Kmart’s last full-scale store in the mainland United States is set to close its doors next month, marking the end of an era for a retail giant that once had more than 2,000 locations across the nation.
The store, located in the stylish hamlet of Bridgehampton, on Long Island, is set to close on Oct. 20, according to an employee who answered the phone Monday night.
The store manager wasn’t available at the time, the employee said.
A representative for Transformco, the Illinois-headquartered investment holding company that currently owns Kmart, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Following the closure of the Bridgehampton location, only one small U.S. store will remain open: a “small two-room storefront, roughly the size of a neighborhood CVS [that is] tucked in the corner of the Kendale Lakes Shopping Plaza” in Miami, Fla., the Miami Herald wrote last month in a story about “the last two Kmart stores left in the country.”
Kmart — which became known across the nation for its Blue Light specials and its popular culture-blessed term “Attention Kmart shoppers” — announced it would close more than 250 of its stores in 2002, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The company attempted to gain back some of its past retail glory a few years later after hedge fund executive Edward Lampert merged Kmart and Sears into a new corporation, known as Sears Holdings.
But competition from Amazon and the 2008 recession got in its way, leading to another bankruptcy filing in 2018.
The original Kmart opened its doors as a “modest five-and-dime store in downtown Detroit” over a century ago, according to TransformCo. The store, which eventually evolved into an empire, would change “the entire landscape of retailing.”
Besides the Miami store, a handful of stores in Guam and and the U.S. Virgin Islands will remain in operation.