One of the oldest, low priced, retail industries in America is Kmart. Kmart is known for its low prices, in store pharmacies, blue light specials, and Martha Stewart Collection. Nevertheless, over the past couple of years Kmart has come on to some hard times. Stock prices have plummeted, net sales have become negative, stores have been shut down and thousands of employees have been laid off. To make matters even worse, early this year Kmart was endanger of filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy. But throughout the storm Kmart has found light and will fights to prevail with plans of reconstruction, new business strategies, and marketing changes. Kmart is slowing recovering and hopefully they will eventually win the fight against their biggest rival Wal-Mart. .
History of Kmart.
In 1899 Sebastian Kresge founded S.S. Krege Co. in Detroit, Michigan which later became Kmart. Between the mid 1980's through the mid 1990's Kmart bought many large companies including: Builder's Square, Sports Authority, and took 90% share in Borders bookstores and OfficeMax. In 1991 Kmart opened its first Super Kmart Center. Throughout the late 1990's Kmart wanted to change its current image so they launched the first Martha Stewart line and they started to distribute groceries in their stores.
Trouble started to arise for the Kmart stores in the year 2000 when Charles Conaway the CEO of Kmart announced that 72 stores where closing and that it would affect over 5,000 employees nationwide. In 2001 Kmart has a second quarter loss of $22 million because of tough competition from Wal-Mart. The 3rd quarter in 2001 has a devastating net loss of $127 million or $0.25 per share. .
Early this year Kmart filed chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Chicago. Ronald Hutchinson was then appointed chief restructuring officer to try to salvage the damage. Currently Kmart is in a lot of trouble on March 8, 2003 Kmart announced that they will be closing 40 stores in the US and Puerto Rico and that it would will affect 22,000 more employees.