Look back at their roots, Kresge. What does that have to do with Kmart, well the Kresge foundation is one of the wealthiest foundations in the U.S. and was created by SS Kresge with profits he took from the company he created which eventually became Kmart. Back before Kmart in the 1960s Kresge stores were old, dirty, poorly lit, but cheap. The company basically was cash starved because its owners diverted profits for their personal interests. But, on a shoestring they started Kmart and kept it going for a lot of years. The model always was however to be cheaper than your competitors. This lead to a culture of cheapness. Initially Kmart stores bathrooms featured coin operated stalls! As many witnessed the stores typical were not updated, and inventory was not cleared out and replaced in a timely manner. And so when in a movie a line was included that said Kmart sucks, well many people agreed. Basically towards the end, it was what Kresge was just before it opened Kmart, shoddy, dirty, but cheap. However in many markets Walmart had come in. It was basically a new version of Kmart, but the stores were newer. Both were about as messy and poorly staffed, except Walmart had in addition to the benefit of newer stores, managers who did not care about work/life balance and were very willing to work large amount of hours on “their” stores. This in part because Walmart has a history of hiring a specific type of person for its managers, deeply religious people devoted more to their religion and the success of the work they do than anything else, basically they higher people who match the Walton family’s religious beliefs and values, fundamentalist reform, a church they actually contribute significantly to. Additionally, while Kmart chronically underfunded due to low profit margins actually had difficulty getting products due to being slow to pay for them, Walmart demanded lower prices from its suppliers, treating them badly and threatened them with being cut. Walmart had and has a model of profit maximization of every step of the product delivery from supplier to customer. It especially works hard to appear to be the cheapest, but to actually maintain profitability by raising prices where it has eliminated its competition and avoiding markets that did not maximize profitability. And so Walmart stepped in as Kmart fumbled and won. The question is can Walmart continue to fill the niche they are in. They try mightily. The stores actually are better organized than they used to be, they are clean and have good product selection, but they have started to screw up with their checkout fiasco and no matter how nice their stores get, in many places the customers they attract make the shopping experience less than ideal. Plus, they often aren’t the cheapest and even if they are, it may be by only a few cents.
Failure to innovate. Their competition, Walmart in particular, was pouring huge amounts of money back into their own stores modernizing their POS and supply chain systems and other aspects of the guest experience
Kmart sat complacent, with an old system that often left the store without any realistic real time inventory count, which meant that product outages could often become very frequent. They didn't bother investing in the physical appearance of many stores, and had a reputation for being the "old" grocery store.
Used to live pretty close to a former Kmart at a few points in life, so growing up I often got to see the state of my local stores at various times.
Also personal curiosity over the self inflicted implosion of Sears/Kmart. It's an oddly entertaining story about how badly the single largest mail order and mall retail behemoth managed to completely implode in the 2000s.
I posted this elsewhere this week, but it’s relevant here too:
Sears was the Amazon of the 20th century. They had the distribution network, the stores, the logistics, everything. They partially even developed the internet with their involvement in Prodigy. Sears was once so big that Whirlpool released their latest innovations on Kenmore first before their own products. All they had to do was give their internal ordering system a GUI for customer use and put it online, and they would have literally been the dominant retailer for the next 100 years.
How Sears let their literal dominance of the market slip away is a mystery in and of itself. It’s literally taken Amazon 25 years to get to where Sears was already with them having to build more and more localized fulfillment centers. Sears already had that with their existing stores, plus an in-store component.
They better never invent time travel, because I’ll go back and change the course of history for life by giving Sears’ leadership Amazon’s playbook.
CEO's that were finance guys, not retailers (Alan Lacy). Then being taken over by a micromanaging hedge fund guy who also knew nothing about retail (Eddie Lampert). They ran the place into the ground. They didn't update stores, and insisted on keeping prices inflated "because of the service we provide."
They did try with online, but it was just run like a clusterfuck. The site was always trash. And again, inflated prices. I literally saw their price sticker over the MSRP that was less than what they were trying to sell the item for.
F'ing Eddie was busy attending all the IT meetings he could, sending people on wild goose chases, working on prlet projects (like creating an internal Yammer dupe called Pebble because he refused to pay Yammer). He should have been looking at the larger picture and listening to the people who had decades of retail experience.
Fucking pig headed finance bros killed it.
Signed,
Former Sears Corporate Associate of the 00's.
I remember Pebble. It was what I’d consider a massive PPI security breach by today’s standards, I worked for Kmart for awhile when some shady assistant managers tried to get rid of me of fake accusations that they themselves couldn’t even provide specifics for. When they canned me, I went on Pebble, and took note of the entire chain of command for direct leadership of those two clowns, all the way up to Leena Munjal and Eddie. Talking about company emails, personal cell phone numbers, maybe an address or two (I think), everything.
I called everyone and told them my story. I was ready to fight this. The general and district managers both investigated, and told me that they could find no evidence of the incident occurring, but said they weren’t high enough to reverse the decision. The regional manager demanded to know how I found his cell phone number and told me to never call him again. Some guy above him either left the company or was let go. Leena said she could help, we talked a couple of times, but then I never did hear from her again, not sure if she got cut herself or what. No number or email on Pebble for Eddie, but I typed him a letter but never sent it out of depression resulting from the whole incident. Still have the letter.
I loved Kmart and Sears as stores, it was my first job, and I was beyond thrilled to work for the company. If it wasn’t for how things went down, I’d probably still would have been with the company bouncing all around the country to different stores as the company slowly closes up shop. I still have depression from those two assistant manager clowns for what they did, but they taught me how cruel the work world could be. Now, I have a personal rule of never working or considering a job with any company that I actually like in order not to repeat the same experience ever again. I still see the old Kmart general manager every once in awhile, and he remembers me. We got along great, and he always apologizes for how things went down. I really hope those assistant managers never find success in life again.
Pebble was a big IP theft situation. We literally had Yammer on a trial basis. Eddie loved it but was too cheap to pay for it, so he directed IT to create a new one just for us.
Leena likely just ghosted you. She was with TransformCo through 2021 per Linkedin.
I LOVED working for Sears the first couple years I was there. The campus was gorgeous, the benefits were excellent, they actually required us in IT to get 10 days of company-paid training each year. Then it quickly went downhill with layoffs every year. Then the Eddie nightmare. By the last few years, if you wanted to attend FREE training, they made you write up an ROI for your lost time at work to attend. It was gross. My mental health while working there was awful. I swear I still have PTSD from it (I mean, look at me here on Reddit still pissing and moaning about it).
Sounds like Leena was with the company until the bitter end. My situation happened back in 2014. I don’t know what ever happened with my contact with her. From my memory, she seemed genuine and wanted to help, but then things just stopped. Maybe a little bit of problems on both sides or something.
Did you ever work or interact with Eddie? It seems the few comments out there from people who have have said that he wasn’t all that bad of a guy, but really paranoid. I’d bet that kidnapping that happened at the start of the merger probably messed him up big time, and often wonder if the company would have had a different outcome if that didn’t happen to him. Like, maybe he’d be more engaged and would show up to HQ more often or something.
I still hope the brand can be resurrected someday beyond its current state. I’d like to be CEO of ever given the opportunity.
I left in 2010. Eddie was at corporate more than he should have been. He SHOULDN'T have been acting as CEO and micromanaging. He should have left that to people who knew how to manage peo and a retailer.
The only direct interaction I had with him was a spat on Yammer when he would be on there as Eli Wexler fighting with employees, not realizing we all knew it was his sorry ass.
A lot of old men saying "This internet thing is a fad."
Seriously, you know how I know? Because I was working for JCPenney at the exact same time (1989-1999) a company that was similarly already set up for internet success because they already had their own inventory and distribution system nationwide and they too utterly shat the bed by basically folding their arms over their chest and saying "The internet won't go anywhere, the paper catalog does not need an online companion." and by the time it became clear that they were wrong, a) everyone else had already gotten past them and b) they insisted on the most kludgy online system possible.
The other big thing is the cost-cutting mindset. When I first started working in the stores, the schedule would include 2 people in every department at all times (sometimes more) plus a couple of 'floaters' who were on the clock and would go cover breaks and lunches and do clean up in areas that needed it and so on. But that's expensive, so they cut floaters, and then they cut the number of people in departments, merge departments, remove cash wraps.
Now when you go into a JCPenney's, there's just a cash wrap by the main doors, no one to help you, no one to clean up, long lines when you do want to check out.. things are messy and disorganized and unpleasant. And they wonder why sales are down.
Ok...yeah, ive read about some of the grocery stores' histories and dept stores. It is fascinating. Interesting how we think each grocery store is its own but so many are owned by one big corp. And then there's Nestles!! Thanks for your comments.
That used to be standard in all retail spaces until relatively recently.
Real-time inventory tracking like that really came about in the 2000's as improvements in computing technology were implemented to improve logistics.
K-Mart never adopted this technology, even as other chains were doing so.
While there's a number of reasons they failed, their consistent failure to update and modernize business practices, and their actual physical stores themselves was definitely a major contributor. K-Mart stores generally looked the same as when they were built, meaning that most of them looked like time capsules from the 1970's when they were expanding and many/most of their stores were built. Instead of looking quaint or "vintage", they came across as run down and very dated.
Hearing all this, part of me thinks that if they updated their computer tech and business practices, but kept the 70s time capsule aspect of their stores, I could imagine Kmart almost having a nostalgic/hipster/ironic appeal nowadays.
The problem is that it wasn't just dated. . .it was dated and worn out. It was 1960's and 1970's fittings and decor etc. . .but they had 30 or 40 years of wear & tear on them.
The stores looked not just dated to another era, but thoroughly worn out. As Wal-Mart and Target were modernizing, K-Mart seemed to be stuck in the past, and more and more run down.
If they modernized their business practices, and replaced their fittings & decor with new versions, but a distinctly more old-time look, then that could have stayed part of their branding, yes, but on it's own the fact they hadn't renovated or modernized in 30+ years just meant they seemed dirty, worn out, and run down.
The last one I shopped in was in Frankfort, KY circa 2011. . .and it felt like it was the 1980's at the latest. If you went in there, then down the road to the local Wal-Mart it felt like traveling through time 30 years into the future.
Yes. I worked at a Kmart in 2009, for 10 months. There were shelves with boxes. And we were told to stick inventory in any empty box. There was no organization at all.
That definitely used to be a thing at all stores back when inventory wasn't electronically tracked. In later years I don't believe that was a real thing though I'm sure people still did that from time to time up until the end because they just felt like being sure vs what was in their system.
We had a pretty "late" k-mart that was the closest store to my house. Not like the last one to close, but it was in one of the last big rounds of closures.
Walking into the place was like walking back in time to the 1980's. Empty shelves, poor design, crap tier products, and yeah, it looked and felt old.
Even though it was super close, I almost never went there.
The screwball debt deal to buy sears also didn't help them (which was also really part of the whole vulture capitalist thing)
The last time I was in a kmart, a handful of years ago, I noticed their checkout machines were the same big chunky grey IBM things they had in the early 2000s. All dusty and yellowing too.
This always seems to be the death knell of any business, some trust fund babies roll in to move debt around in nonsense ways and sell the company for scrap. I'm sure the guys at the top get a nice escape hatch, but they should just send out a mass company e-mail saying "Brush up the resumes and get another job, we're shuttering within 6 months"
It’s different with Kmart/Sears though. Eddie Lampert is still running the company 20 years later. He’s still at the top, the brand hasn’t been sold, and he seems to babe going down with the ship.
Because it was just terrible. I mean, they all felt so soulless and bleak, even when the chain was successful. Which is my theory why Target just destroyed them, they had a sense of aesthetics and tried to make things nondepressing.
First off, there's a whole book on exactly why; Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins: How Incompetence Tainted An American Icon.
So, just take it as read that it wasn't just one thing. But competitors like Walmart helped.
The killshot was when the company was bought by people who realized the real value of owning K-Mart was in the real estate the stores were on, rather than running the place. A similar thing happened to Sears.
The killshot was when the company was bought by people who realized the real value of owning K-Mart was in the real estate the stores were on, rather than running the place. A similar thing happened to Sears.
That's happening to a depressing number of American businesses. Vulture capitalists move in, spin off the land into a seperate company (or sell it off outright), and then move on leaving the original company to wither on the vine.
So many iconic American businesses have been killed by Vulture capitalists, and I note how the media hates to say that's the reason, so commentators typically try to find some other explanation.
Like when Toys-R-Us went out of business in 2018, and the media was talking about how Amazon ran them out of business. . .when it was actually a Vulture Capital kill.
I don't think you can blame VC's for Kmart. They were already in really shitty shape. In this case I'd argue VC's did what they'd do in a perfect world and break up an already dying company rather than sinking a fairly healthy one
Though Toys-R-Us, like Kmart and Sears, was already tottering when the vulture capitalists showed up. The vulture capitalists certainly didn't help, but they aren't always the direct (or only) cause for the death of a business.
this exact thing is happening in my area with a once iconic (locally) restaurant chain that was bought by a PE firm about 10 years ago. They just announced they were closing about 1/3 of their locations to eventually sell the land.
The last few times I went into a Kmart, it was because of their restrooms.
No one shopped there so it was easy to park right by the doors. The restroom in that Kmart was a left from the entrance, so no need to walk past dusty merchandise or decorations from 1996. The restrooms were maintained even though they were almost never used, so everything was spotless and well stocked.
Obviously a major retailer can't survive if this is their main draw.
My family was a Kmart family in the 90s. Kmart was huge, clean, well stocked, cheap, and modern, in comparison to Target, which was nice but had limited selection and felt very subdued, or WalMart, which had a grungy reputation and a warehouse vibe. I visited the last Kmart in my city right before it closed (probably 2018 or 2019) and it was identical to the Kmarts of my childhood, aside from the fact that there now seemed to be no one working there and it was dirty and disorganized. It was like a Time Machine had zapped me into a worse version of 1994.
In the years between 1994 and 2019, WalMart started carrying nicer things, and kind of cleaning up their image. Target started carrying a wider variety of items, and really amped up their customer service. Both remodel their stores regularly to cater to changing aesthetic sensibilities. They carry the products their customers are interested in. Kmart didn’t adapt while its competition did. If that’s the kind of thing a customer can see, there’s probably 10x worse going on behind the scenes.
I visited the last Kmart in my city right before it closed (probably 2018 or 2019) and it was identical to the Kmarts of my childhood, aside from the fact that there now seemed to be no one working there and it was dirty and disorganized.
I did the same thing in the 2010s, and it really did feel like going back in time - and not in a fun, nostalgic way. It felt like the same clothes had been on the mannequins since at least the Clinton administration.
At one point near the end America forgot about KMart. I remember one surreal moment before a hurricane when stores were being stripped of supplies. I was on the hunt for extra propane and batteries that I didn't think we needed but my wife was pregnant and insistant.
The shelves were empty at every store i went to (Walmart, target, grocery stores, home depot etc). I noticed a massive KMart as i drove past but the parking lot was empty and i wasnt sure if it was open. I pulled a u-turn to try anyway.
Walking through the doors was like being transported 20 years into the past. Low ceilings, dated shelving units, ancient registers and beautiful but hand drawn advertisement posters. Yet...
The shelves were stocked. I got everything I needed and, for shits and giggles, grabbed eggs, milk and bread.
Because the guy who bought it, Eddie Lampert, want to get even richer without putting any work into it. He merged KMart with Sears, and got right to work neglecting the physical stores we remember so fondly. Many KMarts from even 10 years ago were throwbacks to the '60s and '70s, with metal pegboard holding the shelves, and decor not updated in decades. And instead of giving both stores a powerhouse online presence resembling a modern-day Sears catalog (or Amazon, for that matter), Lampert let both stores' websites and behind-the-scenes technology fester. Cheap, poor-qualty merchandise didn't help, either. So no compelling reasons to buy from either store in person or online.
We may not have KMart anymore, but we still have the music.
I worked there around 1999-2000 and they were a damn mess. Retail like that doesn’t make huge margins so you have to have your supply chain right. Walmart does this to an amazing degree, Kmart was the polar opposite. Let me give some examples. They would have a product on the shelf that isn’t selling well at all and they’d order enough to jam the shelf and still have 4-5 more cases in the back room. Meanwhile stuff that would sell well was never in stock or when they got it they wouldn’t have enough to last more than a day or so. You can’t sell what you don’t have. And if you’re only making a few % margin overall you quickly tank that profit if you have millions of dollars in stock rotting in the back room unsold. I dealt with everything that wasn’t clothing including the grocery items and it was alarming how much stuff expired and went right in the trash. They also didn’t have a handle at all on shoplifting and didn’t staff enough loss prevention folks to deal with it. They had one guy that handled our store and a number of other nearby locations, can you imagine how much he actually could prevent if he works 40 hours a week covering 7 days a week, multiple stores and 24 hours (because the night crew stocking shelves need to be monitored as well). One year theft and damaged product in the store I was in was $700k.
So that’s the bad management aspect, don’t forget they were competing against Walmart which was bigger/higher volume so they were able to buy cheaper in larger volume. And Walmart is king of knowing what products sell and what doesn’t. They quickly remove stuff that doesn’t work from their shelves.
I graduated HS in 99 and Kmart was my first job ever during that summer. It was an absolutely mess but I did last the whole summer before I went off to college. My older sister only lasted three weeks and quit.
I think one of Kmarts biggest problems was lack of invovation. Most of the technology like hand scanners and pos systems were old. I don't mean 5 years old... I mean 10-20 years old.
When Sears bought Kmart it seemed like it would help. Many things became standardized. Kmart got "new" systems and things were begining to become updated.
However, this also locked the companies in time. Sears was already behind technologically so the improvement was hardly an improvement. It costed millions of dollars to not even catch up. These problems continue and with every new innovation they were lagging behind by 5 years.
I was hired on to update some of these systems towards the end. Man they were freaking horrid. They used phones that connected to a new server which still had to talk to the old server which then communicated with the corperate one. Everything was like this... it was just sooo far behind and when online shopping became a thing they just couldn't adjust.
Also, they wasted a shiiiittttt ton of money on those long as recipts. Literally it would cost $0.05 every time someone printed their recipt. Imagine losing $0.05 every transation only to give them more coupons that lost you more money.
Walmart started doing more grocery items. You could do one stop shopping there. Target did the same and also made a niche as the “nicer” discount store.
Kmart didn’t really make its purpose clear. You could get clothes or toys or furniture there but it didn’t have any appeal.
I lol’d when they simply renamed their existing, dated stores “Super K Mart” in response to Walmart building new massive stores with retail, groceries, nail salons, barber shops, banking etc
Eddie Lampert !! The reason for sears and k mart demise bought both company’s for the real estate valve. Now those properties are Seritage Growth Properties, and transformco is now sears …. Crazy shit. Thanks to Alan lacy for selling sears.. what a pice of shit he was ….
There was a k-mart near my house, but I never shopped there. One day, I went in there for some reason I can’t remember. It was dirty and disorganized. I walked out without even looking at anything. I was not surprised when they all closed down.
There is a joke that there are two books that can change the life of any 14 year old who reads them: The Fountainhead and The Hobbit.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
-John Rogers
And that is what killed K-Mart and Sears. Eddie Lampbert was a staunch Randian, and his philosophy killed both stores.
Ok I literally just finished an assignment on this very topic, weird. It boiled down to nothing made them "special". Kmart had affordable prices but so did Walmart and with a larger selection. Kmart just tried to keep doing the same thing over and hoped for better results while its competition adapted to market trends. Merging with Sears really killed it. The idea was to use the two company's strengths to support each other but instead management focused on cost cutting and ended up making everything worse. They over diversified poorly and had to sell real estate to cover debt. They made the odd decision to sell their most profitable stores off and were left with the poor performers to keep Sears Holdings afloat.
Meh... They were already circling the drain. Merging with Sears (another company that was circling the drain) was just a desperation move that I don't think anyone truly believed would do anything beyond give some corporate types some additional guilding to their parachutes.
K-mart may have been doing better than Sears, but they were (like Sears) unquestionably already circling the drain. Almost nobody could have saved either at that point, the rot was too deep and the damage too widespread.
At worst, Eddie Lampert was just shooting fish in a barrel.
No, the merger was just so Eddie could sell off the real estate since a lot of stores owned the land they were built on. He was always going to run the stores to the ground.
Dazzling-Climate-318@reddit
Look back at their roots, Kresge. What does that have to do with Kmart, well the Kresge foundation is one of the wealthiest foundations in the U.S. and was created by SS Kresge with profits he took from the company he created which eventually became Kmart. Back before Kmart in the 1960s Kresge stores were old, dirty, poorly lit, but cheap. The company basically was cash starved because its owners diverted profits for their personal interests. But, on a shoestring they started Kmart and kept it going for a lot of years. The model always was however to be cheaper than your competitors. This lead to a culture of cheapness. Initially Kmart stores bathrooms featured coin operated stalls! As many witnessed the stores typical were not updated, and inventory was not cleared out and replaced in a timely manner. And so when in a movie a line was included that said Kmart sucks, well many people agreed. Basically towards the end, it was what Kresge was just before it opened Kmart, shoddy, dirty, but cheap. However in many markets Walmart had come in. It was basically a new version of Kmart, but the stores were newer. Both were about as messy and poorly staffed, except Walmart had in addition to the benefit of newer stores, managers who did not care about work/life balance and were very willing to work large amount of hours on “their” stores. This in part because Walmart has a history of hiring a specific type of person for its managers, deeply religious people devoted more to their religion and the success of the work they do than anything else, basically they higher people who match the Walton family’s religious beliefs and values, fundamentalist reform, a church they actually contribute significantly to. Additionally, while Kmart chronically underfunded due to low profit margins actually had difficulty getting products due to being slow to pay for them, Walmart demanded lower prices from its suppliers, treating them badly and threatened them with being cut. Walmart had and has a model of profit maximization of every step of the product delivery from supplier to customer. It especially works hard to appear to be the cheapest, but to actually maintain profitability by raising prices where it has eliminated its competition and avoiding markets that did not maximize profitability. And so Walmart stepped in as Kmart fumbled and won. The question is can Walmart continue to fill the niche they are in. They try mightily. The stores actually are better organized than they used to be, they are clean and have good product selection, but they have started to screw up with their checkout fiasco and no matter how nice their stores get, in many places the customers they attract make the shopping experience less than ideal. Plus, they often aren’t the cheapest and even if they are, it may be by only a few cents.
TehWildMan_@reddit
Failure to innovate. Their competition, Walmart in particular, was pouring huge amounts of money back into their own stores modernizing their POS and supply chain systems and other aspects of the guest experience
Kmart sat complacent, with an old system that often left the store without any realistic real time inventory count, which meant that product outages could often become very frequent. They didn't bother investing in the physical appearance of many stores, and had a reputation for being the "old" grocery store.
ladyinwaiting123@reddit
How do you know all this? I'm impressed!
TehWildMan_@reddit
Used to live pretty close to a former Kmart at a few points in life, so growing up I often got to see the state of my local stores at various times.
Also personal curiosity over the self inflicted implosion of Sears/Kmart. It's an oddly entertaining story about how badly the single largest mail order and mall retail behemoth managed to completely implode in the 2000s.
MinutesFromTheMall@reddit
I posted this elsewhere this week, but it’s relevant here too:
Sears was the Amazon of the 20th century. They had the distribution network, the stores, the logistics, everything. They partially even developed the internet with their involvement in Prodigy. Sears was once so big that Whirlpool released their latest innovations on Kenmore first before their own products. All they had to do was give their internal ordering system a GUI for customer use and put it online, and they would have literally been the dominant retailer for the next 100 years.
How Sears let their literal dominance of the market slip away is a mystery in and of itself. It’s literally taken Amazon 25 years to get to where Sears was already with them having to build more and more localized fulfillment centers. Sears already had that with their existing stores, plus an in-store component.
They better never invent time travel, because I’ll go back and change the course of history for life by giving Sears’ leadership Amazon’s playbook.
digawina@reddit
CEO's that were finance guys, not retailers (Alan Lacy). Then being taken over by a micromanaging hedge fund guy who also knew nothing about retail (Eddie Lampert). They ran the place into the ground. They didn't update stores, and insisted on keeping prices inflated "because of the service we provide."
They did try with online, but it was just run like a clusterfuck. The site was always trash. And again, inflated prices. I literally saw their price sticker over the MSRP that was less than what they were trying to sell the item for.
F'ing Eddie was busy attending all the IT meetings he could, sending people on wild goose chases, working on prlet projects (like creating an internal Yammer dupe called Pebble because he refused to pay Yammer). He should have been looking at the larger picture and listening to the people who had decades of retail experience.
Fucking pig headed finance bros killed it.
Signed, Former Sears Corporate Associate of the 00's.
MinutesFromTheMall@reddit
I remember Pebble. It was what I’d consider a massive PPI security breach by today’s standards, I worked for Kmart for awhile when some shady assistant managers tried to get rid of me of fake accusations that they themselves couldn’t even provide specifics for. When they canned me, I went on Pebble, and took note of the entire chain of command for direct leadership of those two clowns, all the way up to Leena Munjal and Eddie. Talking about company emails, personal cell phone numbers, maybe an address or two (I think), everything.
I called everyone and told them my story. I was ready to fight this. The general and district managers both investigated, and told me that they could find no evidence of the incident occurring, but said they weren’t high enough to reverse the decision. The regional manager demanded to know how I found his cell phone number and told me to never call him again. Some guy above him either left the company or was let go. Leena said she could help, we talked a couple of times, but then I never did hear from her again, not sure if she got cut herself or what. No number or email on Pebble for Eddie, but I typed him a letter but never sent it out of depression resulting from the whole incident. Still have the letter.
I loved Kmart and Sears as stores, it was my first job, and I was beyond thrilled to work for the company. If it wasn’t for how things went down, I’d probably still would have been with the company bouncing all around the country to different stores as the company slowly closes up shop. I still have depression from those two assistant manager clowns for what they did, but they taught me how cruel the work world could be. Now, I have a personal rule of never working or considering a job with any company that I actually like in order not to repeat the same experience ever again. I still see the old Kmart general manager every once in awhile, and he remembers me. We got along great, and he always apologizes for how things went down. I really hope those assistant managers never find success in life again.
digawina@reddit
Pebble was a big IP theft situation. We literally had Yammer on a trial basis. Eddie loved it but was too cheap to pay for it, so he directed IT to create a new one just for us.
Leena likely just ghosted you. She was with TransformCo through 2021 per Linkedin.
I LOVED working for Sears the first couple years I was there. The campus was gorgeous, the benefits were excellent, they actually required us in IT to get 10 days of company-paid training each year. Then it quickly went downhill with layoffs every year. Then the Eddie nightmare. By the last few years, if you wanted to attend FREE training, they made you write up an ROI for your lost time at work to attend. It was gross. My mental health while working there was awful. I swear I still have PTSD from it (I mean, look at me here on Reddit still pissing and moaning about it).
What they did to that company should be a crime.
MinutesFromTheMall@reddit
Sounds like Leena was with the company until the bitter end. My situation happened back in 2014. I don’t know what ever happened with my contact with her. From my memory, she seemed genuine and wanted to help, but then things just stopped. Maybe a little bit of problems on both sides or something.
Did you ever work or interact with Eddie? It seems the few comments out there from people who have have said that he wasn’t all that bad of a guy, but really paranoid. I’d bet that kidnapping that happened at the start of the merger probably messed him up big time, and often wonder if the company would have had a different outcome if that didn’t happen to him. Like, maybe he’d be more engaged and would show up to HQ more often or something.
I still hope the brand can be resurrected someday beyond its current state. I’d like to be CEO of ever given the opportunity.
digawina@reddit
I left in 2010. Eddie was at corporate more than he should have been. He SHOULDN'T have been acting as CEO and micromanaging. He should have left that to people who knew how to manage peo and a retailer.
The only direct interaction I had with him was a spat on Yammer when he would be on there as Eli Wexler fighting with employees, not realizing we all knew it was his sorry ass.
Footnotegirl1@reddit
A lot of old men saying "This internet thing is a fad."
Seriously, you know how I know? Because I was working for JCPenney at the exact same time (1989-1999) a company that was similarly already set up for internet success because they already had their own inventory and distribution system nationwide and they too utterly shat the bed by basically folding their arms over their chest and saying "The internet won't go anywhere, the paper catalog does not need an online companion." and by the time it became clear that they were wrong, a) everyone else had already gotten past them and b) they insisted on the most kludgy online system possible.
The other big thing is the cost-cutting mindset. When I first started working in the stores, the schedule would include 2 people in every department at all times (sometimes more) plus a couple of 'floaters' who were on the clock and would go cover breaks and lunches and do clean up in areas that needed it and so on. But that's expensive, so they cut floaters, and then they cut the number of people in departments, merge departments, remove cash wraps.
Now when you go into a JCPenney's, there's just a cash wrap by the main doors, no one to help you, no one to clean up, long lines when you do want to check out.. things are messy and disorganized and unpleasant. And they wonder why sales are down.
ladyinwaiting123@reddit
Ok...yeah, ive read about some of the grocery stores' histories and dept stores. It is fascinating. Interesting how we think each grocery store is its own but so many are owned by one big corp. And then there's Nestles!! Thanks for your comments.
Smooth_Beginning_540@reddit
Is it true that Kmart employees actually had to look around in the back room in order to know if something was in stock?
MyUsername2459@reddit
That used to be standard in all retail spaces until relatively recently.
Real-time inventory tracking like that really came about in the 2000's as improvements in computing technology were implemented to improve logistics.
K-Mart never adopted this technology, even as other chains were doing so.
While there's a number of reasons they failed, their consistent failure to update and modernize business practices, and their actual physical stores themselves was definitely a major contributor. K-Mart stores generally looked the same as when they were built, meaning that most of them looked like time capsules from the 1970's when they were expanding and many/most of their stores were built. Instead of looking quaint or "vintage", they came across as run down and very dated.
VIDCAs17@reddit
Hearing all this, part of me thinks that if they updated their computer tech and business practices, but kept the 70s time capsule aspect of their stores, I could imagine Kmart almost having a nostalgic/hipster/ironic appeal nowadays.
MyUsername2459@reddit
The problem is that it wasn't just dated. . .it was dated and worn out. It was 1960's and 1970's fittings and decor etc. . .but they had 30 or 40 years of wear & tear on them.
The stores looked not just dated to another era, but thoroughly worn out. As Wal-Mart and Target were modernizing, K-Mart seemed to be stuck in the past, and more and more run down.
If they modernized their business practices, and replaced their fittings & decor with new versions, but a distinctly more old-time look, then that could have stayed part of their branding, yes, but on it's own the fact they hadn't renovated or modernized in 30+ years just meant they seemed dirty, worn out, and run down.
JustSomeGuy556@reddit
About every five years my local wal-marts seem to update themselves. Shit gets rearranged, etc.
K-mart? Never.
smarterthanyoda@reddit
That’s a niche market that wouldn’t support the business. They depended on volume to maintain their prices.
Phyrnosoma@reddit
The last one I personally shopped at was the one in Tucumcari NM sometime in the mid 2010s and I’d swear it still felt like 1999 in there
fourthfloorgreg@reddit
This was my experience in all of them. It was like the lights had been turned on for the first time in 20 years that morning, every day.
MyUsername2459@reddit
The last one I shopped in was in Frankfort, KY circa 2011. . .and it felt like it was the 1980's at the latest. If you went in there, then down the road to the local Wal-Mart it felt like traveling through time 30 years into the future.
Positive-Avocado-881@reddit
Yeah I worked in retail as late as 2016 and we had to do this lol
Kiwik5@reddit
Yes. I worked at a Kmart in 2009, for 10 months. There were shelves with boxes. And we were told to stick inventory in any empty box. There was no organization at all.
Chrisda19@reddit
That definitely used to be a thing at all stores back when inventory wasn't electronically tracked. In later years I don't believe that was a real thing though I'm sure people still did that from time to time up until the end because they just felt like being sure vs what was in their system.
JustSomeGuy556@reddit
This is largely accurate.
We had a pretty "late" k-mart that was the closest store to my house. Not like the last one to close, but it was in one of the last big rounds of closures.
Walking into the place was like walking back in time to the 1980's. Empty shelves, poor design, crap tier products, and yeah, it looked and felt old.
Even though it was super close, I almost never went there.
The screwball debt deal to buy sears also didn't help them (which was also really part of the whole vulture capitalist thing)
spitfire451@reddit
The last time I was in a kmart, a handful of years ago, I noticed their checkout machines were the same big chunky grey IBM things they had in the early 2000s. All dusty and yellowing too.
TehWildMan_@reddit
Same here circa 2010 or so. Clearly ancient yellowed beige plastic with probably the slowest card terminals imagined.
Kellosian@reddit
This always seems to be the death knell of any business, some trust fund babies roll in to move debt around in nonsense ways and sell the company for scrap. I'm sure the guys at the top get a nice escape hatch, but they should just send out a mass company e-mail saying "Brush up the resumes and get another job, we're shuttering within 6 months"
MinutesFromTheMall@reddit
It’s different with Kmart/Sears though. Eddie Lampert is still running the company 20 years later. He’s still at the top, the brand hasn’t been sold, and he seems to babe going down with the ship.
honey_rainbow@reddit
Exactly
friendlylifecherry@reddit
Yeah, the only times I've ever been in a K-mart, it felt like the place was frozen in time
wizardyourlifeforce@reddit
Because it was just terrible. I mean, they all felt so soulless and bleak, even when the chain was successful. Which is my theory why Target just destroyed them, they had a sense of aesthetics and tried to make things nondepressing.
Accomplished_Time761@reddit
They never evolved. Their entire business model stayed in the 80s-early00s.
Current_Poster@reddit
First off, there's a whole book on exactly why; Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins: How Incompetence Tainted An American Icon.
So, just take it as read that it wasn't just one thing. But competitors like Walmart helped.
The killshot was when the company was bought by people who realized the real value of owning K-Mart was in the real estate the stores were on, rather than running the place. A similar thing happened to Sears.
DerekL1963@reddit
That's happening to a depressing number of American businesses. Vulture capitalists move in, spin off the land into a seperate company (or sell it off outright), and then move on leaving the original company to wither on the vine.
Measurex2@reddit
Whenever private equity takes over a company, it starts to tank on quality.
JustSomeGuy556@reddit
Private equity is usually the last gasp for a company, because it means no one else wants anything to do with it.
They are vultures because they consume the dead... not the living.
Measurex2@reddit
Or it's a cash cow to milk money out of like Blackrock's acquisition of Hilton.
MyUsername2459@reddit
So many iconic American businesses have been killed by Vulture capitalists, and I note how the media hates to say that's the reason, so commentators typically try to find some other explanation.
Like when Toys-R-Us went out of business in 2018, and the media was talking about how Amazon ran them out of business. . .when it was actually a Vulture Capital kill.
Phyrnosoma@reddit
I don't think you can blame VC's for Kmart. They were already in really shitty shape. In this case I'd argue VC's did what they'd do in a perfect world and break up an already dying company rather than sinking a fairly healthy one
DerekL1963@reddit
Though Toys-R-Us, like Kmart and Sears, was already tottering when the vulture capitalists showed up. The vulture capitalists certainly didn't help, but they aren't always the direct (or only) cause for the death of a business.
colorcodesaiddocstm@reddit
this exact thing is happening in my area with a once iconic (locally) restaurant chain that was bought by a PE firm about 10 years ago. They just announced they were closing about 1/3 of their locations to eventually sell the land.
Phyrnosoma@reddit
not available on kindle; 50 dollar hardcover. I'd actually like to read it though
No-Conversation1940@reddit
The last few times I went into a Kmart, it was because of their restrooms.
No one shopped there so it was easy to park right by the doors. The restroom in that Kmart was a left from the entrance, so no need to walk past dusty merchandise or decorations from 1996. The restrooms were maintained even though they were almost never used, so everything was spotless and well stocked.
Obviously a major retailer can't survive if this is their main draw.
MinutesFromTheMall@reddit
Kmart must have blew their entire budget on restrooms alone. Their restrooms were always nice and remodeled in the stores that I’ve been to.
TerribleAttitude@reddit
My family was a Kmart family in the 90s. Kmart was huge, clean, well stocked, cheap, and modern, in comparison to Target, which was nice but had limited selection and felt very subdued, or WalMart, which had a grungy reputation and a warehouse vibe. I visited the last Kmart in my city right before it closed (probably 2018 or 2019) and it was identical to the Kmarts of my childhood, aside from the fact that there now seemed to be no one working there and it was dirty and disorganized. It was like a Time Machine had zapped me into a worse version of 1994.
In the years between 1994 and 2019, WalMart started carrying nicer things, and kind of cleaning up their image. Target started carrying a wider variety of items, and really amped up their customer service. Both remodel their stores regularly to cater to changing aesthetic sensibilities. They carry the products their customers are interested in. Kmart didn’t adapt while its competition did. If that’s the kind of thing a customer can see, there’s probably 10x worse going on behind the scenes.
ALoungerAtTheClubs@reddit
I did the same thing in the 2010s, and it really did feel like going back in time - and not in a fun, nostalgic way. It felt like the same clothes had been on the mannequins since at least the Clinton administration.
Phyrnosoma@reddit
I'd swear I saw N64 stuff in the Tucumcari one in the 2010s
ALoungerAtTheClubs@reddit
I believe it!
Measurex2@reddit
At one point near the end America forgot about KMart. I remember one surreal moment before a hurricane when stores were being stripped of supplies. I was on the hunt for extra propane and batteries that I didn't think we needed but my wife was pregnant and insistant.
The shelves were empty at every store i went to (Walmart, target, grocery stores, home depot etc). I noticed a massive KMart as i drove past but the parking lot was empty and i wasnt sure if it was open. I pulled a u-turn to try anyway.
Walking through the doors was like being transported 20 years into the past. Low ceilings, dated shelving units, ancient registers and beautiful but hand drawn advertisement posters. Yet...
The shelves were stocked. I got everything I needed and, for shits and giggles, grabbed eggs, milk and bread.
allbsallthetime@reddit
They ran out of blue lights.
TheJokersChild@reddit
Because the guy who bought it, Eddie Lampert, want to get even richer without putting any work into it. He merged KMart with Sears, and got right to work neglecting the physical stores we remember so fondly. Many KMarts from even 10 years ago were throwbacks to the '60s and '70s, with metal pegboard holding the shelves, and decor not updated in decades. And instead of giving both stores a powerhouse online presence resembling a modern-day Sears catalog (or Amazon, for that matter), Lampert let both stores' websites and behind-the-scenes technology fester. Cheap, poor-qualty merchandise didn't help, either. So no compelling reasons to buy from either store in person or online.
We may not have KMart anymore, but we still have the music.
BeerJunky@reddit
I worked there around 1999-2000 and they were a damn mess. Retail like that doesn’t make huge margins so you have to have your supply chain right. Walmart does this to an amazing degree, Kmart was the polar opposite. Let me give some examples. They would have a product on the shelf that isn’t selling well at all and they’d order enough to jam the shelf and still have 4-5 more cases in the back room. Meanwhile stuff that would sell well was never in stock or when they got it they wouldn’t have enough to last more than a day or so. You can’t sell what you don’t have. And if you’re only making a few % margin overall you quickly tank that profit if you have millions of dollars in stock rotting in the back room unsold. I dealt with everything that wasn’t clothing including the grocery items and it was alarming how much stuff expired and went right in the trash. They also didn’t have a handle at all on shoplifting and didn’t staff enough loss prevention folks to deal with it. They had one guy that handled our store and a number of other nearby locations, can you imagine how much he actually could prevent if he works 40 hours a week covering 7 days a week, multiple stores and 24 hours (because the night crew stocking shelves need to be monitored as well). One year theft and damaged product in the store I was in was $700k.
So that’s the bad management aspect, don’t forget they were competing against Walmart which was bigger/higher volume so they were able to buy cheaper in larger volume. And Walmart is king of knowing what products sell and what doesn’t. They quickly remove stuff that doesn’t work from their shelves.
onyxrose81@reddit
I graduated HS in 99 and Kmart was my first job ever during that summer. It was an absolutely mess but I did last the whole summer before I went off to college. My older sister only lasted three weeks and quit.
bryku@reddit
I think one of Kmarts biggest problems was lack of invovation. Most of the technology like hand scanners and pos systems were old. I don't mean 5 years old... I mean 10-20 years old.
When Sears bought Kmart it seemed like it would help. Many things became standardized. Kmart got "new" systems and things were begining to become updated.
However, this also locked the companies in time. Sears was already behind technologically so the improvement was hardly an improvement. It costed millions of dollars to not even catch up. These problems continue and with every new innovation they were lagging behind by 5 years.
I was hired on to update some of these systems towards the end. Man they were freaking horrid. They used phones that connected to a new server which still had to talk to the old server which then communicated with the corperate one. Everything was like this... it was just sooo far behind and when online shopping became a thing they just couldn't adjust.
Also, they wasted a shiiiittttt ton of money on those long as recipts. Literally it would cost $0.05 every time someone printed their recipt. Imagine losing $0.05 every transation only to give them more coupons that lost you more money.
Dsxm41780@reddit
Walmart started doing more grocery items. You could do one stop shopping there. Target did the same and also made a niche as the “nicer” discount store.
Kmart didn’t really make its purpose clear. You could get clothes or toys or furniture there but it didn’t have any appeal.
DoublePostedBroski@reddit
K-mart had “Super K-Mart” that had groceries.
colorcodesaiddocstm@reddit
I lol’d when they simply renamed their existing, dated stores “Super K Mart” in response to Walmart building new massive stores with retail, groceries, nail salons, barber shops, banking etc
DoublePostedBroski@reddit
Not sure where you are, but the ones by me were brand new at the time.
Amazonsslut@reddit
They suck
Nice-Stuff-5711@reddit
In the end it K-mapart.
farmingvillian@reddit
Eddie Lampert !! The reason for sears and k mart demise bought both company’s for the real estate valve. Now those properties are Seritage Growth Properties, and transformco is now sears …. Crazy shit. Thanks to Alan lacy for selling sears.. what a pice of shit he was ….
lkz665@reddit
Don’t have much to add to this other than Kmart is booming over in Australia
Queen_Aurelia@reddit
There was a k-mart near my house, but I never shopped there. One day, I went in there for some reason I can’t remember. It was dirty and disorganized. I walked out without even looking at anything. I was not surprised when they all closed down.
tee2green@reddit
Brick and mortar retail is a tough business, especially in the Amazon age.
There isn’t much demand for affordable do-it-all retail stores anymore. Walmart and Target cover it. There was no place for Kmart to go.
PlinyCapybara@reddit
Probably online shopping and a mix of other factors
Avery_Thorn@reddit
There is a joke that there are two books that can change the life of any 14 year old who reads them: The Fountainhead and The Hobbit.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
-John Rogers
And that is what killed K-Mart and Sears. Eddie Lampbert was a staunch Randian, and his philosophy killed both stores.
SteakAndIron@reddit
https://youtu.be/1__Qg1toSSs?si=JJNVELu89mbsTWr4
Here's a great breakdown
InfiniteArrival@reddit
Ok I literally just finished an assignment on this very topic, weird. It boiled down to nothing made them "special". Kmart had affordable prices but so did Walmart and with a larger selection. Kmart just tried to keep doing the same thing over and hoped for better results while its competition adapted to market trends. Merging with Sears really killed it. The idea was to use the two company's strengths to support each other but instead management focused on cost cutting and ended up making everything worse. They over diversified poorly and had to sell real estate to cover debt. They made the odd decision to sell their most profitable stores off and were left with the poor performers to keep Sears Holdings afloat.
AmericanNewt8@reddit
The most profitable stores were probably on the most valuable real estate.
DMmeNiceTitties@reddit
The merge with Sears was the killing blow.
Sooner70@reddit
Meh... They were already circling the drain. Merging with Sears (another company that was circling the drain) was just a desperation move that I don't think anyone truly believed would do anything beyond give some corporate types some additional guilding to their parachutes.
Curmudgy@reddit
Forgive my pet peeve, but it’s gilding. “Guilding” sounds like he was trying to unionize management.
DMmeNiceTitties@reddit
K-Mart was actually doing better than Sears actually. After that, it was driven to the ground by the Sears CEO, Eddie Lampert.
Source: used to work at Sears.
DerekL1963@reddit
K-mart may have been doing better than Sears, but they were (like Sears) unquestionably already circling the drain. Almost nobody could have saved either at that point, the rot was too deep and the damage too widespread.
At worst, Eddie Lampert was just shooting fish in a barrel.
Sooner70@reddit
And I'll ask again.... Did you honestly believe that the merger was going to save their collective ass?
DMmeNiceTitties@reddit
No, the merger was just so Eddie could sell off the real estate since a lot of stores owned the land they were built on. He was always going to run the stores to the ground.
Sooner70@reddit
Then it's as I said.... Adding some guilding to his parachute.
DMmeNiceTitties@reddit
You're right, I'll concede to your point.
royalhawk345@reddit
Merging with Sears wasn't so much rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic as it was crashing the Hindenburg into it.
Gatodeluna@reddit
Because their merchandise was total crap and the stores were dirty and old and no one had shopped there for years.
my_clever-name@reddit
I stopped shopping there when their customer service deteriorated. The checkout lines moved slower than a glacier.
Blue387@reddit
Eddie Lampert drove Sears and K-Mart into the ground
lavasca@reddit
Also K-Mart.com was stupid. It was off-brand and incongruent.
They were selling fine jewelry and high end electronics. No. K-Mart was perhaps reaching for Costco status without quality?
Then they aligned with Sears? The Titanic towing the Titanic.
They’d have been better served by locating the Necronomicron and changing the K in their name to an S!
MelodyMaster5656@reddit
Iris didn’t have a plan.
WashuOtaku@reddit
Activist investors ran the company to the ground to get every penny out it.
canadianamericangirl@reddit
Literally what everyone else said but I’m going to recommend this video (even though it was made by a Canadian haha).
Soundwave-1976@reddit
They sucked..it was like barrel bottom items most of the time. The only thing they had good was craftsman tools at the end.
Redbubble89@reddit
KMart always felt the step down when it came to the big box stores. Walmart killed Sears. Target with more clothing and design orriented killed KMart.
ViewtifulGene@reddit
It was a shitty store. Bad selection, depressing to be in. It felt dead many years before it actually closed.
ScienceNeverLies@reddit
It was ghetto
StarSines@reddit
Because they always smelled like pee and if people found out you bought anything from them you got your ass beat into the ground for being poor
Sabertooth767@reddit
Because it was WalMart but inferior in basically every way.
OhThrowed@reddit
Because they didn't sell enough stuff to pay their debts.
Jedi4Hire@reddit
They went out of business.