RIP Super Kmart

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klkla
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Re: RIP Super Kmart

Post by klkla »

pseudo3d wrote: January 7th, 2018, 2:15 amWell, if I recall correctly, many of the FedMart stores topped out at maybe 100k square feet (and running 70k square feet normally). The only really big ones (like San Diego) were built under European ownership, and those stores (like the other more European-based ones) crashed and burned.
The one nearest where I lived in San Diego was 200,000 square feet and did over a $1 million a week, which was an astronomical amount back then. They did have smaller FedMart Jr. stores that were not very successful but most of the large stores were successful considering the mismanagement of the new German owners.

But to my point they were definitely the forerunner of today's modern SuperCenter.
Knight
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Re: RIP Super Kmart

Post by Knight »

pseudo3d wrote: January 4th, 2018, 9:00 pm Frankly, Super Kmart was a concept that was never really taken advantage of. I read an article (Houston Chronicle archives I think) that with Kmart's growth projections circa 2000 they would have 500 Super Kmart stores nationwide by the year 2005 (if I recall correctly). That still would've still put them well behind Wal-Mart with four times that number.
Kmart made bad decisions by not investing more into Super Kmart Center hypermarkets and made minimal improvements with dated Kmart discount department stores by renaming them Big Kmart. I think Kmart would be in a better position if its Super Kmart Center stores were greater in number .
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Re: RIP Super Kmart

Post by Super S »

Knight wrote: January 8th, 2018, 7:57 am
pseudo3d wrote: January 4th, 2018, 9:00 pm Frankly, Super Kmart was a concept that was never really taken advantage of. I read an article (Houston Chronicle archives I think) that with Kmart's growth projections circa 2000 they would have 500 Super Kmart stores nationwide by the year 2005 (if I recall correctly). That still would've still put them well behind Wal-Mart with four times that number.
Kmart made bad decisions by not investing more into Super Kmart Center hypermarkets and made minimal improvements with dated Kmart discount department stores by renaming them Big Kmart. I think Kmart would be in a better position if its Super Kmart Center stores were greater in number .
The "Big Kmart" conversion didn't make sense to me. Many of those stores were not exactly "big" with many under 100,000 square feet. Selection in some areas such as automotive was scaled way back to accommodate a limited grocery selection, and it wasn't long before the word "big" was being dropped from ads, but those signs are on many stores to this day. Those stores received a very minimal amount of interior remodeling. Kmart should have just left the "big" out of the name if they weren't doing an expansion...to many this looked like a half hearted attempt to compete with Walmart. Kmart didn't have much volume in some of those stores and if you weren't careful could easily end up with expired grocery products.
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