Kmart Stores Shrink Again: Here’s Where The Latest Closure Has Struck

Kmart is set to close its Avenel, New Jersey, location on Saturday, leaving only three stores left in the U.S.

The three remaining Kmart stores are located in Westwood, New Jersey; Bridgehampton, New York; and Miami.

Parent company Transformco has been quietly shutting Kmart stores, as well as Sears locations, since it bought the company out of bankruptcy in 2019. Sears filed field for Chapter 11 back in October 2018 and was bought by former chairman Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund ESL in a $5.2 billion deal.

Since that time, the retailer that once stood at well over 2,000 U.S. Kmart stores has dwindled to now just three locations. Over the past 15 years, more than 3,500 Sears and Kmart stores have closed, and about 250,000 jobs have been lost, according to USA Today.

At its peak, Kmart had revenues of $37 billion.

Michael Lisicky, a Baltimore-based author who has written several books about the U.S. retail history, told USA Today, “Kmart was part of America. Everybody went to Kmart, whether you liked it or not. They had everything. You had toys. You had sporting goods. You had candy. You had stationery. It was something for everybody.

“This was almost as much of a social visit as it was a shopping visit. You could spend hours here. And these just dotted the American landscape over the years,” he added.

Kmart’s Avenel store’s liquidation sale is being managed by SB360 Capital Partners.