The doomsday clock has inched closer to midnight for Kmart, once a retail behemoth. Now, with the closure of New Jersey’s last Kmart location, there are only two Kmarts left in the continental United States.
So if you’re looking to take advantage of any blue-light specials that might be left, or perhaps ship your pants, the only Kmarts you can visit are now located in Miami, Florida and Bridgehampton, New York.
Now, if you look beyond the continental U.S., you’ll find a few more Kmart locations. There are currently four Kmarts in the U.S. Virgin Islands, three in Puerto Rico, and one in Guam – for now.
The Downfall of Kmart
At one point, Kmart was one of the biggest retailers in the country, with more than 2,000 locations. Growing up, I remember my own family’s frequent trips to Kmart, especially the vaunted Little Caesars food court in the Kmart Cafe, and the robust aisles of books – or, that’s how I remember it at least. And don’t even get me started on the Super Kmart, the first of which opened in Medina, Ohio in 1991.
Much like the Targets and Walmarts we know today, the Super Kmart aimed to provide essentially everything you needed to live comfortably, which included a full-service grocery, deli, and bakery. Visiting one of these was like a spiritual quest for a lot of us in the Midwest.
But the downfall of Kmart is a tale as old as time in the retail world. The company was mired in insurmountable debt in the early 2000s and eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002. Under shaky leadership and poor financial decisions (including the choice to purchase Sears for $11 billion), Kmart began the long, slow, and grueling process of closing and liquidating underperforming stores.
During the Great Recession, Kmart was crushed by poor sales, closing stores at a more rapid pace until once again going back to the Chapter 11 well in 2018 to file for bankruptcy protection. Since then – under the new management of TransformCo, which purchased the 202 remaining distressed Kmart locations in 2019 – it’s been a slow march of closures, and now, Kmart is very much on the verge of extinction.
So yeah, there are two Kmart locations inexplicably still open in the United States, but they won’t be for long. Get your final visits in now, folks.
