Attention Kmart Shoppers: The Rise and Fall of America's First Big Discounter

The blue light is still on... but for how much longer?

At its peak, Kmart was the undisputed king of discount retail. Over 2,000 stores blanketed the nation, from small towns to big cities to mid-sized suburbs from coast to coast. And yet, less than 20 years later, Kmart was forced into bankruptcy, while its throne was taken by two small regional competitors that were growing to massive size: Wal-Mart and Target. How did it go so wrong?


In Attention Kmart Shoppers, historian Ben Schultz traces the company's whole history, searching for the keys that gave Kmart its power and the missteps that allowed upstarts like Sam Walton to gain an advantage over it. He discovers that the very same Kmart corporate identity (or lack thereof) which made it such a success in the '70s became a huge liability when it ran into the '90s.


Inside: the forgotten origin of the blue light special. Why the company's founder almost nixed the Kmart name for sounding "too Jewish". How Martha Stewart ended up in the discount aisle – and why it wasn't enough. The hedge fund manager who bought Kmart out of bankruptcy, merged it with Sears, and walked away a billionaire while workers lost their pensions. What happened to 3,000 empty buildings across America – and where to find the remote handful of Kmart stores that still survive today.


Meticulously researched and compulsively readable, this is the book for anyone who saw their local Kmart disappear and wondered how such an empire could crumble so fast.

Perfect for fans of Sam Walton: Made in America, The Walmart Effect, and Nickled and Dimed.

Ben Schultz is a historian and archivist from Racine, Wisconsin. He is the founder and administrator of Bluepages (www.bluepageswiki.org), a collaborative website dedicated to collecting and preserving local histories from all over the world. Attention Kmart Shoppers is his first full-length book.For more information visit www.reschultzed.com