Kmart History

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The Company Description of Its Time

This page is kept as a historical profile. Kmart, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation, files itself as a mass merchandising company that offers customers quality products through a portfolio of exclusive brands and labels. The historical record's dated snapshot, as of January 31, 2009, counted a total of 1,368 Kmart stores across 49 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands: 1,321 discount stores averaging 92,000 square feet, and 47 Super Centers averaging 166,000 square feet. Most Kmart stores were one-floor, free-standing units carrying a wide assortment of general merchandise, including products sold under such well-known labels as Jaclyn Smith, Joe Boxer and Martha Stewart Everyday, and certain proprietary Sears brand products such as Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard.

Three Store Formats, as Recorded

The historical record's store-facts section describes three formats. Big Kmart signals a different kind of Kmart: bigger and brighter, offering big savings, big value, big selection and big convenience, designed to increase store sales by increasing the frequency of customer visits. The format focuses on three distinct businesses - home fashions, children's apparel and consumables - and features an expanded food area known as the Pantry, with departments placed near one another and closer to the front of the store. The average Big Kmart carried nearly 100,000 stock-keeping units and averaged between 84,000 and 120,000 square feet; the first Big Kmart opened in Chicago, Illinois on April 23, 1997.

Kmart Super Centers are combination full-service grocery and general merchandise stores, most operating 24 hours a day, ranging from 140,000 to 190,000 square feet, featuring in-house bakeries, USDA fresh meats, fresh seafood delivered daily, a full delicatessen and specialty food kiosks, and carrying between 100,000 and 150,000 SKUs. Traditional Kmart stores, the format most people recognise, average between 80,000 and 110,000 square feet, carry a full selection of general merchandise including a pharmacy, and stock between 60,000 and 80,000 SKUs. The filing's founding fact for the chain is a single line: the first Kmart store opened in Garden City, Michigan in March 1962.

The October 2018 Chapter 11 Announcement

The historical record page opens with the announcement that frames this profile as history. On October 15, 2018, Sears Holdings Corporation announced a series of actions to position the company to establish a sustainable capital structure, continue streamlining its operating model and grow profitably for the long term; to facilitate those actions, the company and certain of its subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Kmart's parent had entered bankruptcy, and this profile preserves the announcement at the head of the filing exactly as the historical record placed it.

That is why this page is kept the way the rest of this directory keeps closed and broken-up companies: as a historical record, not a current shopping guide. The kept facts - the 1962 first store, the three formats with their sizes and SKU counts, the 2006 and 2009 store snapshots with their dates attached, and the 2018 Chapter 11 announcement - describe the chain as it was documented in its own period. The routes to the Sears Holdings and Sears, Roebuck and Co. filings are carried on this page as carried in the historical record. For the directory's current value retailers, the Kohl's profile in this same letter is the living comparison.

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