Kmart, one of the household names in the retail chain industry is no doubt one of those retail chain you would visit as at the time when it was making waves everywhere. Today, it has closed most of its stores leaving them very empty and closing more branches.
Kmart started in the 80s by Sebastian Kresge in Detroit. The store was able to overcome the test of time from the world war to the great depression. Kresge mart became a place for shopper to shop and keep money and it increased in sales and started having more locations.
Soon it changed its name to Kmart and it now had a large mart with a big place as a standalone. Kmart brand became a big deal with the Kmart chef and many more with the Kmart name. In the 1980s, Kmart had over 2000 stores in the US and in Canada. Kmart had a kitchen line, a clothing line and it acquired a lot of other company. Their sales grew to over 26 billion dollars and then Wal-Mart came. The Goliath that most shops feared had arrived the market and it was not long before before people started seeing the flaws of Kmart.
Wal-Mart outperformed Kmart and Kmart also had growth problem as their stocks went down and sales dropped drastically. Soon, stores starting closing down and it started losing billions in sales and SEARs, its parent company also had problems and currently, Kmart has closed over 3/4 of its entire store.
reference
https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/no-one-cares-kmart-anymore.html/
https://guttulus.com/what-happened-to-kmart-the-decline-of-a-business/