The Last of the Blue-Light Specials

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The once ubiquitous K-Mart chain had a massive presence in the US with over two thousand locations, but a couple of decades ago it began falling on hard times as the concept of chainstore retailing was taken over by more aggressive retail giants like Walmart and Target.  K-Mart was on a downward spiral when it tried to right itself in 2005 by merging with Sears, another massive retailer that had fallen on hard economic times.  Both stores began downsizing and rapidly disappearing.  This week it was announced that the last full-service K-Mart store in the continental United States will shutter it's doors later this month.  That store is located in Bridgehampton, New York, on Long Island.

When the store in New York closes on October 20th, the company's US footprint will be reduced to a small store in Miami, Florida, as well as a few in the US Virgin Islands and one on the US island territory of Guam.  

I was not a regular K-Mart shopper.  There was one in Joplin, about fifty miles from my home, when I was growing up, and I visited that store on a few occasions, but I remember the now defunct Katz City better - and, of course, Walmart.  It seems like K-Mart was on the way out for a big part of my life.

My father, who spent much of his life running his own appliance store, understood retailing and knew that K-Mart was on its last legs about fifteen years ago when he asked me to take him to the last remaining K-Mart in northwest Arkansas so that he could purchase a particular brand of blue jeans that he liked.  It took a while to find the lone store in the rabbit warren of businesses in the Bentonville-Rogers metroplex, but we finally located it and my dad, who was in his eighties, came out of the store with a stack of folded jeans.  He didn't want to risk running out after that last store closed for good.

There was also a K-Mart not too far from where I lived in the Phoenix area a decade ago, and as far as I know it was the last one in the fourth-largest urban sprawl in the United States.  I went in there a couple of times looking unsuccessfully for items that I was also unable to find elsewhere, and on those few occasions I found the parking lot and store basically empty of shoppers, and the store in short supply of merchandise to sell.   It was obvious that the end was nigh.

I have been to the K-Mart store on Guam twice, and both times found it to be bustling with business.  Of course, at those times (2011 and 2012) the island territory had no Walmart.  Perhaps it still doesn't.  Guam, whose perimeter can be easily driven at island speed, roughly 30 mph, in two hours, also has a Ross's and a Macy's.

But times change and businesses, like people, come and go.

You had a good run-on the mainland US, K-Mart.  Thanks for teaching us about flash sales and blue-light specials, and the transient nature of consumerism.   You will be missed by a few, for a while.  I guess that is about all any of us can expect.