Eight Michigan Kmart stores, including several in Mid-Michigan will close, leaving only a trio of locations in the state to which the chain traces its roots.
A spokesperson said the Kmart stores in Clio, Midland, Oscoda and Grayling will permanently shut their doors by mid-December, WEYI said. Elsewhere, stores will also close in Belleville, Hastings, Menominee and Marine City. Liquidation sales will begin in mid-September.
That news means there will only be three Kmarts in the state the company was launched in, Crain’s Detroit News said. The three remaining stores are Waterford Township and Warren in the metro Detroit area and Marshall near Battle Creek. Parent company Sears Holding Co. filed for bankruptcy in October 2018.
The Sears-Kmart website gives an extensive biography of the Kmart brand.
To sum it up, Sebastian Spering Kresge opened a five-and-dime store in downtown Detroit in 1899, selling everything for 5 or 10 cents, “and changed the entire landscape of retailing.”
The successes grew to 85 stores in 1912, and the S.S. Kresge Co. opened stores selling items for $1 or less in the mid-1920s.
By the 1950s, it was evident that the company needed to change to continue to be a leader in the growing competitive retail environment. That change came through Harry B. Cunningham, who became Kresge President in 1959. Cunningham had been studying other discount houses and developed a new strategy for the Kresge organization.
Under Cunningham’s leadership, the first Kmart discount department store opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan. Seventeen additional Kmart stores opened that year, leading to corporate sales of more than $483 million that year.
Just four years later in 1966, sales in 162 Kmart stores and 753 Kresge stores topped the $1 billion mark. In 1976, S.S. Kresge made history by opening 271 Kmart stores in one year, becoming the first-ever retailer to launch 17 million square feet of sales space in a single year.
The good times, of course, did not last.
Last October, Sears Holding Co. announced another large round of closures — 142 “unprofitable stores” nationwide — that included the Charlevoix and Lake Orion Kmarts, as well as the Ann Arbor and Lincoln Park Sears stores, according to the corporate website. That was in addition to a previously announced closure of 46.
The latest closures mean there will be no Kmarts in Genesee County, Michigan Live said. Other area closures since 2012 include the stores in Burton, Flint, Grand Blanc, Fenton and Flint Township.
Some of those stores have been repurposed, with Family Farm & Home, KFC and Dollar Tree occupying parts of the Burton store and parking lot. U-Haul has been approved to go into the Flint Township store off Miller Road. T.J. Maxx has moved into the old Kmart in Silver Lake Village.
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
