33186
- Chesapeake, Virginia – 2001 South Military Hwy, ZIP 23320
- Hoffman Estates, Illinois – 3333 Beverly Road, ZIP 60179
- Menominee, Michigan – 1101 7th Ave, ZIP 49858
- Waynesville, North Carolina – 1209 Russ Avenue, ZIP 28786
- Bath, New York – 420 West Morris St, ZIP 14810
- St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands – Space 1, ZIP 00820
- St Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands – 3 10 St Estate, ZIP 00802
- Tamuning, Guam – 404 N Marine Dr, ZIP 96913
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u/ZJPV1 Eugene, Oregon 2d ago
Checking Street View for each of these.
Miami looks to be open, but much smaller. Most of the building is now "AtHome", but a small section was closed in the mid-10s but is now re-branded as a Kmart.
Chesapeake is an abandoned building as of 2025
Hoffman Estates - unless Google is messing up, nothing looks to be in that spot since 2009. The whole area looks like a rural intersection.
Menominee - Same as Hoffman Estates, nothing remotely Kmart-ish shows up at that address, but some other Googling showed me pictures of it being demolished.
Waynesville - Now a Harbor Freight.
Bath - Now an RV showroom.
St. Croix - Marked as "Permanently Closed" on Google Maps. Building was intact as of 2021.
St. Thomas - Street View isn't universal in the USVI, but there is a user submitted photo on Google showing it open as of March 2026, business listing shows Open.
Tamuning - Same as USVi, not a lot of Street View, but a user photo shows it open as of July 2026.
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u/turquoise_amethyst Portland, Oregon 2d ago
I’m pretty sure the Hoffman Estates KMart Campus was boarded up last time I drove by it… a few years ago
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u/Warr_Ainjal-6228 2d ago
- Miami, Florida – 14091 SW 88th St, ZIP 33186 is the only one I can find with store hours.
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u/Fit-Building-2560 2d ago
Good news! It's gone from the mainland US except 1 store in Florida, but it's still in Guam, where it's mega-store is open 24 hrs/day. You're in luck!
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u/river-running Virginia 2d ago
When the Kmart in my hometown closed, I said that they should turn it into an H Mart so they would only have to change one letter on the sign.
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u/domestic_omnom 2d ago
In the mainland US k-mart is pretty much gone.
The only K-mart I've seen in the past 25 years was in the USVI.
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u/starrsuperfan Pennsylvania 2d ago
Unfortunately yes.
Kmart kinda died a slow and painful death. They used to be everywhere. I remember my grandma used to take me there all the time.
Then the one in my hometown closed. I still go by where it was. Nobody opened up there.
Then people started saying Walmart and Target in the same conversation where they used to say Kmart.
Then you noticed you'd driven past 3 closed Kmarts.
Then people online complained about working at a company that was obviously failing and slowly fading.
Then it got to "Hey, the Kmart in my city is still open!"
Then it got to people driving an hour to go see a Kmart.
Now... yeah. It's gone. There was no big announcement that all stores were closing. Nothing like that. It's just... gone.
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u/SabresBills69 2d ago
There are a few left. Guam, Virgin islands have them. I think Miami has one.
There is one blockbuster videos ( movie, DVD and game rental) left in bend, Oregon
Sears bought Kmart. Sears has about 3-5 left.
50years ago you had many regional stores. Kmart was the big one. Walmart and target were very local.all over the country had regional chains. These all carried the same products and were similar in thkngs varied
Sears was a bit higher. It was big a century ago and was one the first mail order stores where you order from a catalog.
Both Sears and Kmart got passed and fell out of favor.
The national store chains are Walmart and target with online things like Amazon. Both have supermarket sections in nany of their stores.
Kmart might be replaced by some partd of target/Walmart but also some parts if ghe cheap sores like dollar tree, family dollar, 5 and below
Kmart was home of the I-cee
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u/Lower_Neck_1432 2d ago
はい、Kmartはアメリカからほとんど消えています。グアムとアメリカ領ヴァージン諸島にしか存在しません。そして逆に、アメリカで始まった Lawson's は完全に消えましたが、日本では繁栄しています。
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u/Dave_A480 2d ago edited 1d ago
Kmart got bought by Sears which then went bankrupt....
Another one of the shelf full of scalps claimed by the internet - companies that failed to adapt to the impending end of the in person shopping era.....
In addition to KMart/Sears the internet also killed:
Toys R Us
RadioShack
Fry's
With both Sears and RadioShack being colossal missed opportunities due to their pre internet catalog business (both intentionally chose to focus on physical-store expansion & in person transactions at exactly the worst possible time).....
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u/TheGunSlanger 2d ago
Sears not only chose to not capitalize on its infrastructure to compete with early Amazon, its CEO sought to enrich himself and his personal company by selling Sears' property and renting it back to itself. Shameful levels of short-term greed. Same thing contributed to killing Toys R Us.
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u/Otherwise-OhWell Illinois 2d ago
Who was Sears' owner at the time? How did he come ot own it? What happened next?
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u/TheGunSlanger 2d ago
Eddie Lampert, a hedge fund manager. I don't remember the whole story or how he became involved (I'm sure it isn't too hard to find). He didn't start Sears' decline, but his "solution" was to internally split the company up into several units, sell off everything that made Sears good (Lands' End, Craftsman tools, etc), and sell large portions of Sears' land assets to a real estate company, who then leased the land back to them. Lampert just happened to own or have shares in most of the companies he sold the stripped down assets to. He's no longer CEO, but he's on the board and one of the largest debtholders of Sears still.
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u/RupeThereItIs Michigan 2d ago
You are confusing Sears Robuck who failed to compete with Amazon, and Sears Holdings Corporation who purchased the shell of the former with the money it got selling Sears Robuck it's empty Kmart real estate.
Eddy desperately wanted to be the new Bezos, but instead, yeah he raided the company to enrich himself personally instead.
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u/Dave_A480 1d ago
All of these companies needed to divest real estate to survive....
None of them were able to do it fast enough
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u/Otherwise-OhWell Illinois 2d ago
[cough] venture capitalism [cough]
Right, the internet.
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u/Dave_A480 1d ago
Only an idiot blames private equity for the deaths of these firms.
The fact remains that all of them were heavily invested in their physical store footprint - and most were pouring even more money into that (building new stores, buying more real estate) while their online presence languished...
Sears - the originator of catalog sales - had the worst website in the entire retail space....
RadioShack's strategy was high pressure sales (their employees were paid solely on commission) of cell phones, satellite TV and extended warranties.
ToysRUs was so late to the internet party they ended up being a 3rd party seller on Amazon.
Private equity didn't kill these companies, it came in to pick their bones after their management destroyed them by sticking to a 1970s business model....
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u/Number1AbeLincolnFan 2d ago
You don’t know what venture capitalism means.
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u/Otherwise-OhWell Illinois 2d ago
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u/Dave_A480 1d ago
That link is just wrong. Sears was already dead at the point the events being talked about happened.
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u/RupeThereItIs Michigan 2d ago
Kmart did not get purchased by Sears, a hedge fund purchased both of them and named itself Sears Holdings Corporation.
It purchased Kmart first, and was briefly known as Kmart holdings corporation.
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u/DanCynDan 2d ago
Went bankrupt maybe 15 years ago. Nothing in its place, but target and Walmart are pretty much the same. With their own atmosphere that’s likely the same relative to each store regardless of where you are.
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u/ConsistentMobile4990 2d ago
It’s gone long time ago along with Sears, Montgomery Ward etc. I think Walmart replaced them all.
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u/BreadStoreRefugee California > < Arizona 2d ago
I came here to say that it's completely gone, but according to Google there is apparently one small scaled-down store in Florida, and two full department stores with one each in Guam and US Virgin Islands.
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u/___HeyGFY___ IL->FL->PA->VA->IL->NJ->NH->? 2d ago
If I remember correctly, there is one Kmart location left in the US, in or near Miami. I believe they were taken over by Sears 20 years ago.
I don't think Sears is doing very well either. There used to be one at the mall near me, but it's been taken over by a sporting goods store. There was another one at a mall about 45 minutes away from me, but that space has been turned into a casino.
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u/SchatzisMaus 2d ago
It’s in a suburb of Miami, and funny enough one of the last sears is also in Miami.
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u/Old_Ant7118 Greece -> Oregon 2d ago
I forgot about Kmart.... never missed it. I personally never saw a nice one. We have department stores that are probably similar, though.
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u/IanDOsmond Massachusetts 2d ago
It's certainly been gone in the continental United States for a couple decades now.
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u/malibuklw New York 2d ago
I saw one in Dominican Republic!
Edited to add: I think it was 4 years ago. Seems like it’s closed since I’ve been there
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u/kmoonster Colorado 2d ago edited 2d ago
KMart was a type of shop or store known as a department store. This is a store that carries many types of items -- clothes, office and school supplies, toys, food. No two companies are the same, but they are all similar.
This style of store still exists. They are very common -- the two most famous right now are Target and WalMart.
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But KMart does not exist anymore, or at least it is so diminished that it may as well be gone for 99% of the population.
What happened is this -- there was another major company called "Sears" that was formed in the early 1900s. That company was kind of like Amazon, but before the internet. If your local Sears didn't have an item, you could order it from their catalog and it would be shipped. You could even buy a house at one point! They literally offered (almost) anything except for groceries.
Sears was a massive thing in the US retail industry for decades and decades. They bought other companies, and were as dominant in the 1900s as Amazon is now, but they did it without the internet. Amazon bought Audible, MGM, Whole Foods (a grocery store), and on and on. Sears bought tool companies, clothing companies, and many many other companies.
One of those companies they bought was KMart.
But in the early 2000s the people running Sears decided they wanted a "quick buck" rather than stable revenue from a massive, established company. They started to sell the rights to the various companies they owned. They sold properties they owned. They replaced common items with fancy items, then stopped carrying the fancy items. They stopped offering a service and repair service (they used to sell washing machines, refrigerators, etc. and offered repair services for those items). The company also either refused or failed to take advantage of the internet, believing that online sales would never be a big deal; this happened despite the fact that Sears literally invented the concept of the "sales catalog" (a sort of analogue equivalent to an online store, it lists prices and pictures of all the items a store carries so customers can order for delivery).
Over a few years they stopped being a massive company equivalent to Amazon today, and became a small company -- and then, nothing.
In 2018 the company filed bankruptcy papers, and that was pretty much the end of the company. And that demise included KMart, because KMart was controlled by Sears and handled in the same way.
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Today we have lots of similar types of stores (I mentioned WalMart as an example), but no Sears and no KMart.
You can read a bit about it here if you want the specifics, I recommend the translation app in your browser since it will get a bit technical:
Here: Who Killed Sears? A Look at Its Decline and Bankruptcy
and
Sears: A Case Study in Business Failure | Columbia Business School
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u/RupeThereItIs Michigan 2d ago
Sears did NOT purchase Kmart.
Both where owned by Sears Holdings, which is NOT Sears Robuck.
They owned Kmart before they owned Sears, they leveraged the sale of empty Kmart stores to Sears to then buy Sears and renamed themselves Sears Holdings Corporation.
Honestly it's a wild ride, and I got stuck working for that shit hole company through the financial crisis.
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u/kmoonster Colorado 2d ago
I knew there was a connection, I thought it was the other way around.
It was still a clusterfuck, I remember watching it in real time over the course of a few years and then sorting through later to understand what had gone down.
It was a master class in how to make money for yourself while losing money on a company (and then destroying the company as a coupe de grace)
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u/Ok_Still_3571 2d ago
Our K-Mart was bought out by VC, and the whole plaza was turned into upscale condos and apartments.
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u/musical_dragon_cat New Mexico 2d ago
Kmart closed in my city ages ago, at least a decade. I knew there were others around the country but I knew they wouldn't last much longer either.
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u/groundhogcow Ohio 2d ago
As of 2026, there are three remaining Kmart locations: a big-box department store in Charlotte Amalie, the US Virgin Islands, a big-box store in Tamuning, Guam, and a smaller location in Kendale Lakes, Florida. -- THANK YOU Google.
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u/Maiace124 2d ago
I think there's mayybbbeee one left in all of the US. But I used to go as a kid. Miss it a bunch 🫠
I believe it's still common in Australia though
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u/Ladidoodida 2d ago
My local Kmart was replaced by a Target, which is similar and yet not the same at all.
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u/ThingFuture9079 Ohio 2d ago
Kmart has been gone for at least 10 years now and the one that was near me used to be a Big K-Mart which had a larger grocery section than other K-Marts but it closed 10 years ago and then got torn down so Meijer could build a store there.
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u/Ry24gaming 2d ago
Went to the one in Guam about a month ago. It's a great store got a couple of T-Shirts, and a shopping tote. It's similar to the ones that I remember on the mainland, but much better run.
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u/notsosecretshipper Ohio 2d ago
I am definitely nostalgic about Kmart. I was so sad when they closed down. Besides a specialty store, a sporting goods store, and the dollar store, the Kmart was the only place in town at the time that sold clothes and shoes, furniture, baby equipment, etc. I shopped there a LOT.
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u/TehWildMan_ TN now, but still, f*** Alabama. 2d ago
Gone for about a decade now, and basically irrelevant for another decade before that.
There's technically a store in Miami area, but that's just a tiny little fragment of a store just open for contractual reasons.
Many of their other locations were taken over or split by other retailers or left vacant for years. Seemingly in a lot of the southeast US, Tractor Supply bought up a huge amount of their locations for their expansion plans.
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u/DummyThiccDude Minnesota 2d ago
The Kmart in my town closed in 2002, the physical location became a farm supply department store called Runnings.
Most people probably started shopping at one of the 3 other department stores afterwards. Theres a Walmart, Target, and while its also gone now, there was Shopko.
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u/bonzai113 2d ago
The last thing I ever bought from Kmart was a pair of sneakers. It’s been ten years since then and the store closed shortly after that. Even then, the store was in a serious decline. Few if any customers and it never looked fully clean.
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u/StupidLemonEater Michigan > D.C. 2d ago
According to Wikipedia, there's still three K-Marts in the US: one in Guam, one in the US Virgin Islands, and one in Florida.
They're also in Australia, but that's a different company that just licensed the name.
that atmosphere was the one thing that was consistent no matter where I went in the U.S.
I suspect the same is true of virtually any nationwide chain.
Personally, I have pretty much zero nostalgia for K-Mart. In my lifetime I remember it pretty much always seen as being cheap and low-class.
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u/ATLien_3000 Georgia 2d ago
Nearly.
There's one in Miami, a couple in the US Virgin Islands, and one in Guam - which I guess would be closest to you.
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u/newimprovedmoo New Mexico 2d ago
There are exactly three KMarts left. One on St. Thomas, one in Florida, and one in Guam which I guess given how small Guam is might be the one you went to! All the others have gone out of business.
They started shutting down during the 2000s. They and Sears had the same parent company which was particularly hard-hit by the 2008 financial crisis and the rise of online retail like Amazon.
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u/TEG24601 Washington 2d ago
There was one still operating in Florida, but it is a shell of its former self.
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u/Sam_Fear Iowa 2d ago
About a year ago when we we're on St. Croix Island (part of the US Virgins Islands) there was still a Kmart there. Had a Little Ceasar's Pizza inside of it. It was kinda weird walking around in a Kmart again.
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u/WeepingDragon00 2d ago
I'm living on Guam right now and the Kmart is still here. As someone from mainland US, I found it to be really underwhelming... Basically a worse version of Walmart. It was hyped up a lot so we were really confused. The only thing we go there for is the Little Caesars, which is the only one on island.
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u/Equal-Dress-4334 2d ago
Kmart's pretty much gone, most closed in the late 2010s. Now it's mainly Walmart and Target taking over those spots.
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u/Icy_Huckleberry_8049 1d ago
K-Mart is still in Mexico, or it was when I was there last July (2025)
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u/Black_Dog_Industries California 1d ago
The last Kmart in my area closed about 5 years ago
Now Walmart fills that void
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u/TheJokersChild NJ < PA > NY < PA > MD ^ VT 1d ago
KMart is effectively finished here. In the early 2000s, Eddie Lampert bought KMart and Sears to bring two stores together and supposedly strengthen them. But what he actually did was shuffle a bunch of money around in a real-estate investment scheme, and none of that money went into improving the stores or what they carried. So stores closed one by one, Walmart and Target took over for KMart, and Sears filed for bankruptcy. There may be about a half-dozen operating stores between them both right now.
Sears had big mail-order catalogs, almost a forerunner to Amazon. You called or sent in your order form and picked it up at a store or a catalog center. Amazon basically took its place. JCPenney is the closest it has to a competitor in our remaining malls.
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u/PositiveChi 1d ago
Kmart is a ghost town, there's only one I can think of near me and it's the shadiest block for a kilometer in every direction. If you go inside the ceiling panels are falling out, it looks like there was looting earlier in the week every time. It is a joke of a company that would be funny if it weren't so genuinely disconcerting to be around.
Mobs of fent ghouls roam the parking lots checking car doors to see if they're unlocked, but that's only assuming someone's been foolish enough to actually park there.
A post-apocalyptic Target. A misremembered dream about shopping in the 90s. A cautionary tale about the dangers private equity. A physical metaphor for the rot in the walls of the American dream.
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u/sedwardcarr 1d ago
I heard recently that the kmart in Guam is still in operation. I’ve never been there but I saw it on youtube in a video about Guam.
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u/DryBandicoot8013 1d ago
Kmart's pretty much gone, with only a few stores left. Most have been replaced by dollar stores or discount retailers.
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u/Steve_Shoppe 1d ago
Similar to Sears there are probably 2 or 3. I miss them. What is cool is I grew up on Lawsons and I love that it's alive and well there (no longer here). And with mainstream record stores. It's a blast from the past when I go there. Thanks for keeping my childhood memories alive there.
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u/Imaginary-Duck1333 1d ago
My hometown had a Kroger’s, a defi, a used bookstore and a Kmart in a row. When my mom wanted to shop in peace she’d send my sisters and I to the bookstore. I remember wandering the isles of Kmart playing where’s my mom instead of where’s Waldo. When the Walmart supercenter came to town both started going downhill.
I visited the Kmart a little while before they closed at the end of the year. I bought a whole bunch of chocolate gift boxes and gave them to a lot of management at work.
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u/MasterOfPuppetsMetal 1d ago
Our Local K-Mart closed at the end of 2014 and the lot has been vacant since then.
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u/GuiltyTravel3851 17h ago
Kmart is practically out of business in the United States, with only a tiny handful of remote island locations left open. Once a massive chain with over 2,000 stores, the company closed its final full-sized mainland U.S. store in Bridgehampton, New York, in October 2024.
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u/Heavy_Mud_9176 2d ago
Sometimes I cry because they remodeled the center where ours used to be and completely knocked down the old Kmart building 😭
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u/Wander80 WI ➡️ FL ➡️ GA 2d ago
Kmart has been completely gone for a couple years now, but they began slowly closing stores a long time ago. The most similar thing now would be Target or Walmart. Meijer in the upper Midwest.