the ironic thing is Kmart in Australia is thriving and has been growing over the years. We have 24/7 stores now just to meet the demand, I even find myself visiting Kmart after work even if its midnight
@@ethancarbajal8496 K-marts have this cobbled-together almost post-apocolyptic vibe to them. This is true even when they aren't abandoned. It's like they took leftovers from other old box stores and glued them together in a way that looks only semi-purposeful. There's also a creepy sense that people and staff are missing from the store, like it was built for a body count that it can no longer attract (which is true). The product was often so carelessly stocked, it looked almost ransacked. To add to this, a lot of the remaining customers in the later years could look just as run-down as the stores themselves.
it's interesting to me how Target survived the onslaught of Walmart by focusing on quality and cleanliness whereas Kmart went head-to-head with Walmart on quantity and cheap products.
Not only K-Mart was a good place, it’s lifetime guarantee lasted unlike Walmart, when the Waltons sold the business the life time guarantee went with them.. Plus, back when the companies had to have a reason to get rid of you, now they don’t have to give ya a reason.. 🐎💩
@@rachelk7555 Back in the late 70s and 80s they were the only game in town. I do remember a new Target opening up. I loved it, but my mother was very cheap, and Target was, "expensive." Then Walmart came in the late 80s and it was all over.
Kmart was great when I was a kid, first place where my Mom could get us school clothes on lay-a-way. We didn't have a lot of money and I often got into fights for having low end clothing at school. Still thankful for what she was able to provide for my sister and I as a single Mother. RIP Mom, miss you.
K-mart always felt like it was gonna close. Uncleaned floors, items and clothes on the ground, a very old smell somewhat. My K-Mart got over ran by Walmart and Target when they arrived in my city.
There used to be a Big K-Mart down the street from my apartment but it went under almost immediately when Wal-Mart opened directly across the street from them. Last time I saw anybody in their parking lot was to watch a lunar eclipse
@@angiek3538 I’ve worked at all three, Trust me they clean at most of the Targets I’ve been to. Now Walmart is basically the new Kmart. Rundown and a miserable place to shop.
Over here in Australia, specifically Sydney, Kmart is owned by Target, and in a shopping mall I go to, there’s a Kmart which replaced an underperforming target. It’s interesting to understand the different brands worldwide aren’t all the same
I'm in Melbourne Australia, and you can probably find at least 100 K-Marts here, there are many in Australia. We are very tolerant to failure and avoid it very well, America just made too much of everything hence why so much of there things are going away and abandoned, there is not enough demand.
Kmart Australia being owned my target makes sense why they flourished. It's because Target nows how to stay trend forward, focus on merchandising and having clean crisp look. So I imagine Australia Kmarts got the upgrades to stay relevant with shoppers
Thanks for sharing this video I'm from the UK so we didn't have any K Mart stores we had woolworth stores, BHS, now those retail shops have gone we've lost it's a gift, our butchers etc & it's getting worse it's sad to see so many favourite stores gone.
My clearest memories of Kmart stores mostly involve just how *old* the buildings were, everything had that sort of "thirty years old dirty" where it's probably being cleaned but it's just so old and starting to decay that no amount of scrubbing can do away with it.
thats what i think of too. also what was my family doing in that frame? did we ever go there? who were the employees? what did their hair and clothes look like? when they moved the shelves to close did they find 30 year dirty items behind them?
They managed to do everything half assed. They built a bigger brand new store to replace the old one in my hometown and didn't even have full grocery. They called it a "pantry" with old gas station coolers that rattled. Stuff like that is why Walmart smoked them.
This! I remember thinking as a kid maybe I just didn’t get it because the store still sucked when my mom took me back after they were bought out. Looking around I knew that whatever they had tried, hadn’t worked and that our store would be closing soon. A few years later it did. The only good part was the pizza place which always felt like a different world. Everything was plain white and it was filled to the brim with the most basic and plain clothes ever. There was as much mayhem as Ross without any of the potential good finds. A really bizarre store.
We had one of the last Kmarts open in my area and when I went in there it was like stepping back in time 35 years. It was really odd feeling, but brought back memories of when I was a kid.
Kmart was my first job while still in high school back in 2014. I had been going to that Kmart since I was a kid probably since 2002-3 which is as far back as I remember. Every time they remodeled it definitely felt older than before. Especially working there finding out about the asbestos, mold and even finding products that were months/years old. I only worked there from November 2014-March 2015. That store only last 2 more years after I left and closed September 2017. I remember going in July/August after their liquidation sales started. It was depressing seeing them tape off over 80% of the store and only having about 4-5 aisles and 2 register lanes. I remember around 2009-2010 is when my local Kmart stopped advertising the little blue lightbulb mascot, 2 years before every other Kmart. That definitely made it seem older than it already was. Even when I was a kid I noticed that Kmart not only had more generic brands than Walmart but higher prices too. The last Walmart here in California closed in 2019 52 miles north of my town. Wanted to go but why be depressed.
I worked for K-Mart during the 2018 bankruptcy, and let me tell you, our inventory storage was about 9,000 sqft, but we had maybe, ten pallets of merchandise available, our store was one of the only plus positive stores so we weren't going to close our store, a month after that....the entire town burned down and well....yeah....go figure, I still have my uniform and employee badge, lanyard and discount debit card. I'm sure it will be interesting for future prospects.
my mom worked at K-mart in LA until it was closed. with her being out of a job and not being financially stable to live in California, we moved and my mom started her own business. Kmart closing could have arguably been the best outcome for us in the long run.
I worked at K Mart when I was high school. This was ~ 11 or 12 years ago. It was like being stuck in time. It felt like it was perpetually 1990. It played old music, it had not really updated its layout or style (shelves, candy machines, soda machines, the tiles, the doors, the carts), it still had the old lighting, and even some features (like around the registers) were there from 20-30 years prior. It felt like you stepped back in time when you walked in. It was beyond bizarre. It finally closed its doors about 5 years ago.
@@spankynater4242 ehhh yeah, they do. But they usually throw in some modern stuff or stuff from the last 15-20 years. Or they’re playing a modern station that is playing classics. This was strictly old / adult contemporary type. It was different than what other stores today have. I’m pretty sure they had tapes from the 80s and early 90s that they just kept playing and never updated.
@@spankynater4242 okay. I don’t know why you’re hung up on this. If you read the comment in it’s entirety you would have understood that it wasn’t strictly the music alone that made me feel that way. It was the totality of the situation. The layout, style, design etc. it had not been updated.
@@yeetwoodmack4197 Settle down, at least I gave some life to your comment. And I’m still correct, many, if not most stores play old music. And I get what you’re saying about traveling back in time. I never experienced that at Kmart, but we all perceive things differently.
I'm very surprised that the "layaway" program wasn't mentioned in this video of Kmart's history it was very popular with customers, yet not with corporate.
I used to work at a Kmart. The clothing section was so dead that you could literally see dust on the floor, as well as footprints from the rare customers that went and looked at the outdated clothing.
I worked there when they were going down hill, and it was quite a fall. In 1995 they were so huge, the fire marshal had concerns that we might have TOO many people in the store on your average Sunday. We would be out of shopping carts at any given time because literally all 500 of them were in use. Fast forward just a few years and it was hard to tell if the store was even open. Shelves were bare, fixtures were broken and falling down, and customers were almost as rare as employees on the floor. It was sad to see a company fall so hard so fast, but they just made bad decision after bad decision.
I remember going to one that was closing and I remember leaving and doing a salute to the cashier that looked so dead inside and he said “ Thanks, I needed that “ I hope their doing well.
About three years ago ours closed up. My oldest nephew (who is only five years younger than me, so we really grew up more like cousins) was in town, and it was their very last weekend open. So he and I decided to pop in, for old times sake...as many, many, many of our childhood memories were of being dragged there by our moms. There was a Little Ceasar's pizza place in the store, so it wasn't always bad...but the hours we spent in those days looking at toys we couldn't have, browsing the games our folks wouldn't buy us, and looking at all the movies we weren't allowed to watch. The things we all used to do while mom shopped, y'know? Anyway. We went in, and to see it empty and barren...we were just two grown ass men holding back tears. Just saying "hey, remember when..." or "then that one time..." One last memory from the K-Mart.
I worked for both K-mart in the 80's in the stores and Sears at corp headquarters. K-mart downfall started in the 80's. Their inventory control and ordering was a disaster. We could not order products in demand because some buyer at corp would make these "awesome deals" on products no one wanted. This inventory would then be pushed to the stores in what was called a GO (general order). This junk would eat up inventory dollars and prevent ordering products people wanted. Then we would have to blow the crap out the door way below cost to just get rid of it. Sears was struggling in the late 90's early 2000's to redefine the company for the next generation of shoppers. They just kept going back to old ways of doing things. Every decision in HQ was by committee. Nothing would ever get done. There were too many lifers at HQ. "This is the way we have always done it." Then they sold Sears Credit. Huge mistake. This is what happens when the CEO, at the time, was a bean counter. It was the profit engine of the company. IMO this was done to make the company less valuable. Sears then took a billion dollars from the sale and guess what, bought a bunch of former K-Mart locations. K-mart now getting cash from Sears and others that bought locations used this to turn around buy out a reduced value Sears. A brilliant plan to set the stage for what comes next. Dear Eddie robbed both companies of anything of value and drove them both into the ground. He gets richer while every employee gets laid off and pensions go up in smoke. One would think this should be a crime.
A crime, indeed. I'm sorry that you lost your job and the other hard working people did. I have memories of my mom and I going to KMart and eating nachos, at the cafe. Layaway, Blue Light Specials, and just an enjoyable shopping experience. Honestly, I hate Walmart. I've proven to folks that Target beats them on alot of stuff. Here in the DFW Texas area, we have new Kroger stores that include furniture, jewelry, toy, and clothes. I get alot of compliments and funny looks, when I respond I got it at Kroger. :)
I remember my last purchase at K mart. I bought 13 inch spinning hub caps for my 1996 2 door mits mirage, in 2004. I remember the smell, how it was cluttered and dank. I remember thinking it felt like I was walking into a relic of the past, and that it was dying for some reason. That K mart ceased to exist about a year later. I've seen very few ever since.
As an Australian it's so odd hearing about kmart in the states, cause over here it's business is going strong! I love going to kmart. It's usually my go to for most things, especially clothes.
Your Kmarts went independent from the US company many years ago. Sears is almost dead in the US now, too, but it's still going strong in Mexico under different management.
I was an electronic lead for years at Kmart. I just recently got the chance to explore the old Kmart I worked at with a local crew of urban explorers. It was so creepy, overwhelming, and exciting at the same time. It’s terrifying how all the abandoned stores look the same inside and out.
I worked at Kmart for 11yrs when l lived in Waterbury, CT. I started off as a cashier but after a few weeks went overnight as a stocker.Loved working overnight, only 5 of us there,no one to bother us.We just did our work,no worries. The only l worked at closed Nov.of 2013.
Maybe you can help me find an employee working in Electronics. I don't think I saw a single worker in that section in the last 10 years I went to K-Mart.
The last Kmart l went into that was close to where l live now shutdown a little over 2yrs ago.Whenever l went in they had no one working Electronics either.If you needed help you had to go looking for someone. When l worked Kmart yrs.ago l was overnight but whenever l was there during the day there was always 2 people working the area.
The bad stigma had already started in the late 80's as a kid; my parents bought all my clothes from Kmart back then but at school you would never tell anyone that's where your clothes came from unless you wanted to be harassed by them. Nobody wanted to be wearing Kmart clothes at school even though I'm sure many did they just would never admit it.
I remember when Kmart was going out of business, a lot of their toys were on sale and I ended up getting a bunch of tech deck sets. It was glorious. Rip kmart
Fun fact: I live in the town with the only Kmart remaining in California. That place is busting at the seams everyday. If you thought "People of Walmart" was a thing, then you need to come see the "Creatures of Kmart" or as my uncle refers to them "UFO's" (Unidentified Fuckin Oddballs)
The only reason why the one in Santa Rosa closed was because it burned down a couple years ago and the little Ceasars in the store definitely would of kept it open
I remember back in 2014-2015 they had this “Ship Your Pants” ad campaign that was hysterical and drew a lot of attention to the brand. It’s a shame they couldn’t capitalize on stuff like that, because most of the reaction among my friends was “wait, K-mart is still a thing?”
A shame they couldn't create more zingers like that. Reminds me of how Jack In The Box was in serious trouble after an E.coli outbreak in 1993. They were able to remedy the situation but the damage had been done, so to save the company, they took a gamble and created a crazy new ad campaign that brought their old mascot Jack the clown out of retirement. Low and behold, it worked and the company rebounded.
I remember that ad. It didn’t run very long. Seemed more people laughed at Kmart. I really think they didn’t mean to intentionally run that to be funny. Plus I was surprised Kmart had enough money to run a commercial a commercial.
Kmart was a big part of my life in the 1970's and 80's, we did almost all our shopping there and have fond memories of Christmas shopping or buying Halloween decorations there with my wife or buying other things like clothes or shoes, Getting a frozen coke or a bag of popcorn before leaving and my kids bothering me for a quarter to put in the machines near the entrance to get one of those plastic bubbles with a toy inside, The store was always so alive full of people shopping or browsing , when I drive by a abandoned Kmart now , It makes my heart ache like seeing a old friends grave
“Really, just look at the state of JCPenney or Kmart, two brands that I will probably cover in the future.” - _Jake, Abandoned - Bradlees Department Store_
Depending on if this Simon and Brookfield thing works out JCPenney could either be saved or be facing bankruptcy and liquidation in the near future. However the fact that a good portion of JCPenney’s are in fact located in Simon and Brookfield malls tells me that JCPenney will be fine. At least for the next decade or 3-5 years if things go really wrong.
A year ago my dad and I went on a roadtrip that passed through Ohio and we forced ourselves to stop and go to a Kmart, just because theres so few now. It was really run down, but open. I used to live in a small town, and Kmart was always the place that had EVERYTHING you could need but got 10 visitors a day, I was not shocked it closed.
Was like when I went out of town and found a Walmart with the old logo where it was white bold letters with lines through it and a star in the middle. I had to at the very least take a picture.
Before we had a Kroger in southeast ohio, the south zanesville kmart was the only place to get food and clothes. Now there are dozens of places, 90% of which are far nicer. Ssd fall.
I am from Ohio, we've had three in the area and the last one closed about a year ago. :( Though out of the three that is the only one where the building is being used. And indoor farmer's market is held there once a week, (I think.).
Tbh I went to K Mart only like once in my whole life when I was a kid. There was only one near where I live and my parents never wanted to shop there. We always went to Target. I assume it was probably because of how tired looking the K Mart stores were. I think I remember the one I went to when I was a kid had roller skates in the sporting goods department and I wanted to get them. K Mart seems to look run down to me even in photos from their heyday.
the saddest of all department stores in my experience has go to be Sears. every Sears i went into in the midwest felt like a half empty cheapo department store that hadn't gotten new stock of anything in months.
Everything they sold was $5.00 to $15.00 more than at other retailers . Their value was the Craftsman and Kenmore lines. The clothing was always outdated and the electronics were too pricey.
Went to get belt for a lawnmower they make. They didn't have it in stock. Ok. And they wanted three times what amazon is charging. Ok. And it would take three weeks to arrive. Ah no thanks, never went back after that.
What’s interesting is that Kmart in Australia has to be one of the biggest retail success stories within the country. Unbelievably popular with a massive cult following that provides endless free advertising on tiktok. Unfortunately Target is failing though (which I personally think Is the better outlet) with the majority of stores being converted to Kmart
Big W is failing alongside Target. Kmart is just dominating. Its so weird cause a decade ago theyre were so manh Big Ws and Targets and only a few Kmarts
Again, another great video. Also, a belated congratulations on your film "Closed for Storm" being part of the 2020 New Orleans Film Festival. That lime green Kmart store intrigued me. It mentioned on Wikipedia it was one of five prototype locations conceived and rolled out at roughly the same time as Kmart's 2002 bankruptcy. I've found other reports where it was described as a "Store of the Future" concept. Along with the logo, the stores featured wider aisles, better lighting and store managers were to be given more autonomy on what and how much of an item they could order. I read the designer behind the lime green and gray logo said it represented nature but I suspect Kmart may have liked the idea of a new colour palette to identify itself from competitors. Walmart was seen with blue, Target had red while Kmart's was defined with both colours.
One big thing missed here: Their older stores were in older, more run down parts of town and cities, while newer competitors were built in the nicer outskirts of towns in new developments
I can remember K-Mart always mocked, and children being picked on for shopping there. I remember the stores themselves as overrun, poorly organized, and pretty shabby at times. Walmart is taking over this mantle now.
Every Wal-Mart I have been in with in the last 3 years looks like K-marts did before they closed up. Dirty, no customer service, prices on the shelves not matching what they ring up, of course the price being higher at the register.
My dad and mother took me to Kmart for clothes and shoes as I had grown up kinda poor and disabled. He made sure I was ok. I miss my dad and may my parents rest in peace 😭 Kmart was my childhood store
yup.. kmart WAS the place to shot in the 80s and 90s. Until Walmart moved in and started to displace them. I recall many a time going to Kmart and shopping for school supplies, clothes and the like. and If we were really lucky, we'd hit the ritzy Target...
Kmart has a special place in my heart. One of my earliest Christmas memories was shopping there as a kid in the late 90s. There were ten or eleven family members shopping together. My aunt and uncle let me pick out a giant Lego set (a Johnny Thunder jungle temple) as a Christmas gift and my cousin, brother, and I managed a high score in one of the games at the arcade in Kmart. I'm not sure how many kmarts had arcades but ours did. Then the defining moment. When we went in, it was cold but no snow. After we checked out, it was snowing. Almost whiteout conditions. As a kid, that's a magical moment you never forget. I'm sorry to see them go, but it's their own fault. Nostalgia takes you only so far.
I was a loss prevention manager for K Mart in 2006 - 2007. My boss told me that in a higher-up meeting, he was told that they were purposely cutting the workforce by like 75% to squeeze as much profit as possible. He even said the company had no integrity. Sears milked the company for everything it was worth knowing that it was going to fail.
When I was 19 I applied for a job at K-Mart. The interview went well. I was offered a job and accepted with a handshake. Then the store manager walked in. She started yelling at me, rescinded the job offer, and showed me the door. I was flabbergasted but the next time I drove by the store I realized what happened. She likely learned the store was closing while I was being interviewed.
@@zuko803 big box stores and chains in general have an always hiring policy that drove me nuts when I got out of high school and how long it took to get a job (ironic now), you never knew who was actually hiring and who wasn’t, the manager was probably operating off that always hiring policy before getting the news
I Remember going to Kmart with My family when I was a Little girl, I Loved that Store I have a lot of Great Memories there, I was So Sad to See it Close!! 🥰💔😭
The store in my hometown closed down in February of this year. Half of it is a discount store in the style of an Ollie’s (fun fact: this place is a toilet) and the other half is empty and I don’t know what they’re doing with it yet
K mart was a different sort of shopping experience. It felt kinda like shoping in someones basement. They did everything they could to keep outside light out of the store. But they had cool stuff and their snack bar was cool.
Kmart will always have a soft spot in my heart. I worked in the same Kmart from 2007-2012, starting in high school. My mom worked there for many years in 605 and my 2 sisters all worked in the same one that I did. I remember helping out opening a new Kmart shortly after I started and then found out it closed after I left. I remember when we found out we bought Sears and the changes we would go through. The one I worked at was one of the best in my state (CT) and held on up until the last year when it did finally closed down. It’s now a gym and an ace hardware. The other CT close by is now a Ollies, which closed down a few years ago. It’s so crazy to think that Kmart is gone and all those years spent, people I’ve met in that place and all the fun memories! It was definitely ugly, rundown, unorganized but so many great times with great people!
This was sad. I remember running around in Kmart as a kid, and later working there when I was in high school. I have so many good memories. The one in my town is now a Home Goods store. Kmart always smelled like brand new shoes, soft music playing in the distance. Like a old, sad depressing movie.
I feel you. I will never forget the blue light specials and coin operated horses outside. My small town in Tennessee had Kmart way before Walmart invaded.
Such an odd feeling seeing pictures of all these smiling cashiers. These people worked day in and day out like we all do and now their entire work legacy is rotting shells of stores left abandoned. Kmart like Sears and Penney just became a neglected company that never really tried and probably thought everything around it was a “little guy” not worthy of changing for.
I agree with you on Kmart and Sears but JC Penney had great buyers especially their clothing lines, High quality merch and their stores we're gorgeous. The first 2 are gone forever but JC Penney could come back if they drop the woke crap and get back to what made them famous.
Sears messed up when they got rid of their mail order service, the very thing that made them big, and focused on physical stores instead. Then a few years later internet sales exploded and Sears bled customers left and right. By the time they got their online store going it was already too late - people had learned to shop elsewhere and Sears went into freefall. If they'd stuck with the mail order and closed down the physical stores when things got tight, there's a good chance they could've survived and wouldn't have gone into the death spiral with Kmart
It's really fascinating and sad at the same time the way retailers have come and gone throughout the years decades I can remember being kid during the 80s and mostly the 90s going with my parents and going shopping at these stores Sears, K-mart......etc. it's amazing how things have changed so quickly. Owners and Vice Presidents of major retail stores have to make a profit but some point they have to realize I'm a millionaire making millions of dollars and then all of sudden Covid hits or we have to file for bankruptcy. I can't even imagine
By the time I was a kid, being in a K-mart felt more like being in a Goodwill Resale than an a walmart or target. Rundown, scuffed uneaven linoleum floors, blinking naked florescent lights, usually almost empty. I can't even remember my parents or grandparents ever actually buying anything there, we'd just go there and then leave not having found what they wanted.
It's funny how in America Target is huge whereas here in Australia they are literally rebranding into Kmarts bc they're the same company and Kmarts do better.
@@Scott_From_Maine Westfarmers owns the australian Kmart and Target, with Kmart group being their subsidiary. So yes, there is a Kmart Group in the AU and it is owned by another parent company, Westfarmers.
It shows how the small things count. Once K-Mart was branded Kame-Apart (as in cheap came apart clothes) and kids from the poor side of town invented the word Targe (pronounced Tar-jay) to make it sound sophisticated it was all over in USA because Target was more fashion forward Target ran with it and K-Mart died. All because off the little things in quality. Both (K-Mart and Target) trying to sell themselves to a discount population who want to be a step extreme discounter small local brand stores.
My most vivid last memory of Kmart and Kmart shoppers was exiting out the front door of the store. I noticed someone walking behind me toward the same door. I held the door open as I walked out, and as I released the door expecting him to reach out to stop the closing door, he did nothing, and the door smacked him in the face.
K-Mart had the interior of a messy, cheap, overstock store like Big Lots, but prices on par with nicer stores like Target. So the stores were shitty, and not that cheap. The only reason anyone would go to K-Mart would be because they want to feel like they were in 1989, or because they haven't finished building the Wal-Mart down the road yet.
So true. Every time I went into Kmart it was like stepping into a time machine to the 1990s. When people tell me Kmart was at one time larger than Wal mart and target it's hard to believe because I have no pleasant memories of that store
My mother worked for k mart in their deli when they 1st opened in Minnesota. She visited stores and routinely picked up pizza from a Little Caesars store that was in the k mart right up until closure of all Minnesota locations.
As someone who worked at one of the last Kmarts left in california I do have mixed feelings of nostalgia and sadness for the company. Growing up in my home town the primary retailers we had access to were Kmart and Radioshack. I started working there in highschool around the time most of the closures took place and eventually quit to join the army not too long after transformco was the new face of the corporation. Flash forward a year later and on flying home for christmas that Kmart too now was shuttered for good. To work in the waning months of not only that location's but the company as a whole's lifespan was dreary to say the least. Most of the shelves were full of gaps where items just weren't being resupplied or products collecting dust for months. Holiday season was still extremely busy at my location but I think thats part in parcel to the fact that the store was in a rural community. By the time I had put in my two weeks I think the writing was on the wall for those of us still working there. I don't know what became of my coworkers after the closure but I do remember feeling sad for some of the management who had spent their whole career at that location and now had very uncertain futures in regards to retirement.
No Target here is just crap 🤣. When I contacted them once about why they have so much better stuff in America and the headquarters here in Australia told me they have the same name but are basically a different company. Target here can be good but we don't get anywhere near as nice stuff.
Even if they’re low on popularity, Kmart still has a place in my heart (Along with Toys R Us, Circuit City, KB Toys, some of the other closed stores from my childhood)
Yeah, and I will always hold that Walmart will forever represent a step down in quality demands for American society in general. Kmart's biggest mistake was trying to compete with Walmart, because it required them to lower the bar even further, and Kmart was already a discount retailer, but they had some dignity until the late 90's. I worked there when the company was at its peak, around 1995, and the mistakes were apparent right then. The rebranding was a disaster, they had no experience in the grocery business, and their desire to keep staff relatively low guaranteed bad customer service and high shoplifting rates. The Kmart I grew up with seemed like an endearing, caring place, and everyone shopped there. They lost their way when they abandoned their founder's principals and instead tried to mimic their rivals.
Back in the day (I'm 65). I was 12, wanted a pair of Converse ($9.95). My dad said, are you crazy, I can get you 4 pair of tennis shoes at K Mart for that price! Funny to reminisce!!
In 1975 I was hired by KMART for the grand opening of their South Willow Street, Manchester NH store. It was big, brand new and they had a hot peanut vender out front as you entered the store, I couldn't resist that. I was hired as a cashier (I tried to get a stockman position as I tended to freeze up in crowds but they said it's cashier or nothing (yeah it didn't go well). Aside from the hot peanut vendor the thing I liked most was the grille at the back of the store. That store Is long gone now, I only lasted six months before they fired me (I came to work one day to find out I no longer had a job, nice management). The hot peanut vender was good, the grille was good and some of the girls who worked there were for lack of a better word, slutty and that was fun. 😁
Apparently here in Vegas our last Kmart just closed this year, I didn’t even know it was open. I grew up going to Kmart in the early 00’s, so it has a special place with me.
Moral of the story: don't hire people like Eddie Lampert to run your business. All he's going to do is drive them into the ground while making as much money for himself as he can, then he jumps ship once the desiccated husk can't support his leeching anymore.
When I was a kid, Kmart had some major competition here in New Jersey: Caldor, Bradlees, Jamesway, Ames, and Two Guys. Once Walmart and Target came in, that was it for Kmart. Would love to see some videos on these other retailers too!
Ames was also up here in Upstate NY. Now there's a Walmart and Target less than 5 minutes away from where the Ames once was, and Ames is now a go kart complex
Caldor was my first employer in '94. As part of a mall, Christmas was unholy chaos. I had so much money in the register that it refused to close properly. Fun Fact: The code needed to open the register was printed on every receipt!
I miss going to KMart, it really brings me back to my childhood in the 80's. I've read that there are currently only three surviving stores in operation in the US, One in Miami, one in New Jersey, and one on Long Island, NY.
No matter what they did, K-Mart stores were always dingy, dirty, and claustrophobic with yellowed plastic bins, cracked floor tiles and water stained ceiling tiles.
@@dtoy1809 It really was. These stores were not nice places. Even as a kid in the 90's, I remember seeing the rot. Surprised they lasted as long as they did.
I miss Kmart sometimes. My mom and grandma would make an annual pilgrimage to a Big Kmart around Christmas when I was a kid to stock up on gifts for all the kids and grandkids. I would go with them and marvel at the differences between it and our local Walmart, while trying to get the most I could out of the toy section for the upcoming holiday. Yet even then, the store was shockingly empty. Rarely would you run into more than a couple other shoppers in that huge shopping space, and we would eat in the built-in restaurant that had no other customers.
We used to have a Kmart literally across the street from the local Walmart, it closed in early 2020 and I'm honestly surprised it lasted as long as it did
I’m 30, and I’ll always have heavy nostalgia for many things, but Kmart isn’t one of them. As far back as I can remember, there was always a cheap, run down, eerie and slightly depressing feeling to Kmart. Plus, I worked there and it was shit.
Yeah, being 30 years old, you weren't around much for the "glory years" of K-Mart. I worked there 1995-2000. It was still pretty descent until about 98 or 99, then it started going down hill fast.
Definitely for any millennial or Gen Y people there wouldn't be any nostalgia for Kmart. For us older folks over 50 it was a great place back in their heyday
Yeah, I remember working briefly at my local Kmart back in the late 1990's. I was only there for a month, and it was the worst job I ever had or ever will have. As nasty and dirty as the store was, it's employees were even nastier. Bunch of old timers from the 1970's and early 1980's who were stuck in the old days and all perpetually depressed and angry. Easily the most toxic work environment I had ever been a part of. Seems like from there, it just steadily got worse and worse. In short, it reminded me of a glorified dollar store.
Yeah, as a kid in the 80s I remember a sense of depressing cheapness about K-mart. My parents hated going there, we only went out of necessity. When we would visit family in the Midwest their Target stores seemed like a world away from K-mart. This was even before the whole "Tar-jay" thing started and it was just a big box with a black T on it.
One of the last Kmarts I can remember going to was in Tacoma, WA in 2014. It was like walking into a time warp back to 1993. The layout was the same, the store decorations were the same, the shelves even looked like they were the same ones from the 1990s. I remember going into the electronics section and they were still selling blank cassettes and VHS tapes at full price. What really blew my mind was that they were selling N64 editions of games like GoldenEye at full price. Again, this was in 2014.
In the US, Kmart's were a time warp, in Australia they're an alternate reality....is this why the current timeline is so messed up? Did Kmart break the universe?
@@Briskeeen doubt all you want, it was the reality of K-Mart before they all finally died. It isn't even uncommon, you should've seen some of the ancient crap RadioShack had for sale before they went under.
i was born in 2003 so i just barely made it to see Kmart. i have fond memories of going and being told i could get pizza and whatever toy i wanted when i would go with my siblings and my dad. there’s a video of me and my sister giggling and having a great time in a kmart that always warms my heart. this place was weird, but will always give me bittersweet feelings of what was.
As a teenager I shopped at Kmart.I love there prices and style.I work for both and Zellers and Sears they are great to there staff.I am happy Zellers is coming back.I do not care for Walmart .I truly feel they hurt Zellers .
The last time I went to K-Mart was in 2015, and while the experience wasn't the worst ever, when I walked in the door it felt like I was entering a portal into 1998. It looked the way I remember K-Marts looking in the 90s, and it looked similar to how I remember Target and Walmarts looking in the 90s, but the difference is that Walmarts and Targets don't look like that anymore. Only thing that was different really from it being completely 90s was that they had a modern electronics section with the then latest TVs and stuff like that. There was hardly anybody there, as one would expect.
Reminds me of my last experience with them which was on 8/23/16. I don't even think I was even aware of anything going on with Kmart either, But I remember the stores I visited that day to return some online purchases. It was like walking back into the 90s. The stores were in shambles and the employees there looked as if they all just started. I'm still sad about how things turned out for Kmart. Their board of directors should be tried and convicted for destroying such an iconic brand.
Target looks like Big K all red inside, I don't like Target or Walmart it's a bore. I like Lidl they have excellent pastries that will knock your socks off! Fresh bakery unlike any Kroger or Netto or Penny's
Last time I stepped inside of a Kmart was in 2019 right after news got out that they where closing the one in town.ninterestingly they decided to close the store mid December 2019. That means they thought Christmas shopping was a lost cause for that particular store.
Jake, this is probably my favorite abandoned series on UA-cam. I expect you to have a slew of them coming up with the wave of bankruptcies, and despite it being a very sad topic, you make very entertaining/educational content on it, which I find extremely valuable. Thank you.
Thanks for making this! This is such a trip to watch. I worked at Kmart for four years, two of those years as a manager, and man, oh man, what a dysfunctional company. But, I had a lot of great coworkers and made lifelong friends. Good times
It's not just alive and kicking, it's thriving. I'm pretty sure it's the largest and most profitable retail brand (not incl. Supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths) in Australia. All their stores are extremely modern and well put-together, they have by FAR the best clothes and home a living section I have EVER seen in a department store.
Australian here. Interesting to see the decline of Target (removal of Target Country stores in favour of a Kmart rebranding). People like value, but don't want cheap looking products. Kmart filled the gap that traditional "cheapie" stores, like The Reject Shop, didn't fill. Sleek, modern looking products without hefty prices. Target just keeps getting more and more expensive, favouring brand name products more than in the past. I suspect Target will be gone in 20 years, and they'll all be Kmart rebrandings or sold off in an area that already has a Kmart. Kmart is our Wal-Mart, and isn't owned by Kmart US. That's what confuses Americans when I tell them how good it is, because they generally see Kmart as shitty. I visited Wal-Mart in the US, and it has some elements of BIG W too in terms of layout and the bulk buys. A hybrid BIG W/Kmart style store is what the Australian market really needs, but it'll never happen. We are always 10 years behind the US with retail 🤣
Oof, this one hit kinda hard. I live in a super small town in the Midwest and Kmart was the only bigger retail store we had left. They closed it 2 years ago and we still dont have an alternative. Closest retail stores are 45 minutes either way now, yay!
convenience is nice, but... maybe you're better off without having a big box store. in recent years I've gone to walmart maybe once in a year. I don't miss it in the least bit. some places are best avoided.
I don't particularly want a Walmart, but something other than a Dollar General would be nice. Heck, even a local clothing store or something would be amazing. I just wish we had an alternative to DG that wasn't driving the 45 mins for a Walmart, which isn't much of a step up.
My friend growing up, her father was high up in management growing up. They made good money. In the early 1980's the store started looking like crap. The wait for help or a question got really long until there wasn't even anyone to ask. I tried to buy a watch and for 30 minutes couldn't find anyone to open the case for me. I told the manager that I can't shop here and that this is how stores go out of business. He told me that he assured me this store would NEVER go out of business and he laughed at me. That store closed a few years later. My friend's father said the people at the top were raising their salaries and becoming non-responsive to concerns about stores. I was shocked they limped along for another 20 years.
A lot of companies get secret political money if they support their favorite candidate and it helps prop select companies from being fully bankrupted. A lot of this dirty stuff was going on since the end of the Bush era. Ironically the one President we all blindly hate is the one that said NO to these games. LOL and behold they are all swiftly closing long before Covid!
This is strange to hear because here in Australia, KMart is a big deal. Most stores are modern & well maintained. I can remember when the first store opened in Adelaide, South Australia.
I liked how you could find underwear, antifreeze and tvs all on 1 shelf as no one ever put the items back in the right spot when they decided they did not want that item.
Under current owner Transformco, the last KMart closed in California in early 2022, and only seven Sears stores remained. The corporate headquarters outside Chicago are for sale. It appears Transformco is basically interested in the land beneath the stores. Lampert and his brother also engineered the demise of Montgomery Ward in the early 2000's.
And sears. And you are correct, all three companies owned the property they were on outright. They were mismanaged into the ground, where Walmart was given a sweetheart tax deal in the mid 90’s to accept certain government benefits. And Walmart was always able to undercut Kmart as they don’t hire full time employees. Lambert should be in jail.
In Rutland VT where I live, we had all these stores booming in the 90's, but by the 2,000's they're all gone. Our "Great Rutland mall" is actually abandoned now
The Kmart I worked in, in California closed in early 2020...feel bad about it cause it definitely was a time capsule in a way. I kinda liked working there. KINDA.
Lambert is a pile of dog shit. His Wallstreet sorry ass and his cronies destroyed so many lives and viable companies. All for short term gain. It's what's wrong with our country now.
Be careful how long you stay in a K Mart. You might come out and find yourself in the 80s...................................Ghost Store.........👻.........................
I agree with your analysis yet as a former employee that witnessed a liquidation of a small GA town Kmart, I was stunned to find no-sale deadstock (including Spice Girl dolls and Tony Hawk branded skate boards) thrown under rusty bays and broken wooden pallets. This inventory was never clearanced and 'made to disappear' from the shelves by a management team that had less than a HS education. It broke my heart to see so much waste. Finally, the last Kmart I visited back in 2017 in Seveirville, TN, was stuck in the early 1980s. They still had cassette tapes for sale. Love it or hate it, every visit in the last 25 years is a nostalgic trip back in time.
The kmart (which are still open) in my city is weird. The store look nice and has a modern atmosphere (kinda like a target with all the red) but the technology they have is so out of date.
I remember when ACE hardware was in the process of being purchased by Kmart. When that news got out something changed and kmart went after Sears. ACE hardware dodged a bullet...
@@Clay3613 not sure, might have been why kmart switched up and purchased Sears. I just remember reading a letter that was given to my brother and father that both worked at ACE stating Kmart was acquiring them. Witch never happened and that same ACE is still opened.
Kmart’s still thriving down under in Australia. I go to Kmart and absolutely love it. Unbelievable though to see this once-powerful retailer in the USA disappear. Love your content. ❤
2011 was the last time I was in a K-Mart and I went there just for old times' sake. It literally was like stepping back in time even then. I can't imagine how bad they are now in the few locations that are left.
Those slippers were made out of recycled designer textiles, hence the name Respoke. That said, Kmart was such a mainstay for so long. My grandma loved Kmart so much and I remember tagging along with her and running to check out the Blue Light Special. We'd always share some popcorn (we did at any store that had it!) and finding the Kmart tapes on Internet Archive were such a blast from the past. There's a real sense of nostalgia held for a place that really hasn't existed and will cease to completely exist sooner than later. But with a listen to the tapes it's like I'm a kid again and following grandma around the store and looking at everything with her.
Last time I walked into a K-mart in Des Moines Iowa, it was like walking 25 years back in time. Old Floorplans, narrow isles, moonscape parking lot FULL of potholes long 80's vintage fluorescent lights, analog cash registers and beige/white wire shelving. It was bizarre.....and they closed a month later
I loved the pharmacy be ause only the old folks used it and it was never very busy. You really got personalized service. I remember our young lady pharmacist calling me so excited to tell me one of my very expensive chemo meds had just gone generic. The price went down from $400 per month to $30.
There was a Kmart building I drove past daily for a few years, always assumed it was closed for a long time, then one day in 2016 I heard it was closing, you could imagine my confusion lol
I'm an Ex General Manager of Sears ... what people don't know is that every building Kmart and Sears was in they personally owned the property ...which means they still had equity in property value. That's why we see so many abandoned buildings!
I wonder if they could turn it into housing. Even single occupancy units They have the parking space and perhaps HUD housing for seniors. You know? Reinvent themselves into something really needed.
@@Kelz_X so my understanding is that Sears is fighting from within... they explained it to us as a " corporation divorce" the company split into 2 entities SHO (Sears Hometown & Outlet) and the original Sears. So they don't agree on anything
So basically they could use old Kmart as homeless shelters it would be fair that they gave back to the same community that kept them in business for decades it would be the right thing to do besides they still have to pay taxes when they use that property or not I guess giving back to the community that made somebody rich is not really how rich people think I guess rich people just don't think except they think about their bank account
Two closed Kmarts in my hometown. One was closed when they built the new Big K store back in the 90s. The old one is now an indoor self storage and the Big K became the police administration. As for the Sears I think it's just abandoned but hell I haven't been near the mall in a while.
I remember most Kmart electronics and appliance boxes on shelves were already opened, and the items inside were either scratched, broken or had missing pieces.
I’m going to use “carnival cruise line of retailers” as an insult somehow.
Only 2 likes and one like is from me lol even tho you are pinned
Smart
Yep
101 likes
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mice.
Ouch!
the ironic thing is Kmart in Australia is thriving and has been growing over the years. We have 24/7 stores now just to meet the demand, I even find myself visiting Kmart after work even if its midnight
Yeah it’s like that tho Kmart is bloody going on here
It’s the opposite here in Australia, Kmart is doing well and target stores are either closing down or changing into Kmarts
@@jekandthesnek do you guys have walmarts in Australia? (serious question i'm curious lol)
Ya'll got Woolworths as well
I like the idea of Kmart thriving in Australia. Run wild and be free
I feel like this whole series is just a documentary on how all Spirit Halloween stores came into being.
Spirit of Halloween....
Only exists....
By moving into corpses of dead retail stores....
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@@Menaceblue3 yep, a bunch of Lowes & cub foods have been zombied out by Spirit Halloween.
Okay spirit corporate... I see you there
The old Kmart in my town was a Spirit Halloween and now it’s a different store called Rural King
Lmao ikr
Kmart was one of those stores that when I walked through I couldn’t help but think the world was ending outside.
I thought i was insane, i felt this all the time. Like mid zombie apocalypse outside as soon as i walked inside the store
What exactly do you mean by this i am very curious
@@ethancarbajal8496 K-marts have this cobbled-together almost post-apocolyptic vibe to them. This is true even when they aren't abandoned. It's like they took leftovers from other old box stores and glued them together in a way that looks only semi-purposeful. There's also a creepy sense that people and staff are missing from the store, like it was built for a body count that it can no longer attract (which is true). The product was often so carelessly stocked, it looked almost ransacked. To add to this, a lot of the remaining customers in the later years could look just as run-down as the stores themselves.
@@Uncle_Fred Interesting the K-Mart in my home town always had this liminal feeling to it...very interesting
What is this the most accurate comment ever?
it's interesting to me how Target survived the onslaught of Walmart by focusing on quality and cleanliness whereas Kmart went head-to-head with Walmart on quantity and cheap products.
Late 90's Target was exactly the same as K-mart to me. They even had an eatery and a layaway area.
@@Connection-Lost I miss the chicken strips and Pizza they used to serve for like $5
Not only K-Mart was a good place, it’s lifetime guarantee lasted unlike Walmart, when the Waltons sold the business the life time guarantee went with them.. Plus, back when the companies had to have a reason to get rid of you, now they don’t have to give ya a reason.. 🐎💩
Our Target that is attached to a mall is always a dump! We have three Walmart's nearby, all are always neater, cleaner and way more organized.
@@charlottesmom opposite for me. Nearby walmart is feels dumpy, Target feels clean and updated
I recall my mom almost tearing my arm off as she dashed to a “Blue Light Special” on jeans. In the 80s they were the ONLY game in town.
sounds like she was trying out Jax's finishing move lolz
Maybe where you lived they were, but not most people - especially in bigger and medium sized-cities. I hated shitty K-mart.
@@rachelk7555 Back in the late 70s and 80s they were the only game in town. I do remember a new Target opening up. I loved it, but my mother was very cheap, and Target was, "expensive." Then Walmart came in the late 80s and it was all over.
We still have a kmart by me in NY. For how much longer, i have no idea. We have no sears after early 2021. Its really sad.
😄😄😄😄 Sorry, but I had to laugh. I remember my brothers always getting lost in K Mart.
Kmart was great when I was a kid, first place where my Mom could get us school clothes on lay-a-way. We didn't have a lot of money and I often got into fights for having low end clothing at school. Still thankful for what she was able to provide for my sister and I as a single Mother. RIP Mom, miss you.
Which decade did you grow up in?
I ù
kmart is a lot like disney
I had that same problem with not being able to have the same clothing that was considered cool. Now nearly all the clothing you find is inferior.
Just don’t make the same mistake as your mom and have kids without someone to help you and you should be fine
K-mart always felt like it was gonna close. Uncleaned floors, items and clothes on the ground, a very old smell somewhat. My K-Mart got over ran by Walmart and Target when they arrived in my city.
Walmart and target are dirty too and no reward system
The wonderful world of Retail
There used to be a Big K-Mart down the street from my apartment but it went under almost immediately when Wal-Mart opened directly across the street from them. Last time I saw anybody in their parking lot was to watch a lunar eclipse
@@angiek3538 I’ve worked at all three, Trust me they clean at most of the Targets I’ve been to. Now Walmart is basically the new Kmart. Rundown and a miserable place to shop.
That's what Walmart looks like now...
Over here in Australia, specifically Sydney, Kmart is owned by Target, and in a shopping mall I go to, there’s a Kmart which replaced an underperforming target. It’s interesting to understand the different brands worldwide aren’t all the same
My whole family was shocked to see a Kmart when we moved to Australia over a decade ago. My mom loved going in there lol.
I'm in Melbourne Australia, and you can probably find at least 100 K-Marts here, there are many in Australia. We are very tolerant to failure and avoid it very well, America just made too much of everything hence why so much of there things are going away and abandoned, there is not enough demand.
Kmart Australia being owned my target makes sense why they flourished. It's because Target nows how to stay trend forward, focus on merchandising and having clean crisp look. So I imagine Australia Kmarts got the upgrades to stay relevant with shoppers
Thanks for sharing this video I'm from the UK so we didn't have any K Mart stores we had woolworth stores, BHS, now those retail shops have gone we've lost it's a gift, our butchers etc & it's getting worse it's sad to see so many favourite stores gone.
My clearest memories of Kmart stores mostly involve just how *old* the buildings were, everything had that sort of "thirty years old dirty" where it's probably being cleaned but it's just so old and starting to decay that no amount of scrubbing can do away with it.
Walmarts& meijer had different stuff, walmarts had different brands of foods, toys, & other stuff, same with meijer ,
Never saw k-mart as dirty.. it was just as clean as walmart... then again we're probably talking about diffrent store locations.
Check out DOLLAR GENERAL if you want to see filth !!
This is the perfect description. Experienced the same up in Canada
thats what i think of too.
also what was my family doing in that frame? did we ever go there? who were the employees? what did their hair and clothes look like?
when they moved the shelves to close did they find 30 year dirty items behind them?
As a child, I always preferred K-Mart over Walmart, or Target. K-Mart had the best toy department AND Little Ceasers.
Kmart always had SUPERIOR CUSTOMER SERVICE (back in the day) compared to Walmart! That’s why my family shopped there for YEARS!
80's K-Mart toy department was awesome
i barely went to kmart because my mom never liked kmart because of prices
Same.
YES and the slushie machines 😫
Kmart is the only company that renovated their stores and when completed, the stores looked even more dated than before
They managed to do everything half assed. They built a bigger brand new store to replace the old one in my hometown and didn't even have full grocery. They called it a "pantry" with old gas station coolers that rattled. Stuff like that is why Walmart smoked them.
This! I remember thinking as a kid maybe I just didn’t get it because the store still sucked when my mom took me back after they were bought out. Looking around I knew that whatever they had tried, hadn’t worked and that our store would be closing soon. A few years later it did.
The only good part was the pizza place which always felt like a different world. Everything was plain white and it was filled to the brim with the most basic and plain clothes ever. There was as much mayhem as Ross without any of the potential good finds. A really bizarre store.
Lol Kmart is destroying target in Australia, as pretty much both of their aspects are flipped
We had one of the last Kmarts open in my area and when I went in there it was like stepping back in time 35 years. It was really odd feeling, but brought back memories of when I was a kid.
Kmart was my first job while still in high school back in 2014. I had been going to that Kmart since I was a kid probably since 2002-3 which is as far back as I remember. Every time they remodeled it definitely felt older than before. Especially working there finding out about the asbestos, mold and even finding products that were months/years old. I only worked there from November 2014-March 2015. That store only last 2 more years after I left and closed September 2017. I remember going in July/August after their liquidation sales started. It was depressing seeing them tape off over 80% of the store and only having about 4-5 aisles and 2 register lanes.
I remember around 2009-2010 is when my local Kmart stopped advertising the little blue lightbulb mascot, 2 years before every other Kmart. That definitely made it seem older than it already was. Even when I was a kid I noticed that Kmart not only had more generic brands than Walmart but higher prices too. The last Walmart here in California closed in 2019 52 miles north of my town. Wanted to go but why be depressed.
I worked for K-Mart during the 2018 bankruptcy, and let me tell you, our inventory storage was about 9,000 sqft, but we had maybe, ten pallets of merchandise available, our store was one of the only plus positive stores so we weren't going to close our store, a month after that....the entire town burned down and well....yeah....go figure, I still have my uniform and employee badge, lanyard and discount debit card. I'm sure it will be interesting for future prospects.
Where the hell did you live if the whole town burned down
@@joeytheslimeboi8900 likely Santa Rosa- look up the Tubbs Fire
Paradise, California?
Keep your work gear. Who knows when it will come I'm handy. A movie. A youtube series. A museum.
I was not expecting that plot twist
my mom worked at K-mart in LA until it was closed. with her being out of a job and not being financially stable to live in California, we moved and my mom started her own business. Kmart closing could have arguably been the best outcome for us in the long run.
Jesus, what's a kmark in LA like? I see riots and forearms in my head rn.
@@LuchadorMasque it was early 2000s so it was pretty normal.
Good for you and your family I’m glad it has a happy outcome
Yeah moving away from LA is always a good life choice.. No one should be a slave for a shitty home
Hear me out, college essay.
I worked at K Mart when I was high school. This was ~ 11 or 12 years ago. It was like being stuck in time. It felt like it was perpetually 1990. It played old music, it had not really updated its layout or style (shelves, candy machines, soda machines, the tiles, the doors, the carts), it still had the old lighting, and even some features (like around the registers) were there from 20-30 years prior. It felt like you stepped back in time when you walked in. It was beyond bizarre. It finally closed its doors about 5 years ago.
Most stores play older music.
@@spankynater4242 ehhh yeah, they do. But they usually throw in some modern stuff or stuff from the last 15-20 years. Or they’re playing a modern station that is playing classics. This was strictly old / adult contemporary type. It was different than what other stores today have. I’m pretty sure they had tapes from the 80s and early 90s that they just kept playing and never updated.
@@yeetwoodmack4197 i’m sure some stores do, but I’ve been in mini stores that play nothing but 70s and 80s, and that never made them feel dated to me.
@@spankynater4242 okay. I don’t know why you’re hung up on this. If you read the comment in it’s entirety you would have understood that it wasn’t strictly the music alone that made me feel that way. It was the totality of the situation. The layout, style, design etc. it had not been updated.
@@yeetwoodmack4197 Settle down, at least I gave some life to your comment. And I’m still correct, many, if not most stores play old music. And I get what you’re saying about traveling back in time. I never experienced that at Kmart, but we all perceive things differently.
Whenever I stepped inside a Kmart store, I always get these 80s and early 90s vibes
Love those vibes!
Miss it so much
Me too. The local Kmart was like a trapped pocket of '80s that I could visit when the 2010s sucked too hard.
@Meat The 2010s were the dark ages of technology starting with Google's forced changes of websites.
@Meat Basically, and that's why the 90's and 00's were so cool! Oh, and I miss Kmart. I had some fond memories there as a kid and teenager.
I'm very surprised that the "layaway" program wasn't mentioned in this video of Kmart's history it was very popular with customers, yet not with corporate.
I used to work at a Kmart. The clothing section was so dead that you could literally see dust on the floor, as well as footprints from the rare customers that went and looked at the outdated clothing.
Lol
I remember going there and seeing a yankees jersey for sale. It had a player on it that left the team years earlier lol
I worked there when they were going down hill, and it was quite a fall. In 1995 they were so huge, the fire marshal had concerns that we might have TOO many people in the store on your average Sunday. We would be out of shopping carts at any given time because literally all 500 of them were in use.
Fast forward just a few years and it was hard to tell if the store was even open. Shelves were bare, fixtures were broken and falling down, and customers were almost as rare as employees on the floor. It was sad to see a company fall so hard so fast, but they just made bad decision after bad decision.
I remember going to one that was closing and I remember leaving and doing a salute to the cashier that looked so dead inside and he said “ Thanks, I needed that “ I hope their doing well.
Funny, one where I'm at was thriving. It had nice clothes too I'm sad they took it out tbh, now it's a lonesome shopping square with one store in it.
About three years ago ours closed up.
My oldest nephew (who is only five years younger than me, so we really grew up more like cousins) was in town, and it was their very last weekend open.
So he and I decided to pop in, for old times sake...as many, many, many of our childhood memories were of being dragged there by our moms. There was a Little Ceasar's pizza place in the store, so it wasn't always bad...but the hours we spent in those days looking at toys we couldn't have, browsing the games our folks wouldn't buy us, and looking at all the movies we weren't allowed to watch.
The things we all used to do while mom shopped, y'know?
Anyway. We went in, and to see it empty and barren...we were just two grown ass men holding back tears.
Just saying "hey, remember when..." or "then that one time..."
One last memory from the K-Mart.
F
K Mart and Toys R Us, many of my favorite childhood memories happened there and I had no idea at the time.
@@SomeBody-rm6hf F
I worked for both K-mart in the 80's in the stores and Sears at corp headquarters. K-mart downfall started in the 80's. Their inventory control and ordering was a disaster. We could not order products in demand because some buyer at corp would make these "awesome deals" on products no one wanted. This inventory would then be pushed to the stores in what was called a GO (general order). This junk would eat up inventory dollars and prevent ordering products people wanted. Then we would have to blow the crap out the door way below cost to just get rid of it.
Sears was struggling in the late 90's early 2000's to redefine the company for the next generation of shoppers. They just kept going back to old ways of doing things. Every decision in HQ was by committee. Nothing would ever get done. There were too many lifers at HQ. "This is the way we have always done it." Then they sold Sears Credit. Huge mistake. This is what happens when the CEO, at the time, was a bean counter. It was the profit engine of the company. IMO this was done to make the company less valuable. Sears then took a billion dollars from the sale and guess what, bought a bunch of former K-Mart locations. K-mart now getting cash from Sears and others that bought locations used this to turn around buy out a reduced value Sears. A brilliant plan to set the stage for what comes next. Dear Eddie robbed both companies of anything of value and drove them both into the ground. He gets richer while every employee gets laid off and pensions go up in smoke. One would think this should be a crime.
A crime, indeed. I'm sorry that you lost your job and the other hard working people did. I have memories of my mom and I going to KMart and eating nachos, at the cafe. Layaway, Blue Light Specials, and just an enjoyable shopping experience. Honestly, I hate Walmart. I've proven to folks that Target beats them on alot of stuff. Here in the DFW Texas area, we have new Kroger stores that include furniture, jewelry, toy, and clothes. I get alot of compliments and funny looks, when I respond I got it at Kroger. :)
Feudalism never went away
Thanks for sharing this
Wow, didn't know that. Makes sense.
at the very least he should of been investigated, how you describe the situation sounds a bit like Embezzlement to me..
I remember my last purchase at K mart. I bought 13 inch spinning hub caps for my 1996 2 door mits mirage, in 2004. I remember the smell, how it was cluttered and dank. I remember thinking it felt like I was walking into a relic of the past, and that it was dying for some reason. That K mart ceased to exist about a year later. I've seen very few ever since.
Must have been one slick Mirage with those on it lol.
@@98-SR5 lol yea it was pretty rad
As an Australian it's so odd hearing about kmart in the states, cause over here it's business is going strong! I love going to kmart. It's usually my go to for most things, especially clothes.
Was hoping for this comment lol. Strong as ever here
As someone in America who saw Kmarts die in every town I've ever lived in or visited, that is really cool to hear.
Your Kmarts went independent from the US company many years ago. Sears is almost dead in the US now, too, but it's still going strong in Mexico under different management.
@@johncate9541 I actually do miss Kmart I used to go there all the time with my family
We Americans have Target now 😭!!!
I was an electronic lead for years at Kmart. I just recently got the chance to explore the old Kmart I worked at with a local crew of urban explorers. It was so creepy, overwhelming, and exciting at the same time. It’s terrifying how all the abandoned stores look the same inside and out.
You must not have invested in their 401k or you would have mentioned losing it all when they filed bankruptcy.
I worked at Kmart for 11yrs when l lived in Waterbury, CT. I started off as a cashier but after a few weeks went overnight as a stocker.Loved working overnight, only 5 of us there,no one to bother us.We just did our work,no worries. The only l worked at closed Nov.of 2013.
Maybe you can help me find an employee working in Electronics. I don't think I saw a single worker in that section in the last 10 years I went to K-Mart.
The last Kmart l went into that was close to where l live now shutdown a little over 2yrs ago.Whenever l went in they had no one working Electronics either.If you needed help you had to go looking for someone. When l worked Kmart yrs.ago l was overnight but whenever l was there during the day there was always 2 people working the area.
Man, I can't imagine working at a place and then seeing it abandoned later. That's gotta be freaky as hell.
The bad stigma had already started in the late 80's as a kid; my parents bought all my clothes from Kmart back then but at school you would never tell anyone that's where your clothes came from unless you wanted to be harassed by them. Nobody wanted to be wearing Kmart clothes at school even though I'm sure many did they just would never admit it.
Don’t forget blue light special 😂🤣
They had pretty good work Jean's and stuff in the 2000s
THAT'S SAD because it has never been anybody elses business where you got your clothes from !!!!!!!!!!!...be grateful you had them.
A teacher I had in middle school used to refer to Kmart as "K-ame Apart" 🤣
Pain
I remember when Kmart was going out of business, a lot of their toys were on sale and I ended up getting a bunch of tech deck sets. It was glorious. Rip kmart
Fun fact: I live in the town with the only Kmart remaining in California. That place is busting at the seams everyday. If you thought "People of Walmart" was a thing, then you need to come see the "Creatures of Kmart" or as my uncle refers to them "UFO's" (Unidentified Fuckin Oddballs)
SO TRUE! I've seen those pictures of how people dress up to go to WALMART, but they forget about the ones that go (went) to KMART!
cringe
What town? I heard the last one closed a short time after you wrote that!
The only reason why the one in Santa Rosa closed was because it burned down a couple years ago and the little Ceasars in the store definitely would of kept it open
people of zodies
I remember back in 2014-2015 they had this “Ship Your Pants” ad campaign that was hysterical and drew a lot of attention to the brand. It’s a shame they couldn’t capitalize on stuff like that, because most of the reaction among my friends was “wait, K-mart is still a thing?”
"Big Gas Savings" too
A shame they couldn't create more zingers like that. Reminds me of how Jack In The Box was in serious trouble after an E.coli outbreak in 1993. They were able to remedy the situation but the damage had been done, so to save the company, they took a gamble and created a crazy new ad campaign that brought their old mascot Jack the clown out of retirement. Low and behold, it worked and the company rebounded.
I was just thinking that. When I was watching this video.
I remember that ad. It didn’t run very long. Seemed more people laughed at Kmart. I really think they didn’t mean to intentionally run that to be funny. Plus I was surprised Kmart had enough money to run a commercial a commercial.
I didnt realize that "Ship my pants" was that long ago. I'm sure it got attention and people wanting to shop there again for nostalgia.
Kmart was a big part of my life in the 1970's and 80's, we did almost all our shopping there and have fond memories of Christmas shopping or buying Halloween decorations there with my wife or buying other things like clothes or shoes, Getting a frozen coke or a bag of popcorn before leaving and my kids bothering me for a quarter to put in the machines near the entrance to get one of those plastic bubbles with a toy inside, The store was always so alive full of people shopping or browsing , when I drive by a abandoned Kmart now , It makes my heart ache like seeing a old friends grave
You’re Sweet !❤️
“Really, just look at the state of JCPenney or Kmart, two brands that I will probably cover in the future.”
- _Jake, Abandoned - Bradlees Department Store_
Well, he did cover Kmart...
Lol
Looking forward to the JCPenney one!
Same with other ones like Forever 21 and Chuck E Cheese! Oh man, Jake must have so many ideas!
Depending on if this Simon and Brookfield thing works out JCPenney could either be saved or be facing bankruptcy and liquidation in the near future. However the fact that a good portion of JCPenney’s are in fact located in Simon and Brookfield malls tells me that JCPenney will be fine. At least for the next decade or 3-5 years if things go really wrong.
A year ago my dad and I went on a roadtrip that passed through Ohio and we forced ourselves to stop and go to a Kmart, just because theres so few now. It was really run down, but open.
I used to live in a small town, and Kmart was always the place that had EVERYTHING you could need but got 10 visitors a day, I was not shocked it closed.
Was it the one in Fostoria?
Was like when I went out of town and found a Walmart with the old logo where it was white bold letters with lines through it and a star in the middle. I had to at the very least take a picture.
Before we had a Kroger in southeast ohio, the south zanesville kmart was the only place to get food and clothes. Now there are dozens of places, 90% of which are far nicer. Ssd fall.
I am from Ohio, we've had three in the area and the last one closed about a year ago. :( Though out of the three that is the only one where the building is being used. And indoor farmer's market is held there once a week, (I think.).
Tbh I went to K Mart only like once in my whole life when I was a kid. There was only one near where I live and my parents never wanted to shop there. We always went to Target. I assume it was probably because of how tired looking the K Mart stores were. I think I remember the one I went to when I was a kid had roller skates in the sporting goods department and I wanted to get them. K Mart seems to look run down to me even in photos from their heyday.
the saddest of all department stores in my experience has go to be Sears. every Sears i went into in the midwest felt like a half empty cheapo department store that hadn't gotten new stock of anything in months.
Everything they sold was $5.00 to $15.00 more than at other retailers . Their value was the Craftsman and Kenmore lines. The clothing was always outdated and the electronics were too pricey.
@@silentservant_ ya. I worked there in the 90s. it was a good time.
Sears used to be a top notch retailer. They had most of their stores in malls and had to look the part. Their stores looked great.
Went to get belt for a lawnmower they make. They didn't have it in stock. Ok. And they wanted three times what amazon is charging. Ok. And it would take three weeks to arrive. Ah no thanks, never went back after that.
I worked at Sears, it's a terrible company. Always short staffed, got paid $7.75/hr to unload semi-tractor loads of appliances part-time.
What’s interesting is that Kmart in Australia has to be one of the biggest retail success stories within the country. Unbelievably popular with a massive cult following that provides endless free advertising on tiktok. Unfortunately Target is failing though (which I personally think Is the better outlet) with the majority of stores being converted to Kmart
If you ask me target is just worse Kmart that sells almost nothing but cloths. I’m not sure if that’s just because my local target sucks tho
Target didn't work here in canada and we apparently accept and pay for anything with open arms. Not sure if that tells you what you need to hear.
the ANKO rebranding in Aus and NZ definitely helped their success here though, Kmarts were getting a bit stale before that 🤔
Big W is failing alongside Target. Kmart is just dominating. Its so weird cause a decade ago theyre were so manh Big Ws and Targets and only a few Kmarts
Target in Australia is absolutely shit. Target in the US is just 👍
Again, another great video. Also, a belated congratulations on your film "Closed for Storm" being part of the 2020 New Orleans Film Festival.
That lime green Kmart store intrigued me. It mentioned on Wikipedia it was one of five prototype locations conceived and rolled out at roughly the same time as Kmart's 2002 bankruptcy. I've found other reports where it was described as a "Store of the Future" concept. Along with the logo, the stores featured wider aisles, better lighting and store managers were to be given more autonomy on what and how much of an item they could order.
I read the designer behind the lime green and gray logo said it represented nature but I suspect Kmart may have liked the idea of a new colour palette to identify itself from competitors. Walmart was seen with blue, Target had red while Kmart's was defined with both colours.
One big thing missed here: Their older stores were in older, more run down parts of town and cities, while newer competitors were built in the nicer outskirts of towns in new developments
I can remember K-Mart always mocked, and children being picked on for shopping there.
I remember the stores themselves as overrun, poorly organized, and pretty shabby at times.
Walmart is taking over this mantle now.
Yep .....Wal Mart is falling fast .
Every Wal-Mart I have been in with in the last 3 years looks like K-marts did before they closed up. Dirty, no customer service, prices on the shelves not matching what they ring up, of course the price being higher at the register.
@@kjlahti782 Same here . Wal Mart is going backwards.
@Paula Carson Thats because they are changing the prices every 10 minutes! !!
TJ Maxx
My dad and mother took me to Kmart for clothes and shoes as I had grown up kinda poor and disabled. He made sure I was ok. I miss my dad and may my parents rest in peace 😭 Kmart was my childhood store
Very nice memories. My grandparents took me to Kmart every other Friday to buy me a new outfit. Very fond memories of it as well. May your parents RIP
@@SindyJ37 thank you good soul. The memories hit hard for me 😢
yup.. kmart WAS the place to shot in the 80s and 90s. Until Walmart moved in and started to displace them. I recall many a time going to Kmart and shopping for school supplies, clothes and the like. and If we were really lucky, we'd hit the ritzy Target...
Same here…
I'm sorry for the loss of your parents
My local store survived closing after closing, until finally kicking the bucket on December 15, 2019.
COVID would’ve killed it surely anyway
In nj?
F
Redlands Ca
Bishop, CA ?
My whole town is still sad about a Kmart that closed 4 years ago
K
Kmart has a special place in my heart. One of my earliest Christmas memories was shopping there as a kid in the late 90s. There were ten or eleven family members shopping together. My aunt and uncle let me pick out a giant Lego set (a Johnny Thunder jungle temple) as a Christmas gift and my cousin, brother, and I managed a high score in one of the games at the arcade in Kmart. I'm not sure how many kmarts had arcades but ours did.
Then the defining moment. When we went in, it was cold but no snow. After we checked out, it was snowing. Almost whiteout conditions. As a kid, that's a magical moment you never forget. I'm sorry to see them go, but it's their own fault. Nostalgia takes you only so far.
I was a loss prevention manager for K Mart in 2006 - 2007. My boss told me that in a higher-up meeting, he was told that they were purposely cutting the workforce by like 75% to squeeze as much profit as possible. He even said the company had no integrity. Sears milked the company for everything it was worth knowing that it was going to fail.
The joys of capitalism I guess
@@EdWard-ie5wn Just any kind of authority is the problem. Power corrupts. It's a law of nature.
Your boss probably knew that the hedge fund just got in to get all of the money out of the 2 brands
When I was 19 I applied for a job at K-Mart. The interview went well. I was offered a job and accepted with a handshake. Then the store manager walked in. She started yelling at me, rescinded the job offer, and showed me the door. I was flabbergasted but the next time I drove by the store I realized what happened. She likely learned the store was closing while I was being interviewed.
What a horrible moment...why they keep opening a job vacancy while they started to close
Yeah well she still deserves to be euthanized. You didn't deserve that
@@zuko803 big box stores and chains in general have an always hiring policy that drove me nuts when I got out of high school and how long it took to get a job (ironic now), you never knew who was actually hiring and who wasn’t, the manager was probably operating off that always hiring policy before getting the news
I Remember going to Kmart with My family when I was a Little girl, I Loved that Store I have a lot of Great Memories there, I was So Sad to See it Close!! 🥰💔😭
Lolol
The KMart near me finally died 2 months ago. It was a tough old store - lasted a hell of a lot longer than I expected it to.
The store in my hometown closed down in February of this year. Half of it is a discount store in the style of an Ollie’s (fun fact: this place is a toilet) and the other half is empty and I don’t know what they’re doing with it yet
Mine closed in 2014
Was it so old that the toilets were stained ?????
@@douglasrowland3722 For mine, I was too scared to use the bathrooms
K mart was a different sort of shopping experience. It felt kinda like shoping in someones basement. They did everything they could to keep outside light out of the store. But they had cool stuff and their snack bar was cool.
I loved the K Mart cafeteria. The biggest mistake was merging with Sears and trying to become Wall mart!
Kmart will always have a soft spot in my heart. I worked in the same Kmart from 2007-2012, starting in high school. My mom worked there for many years in 605 and my 2 sisters all worked in the same one that I did. I remember helping out opening a new Kmart shortly after I started and then found out it closed after I left. I remember when we found out we bought Sears and the changes we would go through. The one I worked at was one of the best in my state (CT) and held on up until the last year when it did finally closed down. It’s now a gym and an ace hardware. The other CT close by is now a Ollies, which closed down a few years ago. It’s so crazy to think that Kmart is gone and all those years spent, people I’ve met in that place and all the fun memories! It was definitely ugly, rundown, unorganized but so many great times with great people!
Kmart always felt like it was in “store closing” mode.
Reminds me of the Frys Electronics store by me. It should have closed like 5 years ago, but nope still there, now with horribly low stock.
@@turandorf agreed
@@thatdude123 had that grey sky gloomy feeling i loved
Ikr
Next 5 below
This was sad. I remember running around in Kmart as a kid, and later working there when I was in high school. I have so many good memories. The one in my town is now a Home Goods store. Kmart always smelled like brand new shoes, soft music playing in the distance. Like a old, sad depressing movie.
I remember buying shiny polyester shirts in the 70's from Kmart.I loved wearing them tucked in black dress slacks.
I feel you. I will never forget the blue light specials and coin operated horses outside. My small town in Tennessee had Kmart way before Walmart invaded.
The K Mart in Ann Arbor is a Home Goods store also.
Great description. This English teacher approves. 🤩
Get a life.
-the Troll
Such an odd feeling seeing pictures of all these smiling cashiers. These people worked day in and day out like we all do and now their entire work legacy is rotting shells of stores left abandoned.
Kmart like Sears and Penney just became a neglected company that never really tried and probably thought everything around it was a “little guy” not worthy of changing for.
I agree with you on Kmart and Sears but JC Penney had great buyers especially their clothing lines, High quality merch and their stores we're gorgeous. The first 2 are gone forever but JC Penney could come back if they drop the woke crap and get back to what made them famous.
Of course I don't know the Sins of the Company if there are any. There may not be any.
Sears messed up when they got rid of their mail order service, the very thing that made them big, and focused on physical stores instead. Then a few years later internet sales exploded and Sears bled customers left and right. By the time they got their online store going it was already too late - people had learned to shop elsewhere and Sears went into freefall. If they'd stuck with the mail order and closed down the physical stores when things got tight, there's a good chance they could've survived and wouldn't have gone into the death spiral with Kmart
It's really fascinating and sad at the same time the way retailers have come and gone throughout the years decades I can remember being kid during the 80s and mostly the 90s going with my parents and going shopping at these stores Sears, K-mart......etc. it's amazing how things have changed so quickly. Owners and Vice Presidents of major retail stores have to make a profit but some point they have to realize I'm a millionaire making millions of dollars and then all of sudden Covid hits or we have to file for bankruptcy. I can't even imagine
hate to tell you this but i dont think they were that emotionally attached to their minimum wage job bagging groceries
By the time I was a kid, being in a K-mart felt more like being in a Goodwill Resale than an a walmart or target. Rundown, scuffed uneaven linoleum floors, blinking naked florescent lights, usually almost empty. I can't even remember my parents or grandparents ever actually buying anything there, we'd just go there and then leave not having found what they wanted.
It's funny how in America Target is huge whereas here in Australia they are literally rebranding into Kmarts bc they're the same company and Kmarts do better.
They are ?
@@mariosnyd Yes, target and kmart are owned by The Kmart Group
@@blakeharrison5948 K Mart and Target in Australia aren't connected to the American companies.
@@Scott_From_Maine Westfarmers owns the australian Kmart and Target, with Kmart group being their subsidiary. So yes, there is a Kmart Group in the AU and it is owned by another parent company, Westfarmers.
It shows how the small things count. Once K-Mart was branded Kame-Apart (as in cheap came apart clothes) and kids from the poor side of town invented the word Targe (pronounced Tar-jay) to make it sound sophisticated it was all over in USA because Target was more fashion forward Target ran with it and K-Mart died. All because off the little things in quality. Both (K-Mart and Target) trying to sell themselves to a discount population who want to be a step extreme discounter small local brand stores.
My most vivid last memory of Kmart and Kmart shoppers was exiting out the front door of the store. I noticed someone walking behind me toward the same door. I held the door open as I walked out, and as I released the door expecting him to reach out to stop the closing door, he did nothing, and the door smacked him in the face.
That was me!!
@@badapple65 HAHAHA!
worth it
Hahahahahaha
Smacked in face Lol
Seeing a abandoned K-mart is like traveling back in time. It sends chills down your spin 😅
K-Mart had the interior of a messy, cheap, overstock store like Big Lots, but prices on par with nicer stores like Target. So the stores were shitty, and not that cheap. The only reason anyone would go to K-Mart would be because they want to feel like they were in 1989, or because they haven't finished building the Wal-Mart down the road yet.
The last few years it was like a large convenient store when you didn't want to drive a little out of the way.
So true. Every time I went into Kmart it was like stepping into a time machine to the 1990s. When people tell me Kmart was at one time larger than Wal mart and target it's hard to believe because I have no pleasant memories of that store
KMart was too expensive considering the quality of goods.
My mother worked for k mart in their deli when they 1st opened in Minnesota. She visited stores and routinely picked up pizza from a Little Caesars store that was in the k mart right up until closure of all Minnesota locations.
"Shark dies in Kmart commercial shoot in the valley."
That is certainly some bad press.
Millions get killed when taken from the ocean and get sold as flake: no one cares.
@@c0oldug273 Flake? It gets turned into shark fin soup, worse than flakes,as only the fins are kept for the soup heh
@@dertythegrower actually theres way les dolphin fin soup than there is flake, flake is litteraly every boneless fish you can buy.
Definitely did NOT expect to see my Instagram comment in the intro, did a double take 👀 Thanks for the content Jake!
First
Why are you here? Lol
@darrell holland understandable. Have a great day
Oh, hey Jon lol
how nice.
As someone who worked at one of the last Kmarts left in california I do have mixed feelings of nostalgia and sadness for the company. Growing up in my home town the primary retailers we had access to were Kmart and Radioshack. I started working there in highschool around the time most of the closures took place and eventually quit to join the army not too long after transformco was the new face of the corporation. Flash forward a year later and on flying home for christmas that Kmart too now was shuttered for good. To work in the waning months of not only that location's but the company as a whole's lifespan was dreary to say the least. Most of the shelves were full of gaps where items just weren't being resupplied or products collecting dust for months. Holiday season was still extremely busy at my location but I think thats part in parcel to the fact that the store was in a rural community. By the time I had put in my two weeks I think the writing was on the wall for those of us still working there. I don't know what became of my coworkers after the closure but I do remember feeling sad for some of the management who had spent their whole career at that location and now had very uncertain futures in regards to retirement.
I'm starting to honestly believe that Australia is just an alternate dimension
No Target here is just crap 🤣. When I contacted them once about why they have so much better stuff in America and the headquarters here in Australia told me they have the same name but are basically a different company. Target here can be good but we don't get anywhere near as nice stuff.
Yeah really. Burger King? No! Hungry Jacks!
lmao i live in australia
@@Cline3911
hungry jacks actually tastes good though
@@Ruinedtri
I remember going to target when i was 4 or 5. It didn’t look crap suprisingly
Even if they’re low on popularity, Kmart still has a place in my heart (Along with Toys R Us, Circuit City, KB Toys, some of the other closed stores from my childhood)
Toys R Us definitely.
Yeah, and I will always hold that Walmart will forever represent a step down in quality demands for American society in general. Kmart's biggest mistake was trying to compete with Walmart, because it required them to lower the bar even further, and Kmart was already a discount retailer, but they had some dignity until the late 90's. I worked there when the company was at its peak, around 1995, and the mistakes were apparent right then. The rebranding was a disaster, they had no experience in the grocery business, and their desire to keep staff relatively low guaranteed bad customer service and high shoplifting rates. The Kmart I grew up with seemed like an endearing, caring place, and everyone shopped there. They lost their way when they abandoned their founder's principals and instead tried to mimic their rivals.
I really miss Radio Shack!
Toys r us for sure. I miss the giraffe.
Does this include Showbiz Kids?
When I was a kid, you never wanted to be spotted shopping there. "Your mom shops at Kmart" was a huge burn.
I remember that.
People say the same for Walmart now
Yes, yes it was lol
Back in the day (I'm 65). I was 12, wanted a pair of Converse ($9.95). My dad said, are you crazy, I can get you 4 pair of tennis shoes at K Mart for that price! Funny to reminisce!!
@@fknWorldSeries 😄
In 1975 I was hired by KMART for the grand opening of their South Willow Street, Manchester NH store. It was big, brand new and they had a hot peanut vender out front as you entered the store, I couldn't resist that. I was hired as a cashier (I tried to get a stockman position as I tended to freeze up in crowds but they said it's cashier or nothing (yeah it didn't go well). Aside from the hot peanut vendor the thing I liked most was the grille at the back of the store. That store Is long gone now, I only lasted six months before they fired me (I came to work one day to find out I no longer had a job, nice management). The hot peanut vender was good, the grille was good and some of the girls who worked there were for lack of a better word, slutty and that was fun. 😁
Apparently here in Vegas our last Kmart just closed this year, I didn’t even know it was open.
I grew up going to Kmart in the early 00’s, so it has a special place with me.
Yes so nostalgic looking back now
Moral of the story: don't hire people like Eddie Lampert to run your business. All he's going to do is drive them into the ground while making as much money for himself as he can, then he jumps ship once the desiccated husk can't support his leeching anymore.
Basically Eddie Lampert took the money and run.
Fast Eddie belongs in prison!!!
There are many like that
Sounds like it should be more like Eddie Lamprey.
It's called capitalism my dear. The freedom of enterprise! Until it's no longer free that is!
When I was a kid, Kmart had some major competition here in New Jersey: Caldor, Bradlees, Jamesway, Ames, and Two Guys. Once Walmart and Target came in, that was it for Kmart. Would love to see some videos on these other retailers too!
I was literally just thinking about Caldors.
Bradlees had the best Christmas stuff!
Ames was also up here in Upstate NY. Now there's a Walmart and Target less than 5 minutes away from where the Ames once was, and Ames is now a go kart complex
Caldor was my first employer in '94. As part of a mall, Christmas was unholy chaos. I had so much money in the register that it refused to close properly.
Fun Fact:
The code needed to open the register was printed on every receipt!
Walmart is killing them all
I miss going to KMart, it really brings me back to my childhood in the 80's. I've read that there are currently only three surviving stores in operation in the US, One in Miami, one in New Jersey, and one on Long Island, NY.
No matter what they did, K-Mart stores were always dingy, dirty, and claustrophobic with yellowed plastic bins, cracked floor tiles and water stained ceiling tiles.
Don’t forget the bathrooms were like Calcutta in July 🤢😩
Anything dinghy or dirty or dusty, anything ragged or rotten or rusty, I love it because it’s TRASH! Oh I LOVE TRASH!
@@BlueWhisperer lol. That sounds fucking disgusting
@@dtoy1809 Going into a Kmart back in the day made me feel like I needed a tetanus shot afterwards. I never understood why ppl shopped there!
@@dtoy1809 It really was. These stores were not nice places. Even as a kid in the 90's, I remember seeing the rot. Surprised they lasted as long as they did.
I miss Kmart sometimes. My mom and grandma would make an annual pilgrimage to a Big Kmart around Christmas when I was a kid to stock up on gifts for all the kids and grandkids. I would go with them and marvel at the differences between it and our local Walmart, while trying to get the most I could out of the toy section for the upcoming holiday. Yet even then, the store was shockingly empty. Rarely would you run into more than a couple other shoppers in that huge shopping space, and we would eat in the built-in restaurant that had no other customers.
If you go to Australia they are everywhere
The K Mart back in my home town even offered bowling balls. Sized, drilled and everything. It was the place in 1995.
Damn that's awesome
We used to have a Kmart literally across the street from the local Walmart, it closed in early 2020 and I'm honestly surprised it lasted as long as it did
I’m 30, and I’ll always have heavy nostalgia for many things, but Kmart isn’t one of them. As far back as I can remember, there was always a cheap, run down, eerie and slightly depressing feeling to Kmart. Plus, I worked there and it was shit.
Yeah, being 30 years old, you weren't around much for the "glory years" of K-Mart. I worked there 1995-2000. It was still pretty descent until about 98 or 99, then it started going down hill fast.
Definitely for any millennial or Gen Y people there wouldn't be any nostalgia for Kmart. For us older folks over 50 it was a great place back in their heyday
Yeah, I remember working briefly at my local Kmart back in the late 1990's. I was only there for a month, and it was the worst job I ever had or ever will have. As nasty and dirty as the store was, it's employees were even nastier. Bunch of old timers from the 1970's and early 1980's who were stuck in the old days and all perpetually depressed and angry. Easily the most toxic work environment I had ever been a part of. Seems like from there, it just steadily got worse and worse. In short, it reminded me of a glorified dollar store.
Yeah, as a kid in the 80s I remember a sense of depressing cheapness about K-mart. My parents hated going there, we only went out of necessity. When we would visit family in the Midwest their Target stores seemed like a world away from K-mart. This was even before the whole "Tar-jay" thing started and it was just a big box with a black T on it.
KMart products were inexpensive but better quality than Walmart’s trash.
One of the last Kmarts I can remember going to was in Tacoma, WA in 2014. It was like walking into a time warp back to 1993. The layout was the same, the store decorations were the same, the shelves even looked like they were the same ones from the 1990s. I remember going into the electronics section and they were still selling blank cassettes and VHS tapes at full price.
What really blew my mind was that they were selling N64 editions of games like GoldenEye at full price. Again, this was in 2014.
You should have gone in and bought the games. They could sell those refurbished at modern stores in retro games isle or something
Wth 😂 that’s crazy
Somehow I doubt that since nobody was making the cartridges for n64 games since the mid 2000s
In the US, Kmart's were a time warp, in Australia they're an alternate reality....is this why the current timeline is so messed up? Did Kmart break the universe?
@@Briskeeen doubt all you want, it was the reality of K-Mart before they all finally died. It isn't even uncommon, you should've seen some of the ancient crap RadioShack had for sale before they went under.
i was born in 2003 so i just barely made it to see Kmart. i have fond memories of going and being told i could get pizza and whatever toy i wanted when i would go with my siblings and my dad. there’s a video of me and my sister giggling and having a great time in a kmart that always warms my heart. this place was weird, but will always give me bittersweet feelings of what was.
As a teenager I shopped at Kmart.I love there prices and style.I work for both and Zellers and Sears they are great to there staff.I am happy Zellers is coming back.I do not care for Walmart .I truly feel they hurt Zellers .
I can remember stopping to listen when they would announce a blue light special that was going on. 😂
The last time I went to K-Mart was in 2015, and while the experience wasn't the worst ever, when I walked in the door it felt like I was entering a portal into 1998. It looked the way I remember K-Marts looking in the 90s, and it looked similar to how I remember Target and Walmarts looking in the 90s, but the difference is that Walmarts and Targets don't look like that anymore. Only thing that was different really from it being completely 90s was that they had a modern electronics section with the then latest TVs and stuff like that. There was hardly anybody there, as one would expect.
Reminds me of my last experience with them which was on 8/23/16. I don't even think I was even aware of anything going on with Kmart either, But I remember the stores I visited that day to return some online purchases. It was like walking back into the 90s. The stores were in shambles and the employees there looked as if they all just started. I'm still sad about how things turned out for Kmart. Their board of directors should be tried and convicted for destroying such an iconic brand.
Target looks like Big K all red inside, I don't like Target or Walmart it's a bore. I like Lidl they have excellent pastries that will knock your socks off! Fresh bakery unlike any Kroger or Netto or Penny's
Last time I stepped inside of a Kmart was in 2019 right after news got out that they where closing the one in town.ninterestingly they decided to close the store mid December 2019. That means they thought Christmas shopping was a lost cause for that particular store.
Bright Sun Films: *Abandoned intro plays*
Me: Rolling Acres Mall rolls into my mind
"Do you got Miss Piggy?"
My friend’s parents had a greeting card store there.
Lol i still have flashbacks from that vid
How many dead mall youtube channels were launched by that mall?
Jake, this is probably my favorite abandoned series on UA-cam. I expect you to have a slew of them coming up with the wave of bankruptcies, and despite it being a very sad topic, you make very entertaining/educational content on it, which I find extremely valuable. Thank you.
Thanks for making this! This is such a trip to watch. I worked at Kmart for four years, two of those years as a manager, and man, oh man, what a dysfunctional company. But, I had a lot of great coworkers and made lifelong friends. Good times
*_confused in Australian_*
For reference, in Australia, K-Mart is still alive and kicking.
Quite the opposite here in the U.S, but I'm glad that you still get to experience it. Cheers, Mate
It's not just alive and kicking, it's thriving. I'm pretty sure it's the largest and most profitable retail brand (not incl. Supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths) in Australia. All their stores are extremely modern and well put-together, they have by FAR the best clothes and home a living section I have EVER seen in a department store.
@@euantiernan6991 it's a different unrelated chain called Kmart. They are not the same company
Australian here. Interesting to see the decline of Target (removal of Target Country stores in favour of a Kmart rebranding). People like value, but don't want cheap looking products. Kmart filled the gap that traditional "cheapie" stores, like The Reject Shop, didn't fill. Sleek, modern looking products without hefty prices. Target just keeps getting more and more expensive, favouring brand name products more than in the past. I suspect Target will be gone in 20 years, and they'll all be Kmart rebrandings or sold off in an area that already has a Kmart.
Kmart is our Wal-Mart, and isn't owned by Kmart US. That's what confuses Americans when I tell them how good it is, because they generally see Kmart as shitty. I visited Wal-Mart in the US, and it has some elements of BIG W too in terms of layout and the bulk buys. A hybrid BIG W/Kmart style store is what the Australian market really needs, but it'll never happen. We are always 10 years behind the US with retail 🤣
He mentioned that in the video
Oof, this one hit kinda hard. I live in a super small town in the Midwest and Kmart was the only bigger retail store we had left. They closed it 2 years ago and we still dont have an alternative. Closest retail stores are 45 minutes either way now, yay!
😮
convenience is nice, but... maybe you're better off without having a big box store. in recent years I've gone to walmart maybe once in a year. I don't miss it in the least bit. some places are best avoided.
If you can afford seven dollar gas to go shopping for cheap clothes, how much sympathy should I give you?
I don't particularly want a Walmart, but something other than a Dollar General would be nice. Heck, even a local clothing store or something would be amazing. I just wish we had an alternative to DG that wasn't driving the 45 mins for a Walmart, which isn't much of a step up.
My friend growing up, her father was high up in management growing up. They made good money. In the early 1980's the store started looking like crap. The wait for help or a question got really long until there wasn't even anyone to ask. I tried to buy a watch and for 30 minutes couldn't find anyone to open the case for me. I told the manager that I can't shop here and that this is how stores go out of business. He told me that he assured me this store would NEVER go out of business and he laughed at me. That store closed a few years later.
My friend's father said the people at the top were raising their salaries and becoming non-responsive to concerns about stores. I was shocked they limped along for another 20 years.
Hopefully he retired before the company went under!
A lot of companies get secret political money if they support their favorite candidate and it helps prop select companies from being fully bankrupted. A lot of this dirty stuff was going on since the end of the Bush era. Ironically the one President we all blindly hate is the one that said NO to these games. LOL and behold they are all swiftly closing long before Covid!
This is strange to hear because here in Australia, KMart is a big deal. Most stores are modern & well maintained. I can remember when the first store opened in Adelaide, South Australia.
At some point in that chain’s history they became independent from the american entity
I remember my local Kmart. It's dead now. It was so big that a Ross and a DDs discount occupy the space that once held the store.
Turkey lake rd?
How the hell is Ross still around?
I liked how you could find underwear, antifreeze and tvs all on 1 shelf as no one ever put the items back in the right spot when they decided they did not want that item.
Lol!
Why did you like that?
@@jamesmcinnis208 it’s convenient
That's becoming everywhere. Even supermarkets. Trust me.
@@jeansenn2831 Suddenly I don't trust you.
Under current owner Transformco, the last KMart closed in California in early 2022, and only seven Sears stores remained. The corporate headquarters outside Chicago are for sale. It appears Transformco is basically interested in the land beneath the stores. Lampert and his brother also engineered the demise of Montgomery Ward in the early 2000's.
And sears. And you are correct, all three companies owned the property they were on outright.
They were mismanaged into the ground, where Walmart was given a sweetheart tax deal in the mid 90’s to accept certain government benefits. And Walmart was always able to undercut Kmart as they don’t hire full time employees.
Lambert should be in jail.
In Rutland VT where I live, we had all these stores booming in the 90's, but by the 2,000's they're all gone. Our "Great Rutland mall" is actually abandoned now
The Kmart I worked in, in California closed in early 2020...feel bad about it cause it definitely was a time capsule in a way. I kinda liked working there. KINDA.
Lambert is a pile of dog shit. His Wallstreet sorry ass and his cronies destroyed so many lives and viable companies. All for short term gain. It's what's wrong with our country now.
@@halo2d good point
I miss Kmart. Got some good stuff there. Kroger took over our old Kmart.
Nothing better than finally getting out of school and watch some abandoned k mart
Holiday Vacations, yay!
Just finished my final final exam so hooray for holiday break
same
Same here! Just finished the semester! :)
Froggy Chair
For anyone curious, the background music is from a Kmart reel-to-reel that was played in store in 1973 and 1988
Very cool
Be careful how long you stay in a K Mart. You might come out and find yourself in the 80s...................................Ghost Store.........👻.........................
Are those the ones that that employee smuggled out and saved for years when they were supposed to be throwing them away?
@@kyoyameganebereznoff I would suppose............
@@kyoyameganebereznoff Yea, his UA-cam account is Mark Davis
I agree with your analysis yet as a former employee that witnessed a liquidation of a small GA town Kmart, I was stunned to find no-sale deadstock (including Spice Girl dolls and Tony Hawk branded skate boards) thrown under rusty bays and broken wooden pallets. This inventory was never clearanced and 'made to disappear' from the shelves by a management team that had less than a HS education. It broke my heart to see so much waste. Finally, the last Kmart I visited back in 2017 in Seveirville, TN, was stuck in the early 1980s. They still had cassette tapes for sale. Love it or hate it, every visit in the last 25 years is a nostalgic trip back in time.
Was that in Statesboro, by any chance? They liquidated in 2017-2018 as I recall and it was quite chaotic.
My neighbor was a store manger for K mart in 2000 and i remember him saying they couldn't compete with Wal-Marts prices
"Kmart was renovating older stores"
Just that sentence makes my head explode.
Some Kmart stores in Florida were pretty nice!
Antique
The kmart (which are still open) in my city is weird. The store look nice and has a modern atmosphere (kinda like a target with all the red) but the technology they have is so out of date.
There was a Kmart near me that did a full renovation and closed down 6-9 months later.
There is only 35 Kmart Stores left in the US and US territories
OMG IM SO HAPPY YOU MADE AN EPISODE ON THIS!! yoooo this video is good
Thank you!!
There ! There ! EASY BOY !! ...EEEEEASY !!!!!!!!!!!
I remember when ACE hardware was in the process of being purchased by Kmart. When that news got out something changed and kmart went after Sears. ACE hardware dodged a bullet...
How would that work considering the employees own ACE?
@@Clay3613 not sure, might have been why kmart switched up and purchased Sears. I just remember reading a letter that was given to my brother and father that both worked at ACE stating Kmart was acquiring them. Witch never happened and that same ACE is still opened.
Kmart’s still thriving down under in Australia. I go to Kmart and absolutely love it. Unbelievable though to see this once-powerful retailer in the USA disappear. Love your content. ❤
2011 was the last time I was in a K-Mart and I went there just for old times' sake. It literally was like stepping back in time even then. I can't imagine how bad they are now in the few locations that are left.
I can still smell the popcorn that hit you when you first entered the store!
Yes!! I totally forgot about this.
Always left the store with a bag of popcorn and a Icee as a reward for behaving in the store with my parents as a kid
Omg yesssssss
Those slippers were made out of recycled designer textiles, hence the name Respoke.
That said, Kmart was such a mainstay for so long. My grandma loved Kmart so much and I remember tagging along with her and running to check out the Blue Light Special. We'd always share some popcorn (we did at any store that had it!) and finding the Kmart tapes on Internet Archive were such a blast from the past. There's a real sense of nostalgia held for a place that really hasn't existed and will cease to completely exist sooner than later. But with a listen to the tapes it's like I'm a kid again and following grandma around the store and looking at everything with her.
So sweet
same when I was 5 they closed and changed into rowes and left one until 3 years later they closed
Yes! The popcorn. I remember that being the best part of going there when I was little.
Last time I walked into a K-mart in Des Moines Iowa, it was like walking 25 years back in time. Old Floorplans, narrow isles, moonscape parking lot FULL of potholes long 80's vintage fluorescent lights, analog cash registers and beige/white wire shelving. It was bizarre.....and they closed a month later
You’re describing most of the USA since the early 1970s
I miss Kmart, the snack bar, the dirty floors, dingy lights, blue light specials, the wonderful long-term staff........
did you quit or get fired?
I loved the pharmacy be ause only the old folks used it and it was never very busy. You really got personalized service. I remember our young lady pharmacist calling me so excited to tell me one of my very expensive chemo meds had just gone generic. The price went down from $400 per month to $30.
In my now closed local Kmart, the cashier manager was an elderly lady with an oxygen tank she pushed around in a cart.
I’m surprised there even are any Kmarts left. Hearing that there were closings in 2018 was surprising. I thought they were gone by the mid-2000s.
They only have about 30 Kmart AND Sears locations left. The biggest 2 remaining are interestingly in the same Mall Complex in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.
There was a Kmart building I drove past daily for a few years, always assumed it was closed for a long time, then one day in 2016 I heard it was closing, you could imagine my confusion lol
@@AFoxGuy down to 6 now 😞
@@LukeO-1234 That’s not counting the ones in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam.
@@LukeO-1234 Counting the ones there its 12. Most in USVI. One in Guam and one in PR. 20 Sears and 12 Kmart locations left. 32 total. Wow
I'm an Ex General Manager of Sears ... what people don't know is that every building Kmart and Sears was in they personally owned the property ...which means they still had equity in property value. That's why we see so many abandoned buildings!
why didn’t they sell?
I wonder if they could turn it into housing. Even single occupancy units
They have the parking space and perhaps HUD housing for seniors. You know? Reinvent themselves into something really needed.
@@Kelz_X so my understanding is that Sears is fighting from within... they explained it to us as a " corporation divorce" the company split into 2 entities SHO (Sears Hometown & Outlet) and the original Sears. So they don't agree on anything
So basically they could use old Kmart as homeless shelters it would be fair that they gave back to the same community that kept them in business for decades it would be the right thing to do besides they still have to pay taxes when they use that property or not I guess giving back to the community that made somebody rich is not really how rich people think I guess rich people just don't think except they think about their bank account
Two closed Kmarts in my hometown. One was closed when they built the new Big K store back in the 90s. The old one is now an indoor self storage and the Big K became the police administration. As for the Sears I think it's just abandoned but hell I haven't been near the mall in a while.
I remember most Kmart electronics and appliance boxes on shelves were already opened, and the items inside were either scratched, broken or had missing pieces.