On today's EJC Exploration we go EXPLORING ABANDONED KMART CAR SHOP WE GOT INSIDE
Soon there will be only three open Kmart stores in the U.S.
The Kmart store in Avenel, New Jersey, 15 miles south of New York City, is the latest store scheduled to permanently close on Saturday.
SB360 Capital Partners is managing the store closing sale, according to the liquidation firm's website.
Once it shutters, the number of Kmarts in the U.S. - once well over 2,000 -will be down to three in the continental U.S. and a handful of stores elsewhere, according to multiple reports, in a retail world now dominated by Walmart, Target and Amazon.
For now, Kmart stores in the continental U.S., continue to operate in Westwood, New Jersey; Bridgehampton, on New York’s Long Island; and Miami, Florida
.Both Sears and Kmart were owned by Sears Holdings, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2018 and narrowly escaped liquidation in early 2019. They were sold to their longtime investor and CEO, Eddie Lampert, who has kept them alive on a shoestring budget under the company name Transformco.
Together, Sears and Kmart have closed more than 3,500 stores and cut about 250,000 jobs in the past 15 years.
Kmart’s decline has been slow but steady, brought about by years of falling sales, changes in shopping habits and the looming shadow of Walmart, which coincidentally began its life within months of Kmart’s founding in 1962.
“Kmart was part of America,” said Michael Lisicky, a Baltimore-based author who has written several books on U.S. retail history. “Everybody went to Kmart, whether you liked it or not. They had everything. You had toys. You had sporting goods. You had candy. You had stationery. It was something for everybody. This was almost as much of a social visit as it was a shopping visit. You could spend hours here. And these just dotted the American landscape over the years.”