Only 4 Kmart Stores Are Left: Here’s Where They Are Located

Kmart stores are dwindling away to the point where there are now only four locations left in the U.S.

The discount store, which once had more than 2,000 stores across the country, now only has locations in Avenel and Westwood, New Jersey; Long Island, New York; and Miami, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Kmart has become a victim of the retail apocalypse, closing stores at a record pace after its parent company Sears Holdings filed for bankruptcy in 2018. It emerged from Chapter 11 when it was picked up along with Sears in a $5.2 billion deal by former Chairman Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund ESL the following year.

The newly formed company, Transformco Holdco, has been quietly closing locations at a steady clip as consumers shifted to online shopping in lieu of brick-and-mortar stores. Its biggest rivals - Walmart, Amazon and Target - continue to outpace Kmart with their technology and updated branding.

Kmart has also been suffering financially, seeing its global profit margins sink from $49 billion in 2005 to just $3.6 billion in 2020, the Daily Mail reported.

Kmart was founded in 1899 as the SS Krege Company in Michigan’s Garden City, according to its website. It changed its name to Kmart in 1977 and was known for its daily department deals and bluelight specials, where customers would run to get special discounts in-store.

Ben Schultz, a graduate student in public history at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who has been studying the decline of Kmart, told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Kmart absolutely reigned supreme over the retail discount market. Their focus was to be America's discount store. They essentially wanted to have a monopoly over the industry and it seemed like it was within their reach.”

The retailer had nearly 2,400 stores and about 350,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada in the 1990s, when it also owned Payless Drug Stores, Borders bookstores and Sports Authority. All three have shuttered since that time, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In 1993, Kmart had revenues of $37 billion, according to its website, but its demise started a year later as it closed hundreds of stores, which continued over the course of the next decade. Kmart filed for bankruptcy for the first time in 2002, when it then merged with Sears in an $11 billion deal by Lampert, according to the Daily Mail.