Attention Kmart shoppers: It’s closing time

When Chrissy Economos and Gloria McCourtney heard that the last full-size Kmart in the mainland United States was closing down, they knew they had to pay their respects, even if the store was more than 1,300 miles away.

As the shelves were quickly emptying at the Kmart in Bridgehampton, New York, the two sisters remembered the one in Duluth, Minnesota, where they grew up. They went to that store as children in the 1980s with their mother and grandmother, who wrote poetry in the Kmart Cafe. They got their driver’s licenses there and killed time by wandering the aisles as teenagers. Economos bought her first pregnancy test there. And once they had their own children, the sisters would escape to Kmart for their “mom breaks.”

“We would regret it if we didn’t come,” McCourtney, 39, said.

Kmart was once America’s leading discount store, famous for its “Blue Light Specials” for in-store customers. “Attention Kmart shoppers!” became a catchphrase, uttered by Johnny Carson and Beetlejuice.

Now, at the Bridgehampton store, the announcements seemed stuck in a pandemic-era time warp: Shoppers were asked to stay safe by masking up and social distancing.

After decades of decline, Kmart has now largely disappeared, living on in comedy bits or classic films like “Rain Man,” where Dustin Hoffman’s character only gets his boxer shorts at Kmart in Cincinnati. The closure of the store in Bridgehampton on Sunday will leave just one small store in Miami, crammed into what was once the garden center of a much larger Kmart, and a handful on Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The news of the Bridgehampton closure drew lapsed and loyal customers alike back to the store’s drab interior, not just for the liquidation sale — everything must go! — but also to mourn and reminisce. Some shoppers honored the store by milling the aisles, while others filled their carts with discounted cologne, L.O.L. Surprise! sticker books and household products. Online, Kmart fans have long been eulogizing the retailer on Facebook and the Kmart subreddit.

“It’s just this weird nostalgia for us,” said McCourtney, who was wearing Kmart Joe Boxer leggings and shares half of a “Kmart 4 Eva” tattoo on her forearm with a friend. When she imagines something peaceful, she thinks of wandering Kmart.

“Walking the aisles of Kmart just made me so calm and happy,” McCourtney said. She looked at her sister, adding: “Probably because I was always doing it with you.”

“Everything must go!”

One recent Wednesday afternoon, customers streamed in and out of the Bridgehampton Kmart, past the yellow signs with thick red letters shouting: “Everything Must Go!,” “Store Closing Sale” and “Nothing Held Back!” Customers carried mesh bags of firewood and handfuls of sponges, or pushed carts full of toilet paper. They asked one another about the sales inside, and swapped stories about how handy Kmart was for greeting cards, layaways and small gifts to take to someone’s home over the holidays or for parties.

Jake Berry took a picture of a Thomas the Tank Engine keychain in front of the store’s exterior, with the big red K in the background. “They had the best toy section,” Berry, 22, said. “They always had exclusive Thomas train sets.” Berry regularly shopped at Kmart as a child with his mother and used his day off from Barnes & Noble to travel from Islip, New York, to bid farewell, he said.

“Boy, they’re knocking down fast,” said Gerri MacWhinnie, 80, as she loaded stocking stuffers, cat food and other items into the trunk of her car.

Like many local customers, MacWhinnie, who lives in Southampton, wonders what will move into the nearly 90,000-square-foot space. Bridgehampton, on the tony eastern end of Long Island, one of the country’s most expensive ZIP codes, doesn’t have other big box stores. The closest Walmart and Target are at least a 45-minute drive away.

“This was really the only place it felt like you could get kind of affordable clothes,” said Dana Casale, 46, who grew up in Sag Harbor and still has shirts she bought from Kmart 10 years ago. “Public transportation comes here, which is kind of a big deal. It’s hard to get that to go anywhere.”

Inside, closeout sale posters overwhelmed the store. Pop music from the 1980s and ’90s played over the speakers. Customers strolled past discounted Kenmore washing machines, dryers, refrigerators and dishwashers on the display floor. An empty area cordoned off by yellow caution tape had missing tiles where patches of dirt floor remained, and bare mannequins stood stashed together. Shoppers scribbled in the layers of dust that caked a Craftsman YT 3000 red lawn mower sitting out near the pet clothes with a yellow “sold” sticker on it. They debated whether the prices might drop.

Chris O’Brien, 63, a retired schoolteacher from Center Moriches, picked up cinnamon-scented pine cones, Riesen chocolate and Montreal steak seasoning, as Bruce Springsteen songs played from his phone. O’Brien looked at a winter hat marked 50% off. “It’s kind of like playing the stock market,” he said, putting the hat back: Hold out for the cheaper discounts or risk items selling out.

Some customers asked store employees about couches on sale, while others asked what would happen to their jobs. Among those inquiring: Stella Capasso. “It’s very sad. A lot of people work here,” said Capasso, a retired teacher in her 70s. Capasso stood at the entrance to the store, the back corner of which appeared dimly lit and barren. “It kind of sets the tone,” she added. So many of the stores from her childhood have closed.

Transformco, Kmart’s parent company, did not respond to requests for comment from The New York Times. A Kmart manager said that staff members were not authorized to speak with the Times when a reporter and photographer visited the store Oct. 2.

Once unstoppable, a chain became understocked and understaffed

The first Kmart opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan, though the company’s roots go back much further, to a chain of S.S. Kresge variety stores that started in Michigan in 1899. Kmarts quickly spread across the country by offering everything from food to fashion, according to Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada. “They grew to be an enormous feature in retailing back in the day,” Cohen said.

By 1986, Kmart had become the country’s leading discounter and its second-largest retailer, behind Sears.

Kmart fell victim to executive mismanagement, Cohen said, and failed to compete with Walmart’s low prices, Target’s stylish branding and, later, the rise of Amazon. Once an unstoppable giant that carried brands including Martha Stewart and Jaclyn Smith, Kmart’s stores became understocked, understaffed and neglected.

In 2002, Kmart — which then had 2,114 stores and 240,000 employees — filed for bankruptcy, at the time the largest-ever filing for a retailer.

In 2005, Kmart merged with Sears, also in rapid decline. The move nearly wiped out both brands. Sears Holdings, their parent company, filed for bankruptcy in 2018, and Kmart continued shuttering its stores.

Nostalgia for Kmart’s heyday set in as the company collapsed. In 2015, fans swooned over the release of four years’ worth of in-store music and announcements that were preserved by a former employee, Mark Davis, and uploaded to Archive.org.

“It is the final chapter in the great American story of success and failure,” Cohen said.

The mannequins are not for sale

After an hour and a half of shopping, around 5:15 p.m., Economos and McCourtney joined the checkout line. They didn’t find any Jaclyn Smith or Joe Boxer clothes, and despite their requests, store associates told the sisters that they were not allowed to buy the arm or hand off one of the bare Kmart mannequins. Still, the pair found plenty: a grow aquarium, ninja tattoos, mittens and a fishing lure.

McCourtney felt a rush when she typed in her phone number to earn her Shop Your Way loyalty Kmart points. She spent $75.22 and saved $70.03 with points.

Economos spent $35.67 and saved $31.24.

What they’ll get for their remaining loyalty points is anyone’s guess, but one thing was clear from the flyers around the store and the receipts in their hands: All sales were final.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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