Kmart: A slow death but a fast start

Kmart doesn’t get much respect these days.

Actually, it never did it.

The words, “I got it at Kmart,” were never said with great pride – even when Kmart was a big deal.

And Kmart was a big deal at one time.

“The Joliet K Mart is the 98th to be opened by the S. S. Kresge Co. in the past three years,” reported a Joliet Herald-News story from Sept. 22, 1965, about the new store opening that week at Jefferson Street and Larkin Avenue.

Kmart’s owner today, Sears Holdings, announced last week the Joliet store will close in December. But the 51-year-old news article from the Herald-News files gives a glimpse of the vitality that Kmart brought to town back then.

“The company is opening new K Marts at the rate of 35 to 40 a year,” the story went on. “A year ago the company became the operator of the largest number of discount department stores in the world.”

K stood for Kresge, the name of one of America’s great, innovative retailers who in 1899 began to pioneer what grew into a giant chain of five-and-ten-cent stores – including locations in downtown Joliet and the Hillcrest Shopping Center in Crest Hill – and then evolved into Kmart, which was spelled “K Mart” when the first stores opened in 1962.

But K could have stood for “King” because Kmart became the king of discount retailing.

The Herald-News story included store manager Edward G. O’Brien discussing Kmart’s retail strategy, which included the “accelerated turnover principle” to move merchandise in “huge quantity.”

“To move goods this rapidly, self-service is the only practical way to set up the store. Trained employees are available however to help customers who want it,” O’Brien said.

Indeed, I have a childhood memory of my brother and I being fitted for shoes by a Kmart employee – something unimaginable today – at that store.

O’Brien also talked about the police that would be at Kmart to control traffic at the store opening. He mentioned that the parking lot had spaces for nearly 1,000 cars.

It’s been a long time since Kmart had to worry about having enough parking for 1,000 cars at that store. But it’s still impressive that Kmart has held that corner – one of the busiest in Joliet and Will County – for more than a half-century.

Think about it.

How many stores in Joliet today have lasted 51 years at the same location? Any?

Joliet has local stores that have lasted a lot longer. J.D. Brown & Company, Turk Furniture and Sumbaum Cycle, which is located just across Larkin from Kmart, all can trace their origins to the 19th Century. All of them even preceded the first Kresge five-and-ten store.

But all those stores have moved to new locations over the years. None have been in the same place for 51 years.

Obviously, Kmart should have changed for the better somewhere along the way. After all, S.S. Kresge Co. shut down the Kresge stores as it opened Kmarts.

But Kmart did change. A 1985 fact sheet from Kmart, also in The Herald-News files, is a reminder for those who have forgotten that by then the company had acquired several retail and restaurant chains, including Walden Book Company, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, and Builders Square, one of the first home improvement big-box stores.

Those Kmart subsidiaries were in Joliet, too, but have disappeared.

Now, Kmart is going – at least from Joliet and New Lenox, where the Kmart also is closing.

But as Kmart comes to a pitiful end, it’s worth remembering that it was brash, bustling and maybe the biggest thing in retailing when it came to Joliet.

Kmart back then was a sign of the future – 51 years worth of future.

• Bob Okon is a senior reporter for The Herald-News. He can be reached at bokon@shawmedia.com or 815-280-4121.