Kmart has pulled its shutters after almost 25 years in Manhattan’s Astor Place. Now, there are no more Kmarts in Manhattan, although there are two stores in the Bronx still open.
The store opened as the second Kmart store in Manhattan in November 1996, located in the old Wanamaker store on Broadway and Astor Place. The first outlet was in the Penn Plaza next to the Pennsylvania railroad station on 34th Street. It had to be closed due to the pandemic early in 2020.
The members of the Kmart team were told a few days just before Transformco shuttered the outlet on the previous Sunday as per the East Village blog by EV Grieve. Around 18 Sears and 8 Kmart outlets will be shut down by midyear, according to Chain Store Age.
Sears was once a leading chain store that was feared by the other competitors and suppliers. But, now the empire has dropped from sight and is not trustworthy to the consumers. Catalogs boosted the company’s sales. They were on a lot of night tables across the US.
The ignorance of visionary leadership in the chain sank the ship. Just-ripening companies such as Best Buy and Home Depot allowed consumers to purchase cheaper, quicker, and more up-to-the-minute. Also, Asian giants like LG and Samsung are bombarding the US market successfully for the past five years, providing more up-to-date tech in their products.
In the narrative “The Big Store” by Donald Katz, he wrote about how the president and COO Ed Brennan hated the lack of urgency he often noticed in people. He was able to understand it in the numbers of their books and the deadness of their eyes. He has seen it numerous times.
One might know how collegiate the top management staff was, and the dismissal was an action done too seldom, but it should be conducted more often. The management should have pushed some people to get going and motivate them for more innovative and inventive thinking and implementation.
Sears was asleep and died when young companies hit them aggressively by being faster, more creative, and innovative.
Hopefully, in the post-pandemic stage, retailers will gain a mature vision for an organization that will substantially change the retail sector. Creative retailers are in much need whose vision is what consumers need, want, and will buy. Innovation begins when innovative retailers can tell what the customer wants at this very moment.
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