iggest discount chains in the country to one that is fighting to survive? What happened to Kmart? The seeds for Kmart were planted in the late nineteenth century when founder Sebastian Spering Kresge opened a five-and-dime store in Michigan.  The first-ever Kmart store opened in 1962 and in the 1990s, the business hit its peak with approximately 2500 stores spread out across the US. At that point, the retailer was well-known for its wide array of price-accessible goods, from apparel to cookware as well as its “Blue Light Special” where stores would announce spontaneous, limited-time sales on specific items. This sales tactic would create a unique frenzy amongst shoppers as they rushed to purchase the discounted products.  However, where Kmart was once a retail innovator, it increasingly fell behind its competitors, from big-box chains like Walmart to — more recently — online giants like Shein and Temu. “There is no single factor that led to the downfall,” Neil Saunders, GlobalData’s managing director and retail analyst noted. “It was a series of missteps and errors which occurred over a long period of time.” In 2002, Kmart filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 and announced the closure of 283 stores. The retailer pushed onwards and attempted a comeback through an $11 billion merger with Sears in March 2005. However, by 2018, the united entity, Sears Holdings, filed for bankruptcy protection and narrowly escaped liquidation in early 2019.  Kmart fell out of favor with lower-income customers looking for a good deal, in part because it failed to keep up with the times, especially as other retailers invested in superior omnichannel operations.  “It squandered this position because it failed to focus on its core business and, instead, overexpanded by making a number of questionable acquisitions,” Saunders said. “It also didn’t pay enough attention to Walmart which outclassed it in terms of logistics, operations, and a focused customer proposition.” Liza Amlani, the principal and co-founder of Retail Strategy Group, noted that Kmart’s “poor standards of product assortments and visual merchandising” also played a role in the retailer’s downfall.  The final nail in the coffin was Kmart’s merger with Sears to launch Sears Holdings. “The combination of the two was supposed to bring synergistic savings and to create a retail powerhouse. Those things never materialized,” Saunders observed. “Instead, the combined entity was unwieldy, badly managed and eventually became a real estate play.” As Amlani put it: “The end result is a once iconic brand goes and bites the dust.” Can Kmart make a comeback? According to these two retail experts, it’s the end of the road for Kmart. “Kmart cannot return to its former glory. There is no place for Kmart in today’s market,” Saunders said. “There is no need for it from a demand perspective and it would not be able to compete with retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart.” Amlani added: “It’s not worth the time, effort or expense to even try [to revive Kmart]. The Kmart brand has been devalued because of years of leadership-level ineptness and reviving it will have limited nostalgic benefit….if that.”