Tube City Almanac

June 02, 2005

Blue-Light Special

Category: default || By jt3y

In need of some essential, but essentially boring items --- a watch battery, some cassette tapes, shampoo, allergy medicine --- I faced a trip last night to any of three discount palaces. North Bittyburg is roughly equidistant from a Wal-Mart, a Target and a Kmart.

Target is fine for some things --- Michael Graves pastel-colored teapot cozies, for instance --- but I've found their selection isn't exactly deep on many staple items. Wal-Mart often has a great selection, but I've tried to cut back on purchasing items from companies that lock their employees in and force them to work overtime. I also strongly suspect, but have no evidence, that Wal-Mart executives amuse themselves between buying trips to China by torturing rats with hacksaws. That left me with Kmart.

Actually, it left me with virtually a private shopping trip to Kmart, because I was one of only a handful of customers in the entire store. It was clean, well-lit, and had everything I was looking for.

It was also mostly empty.

I'm not much of a shopper, but over the past six months, I've been in several different Kmarts and Targets as well as the North Versailles Township Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is always crowded. Too crowded --- I actually get a little bit uneasy from the crowds at times. I'm sure Wal-Mart has the same uneasiness, thinking of ways to spend the money. (The number 1 idea? Build more Wal-Marts.)

Target doesn't build stores quite as big as the largest Wal-Marts, but they're usually pretty crowded, too. It's interesting, too, that the customers largely fit the popular stereotypes. Wal-Mart attracts a lot of customers with big hair, NASCAR jackets and glitter on their fingernails, while Target seems to attract yuppies and young urban hipsters.

I'd make some sort of snide comment about the kinds of stereotypical customers I see at Kmart, but the last half-dozen times I've been inside a Kmart, I haven't seen enough people to develop a stereotype. (The only crowded Kmart I've seen was in Elizabethtown, Pa., a few months ago, when I was doing some traveling. It was Friday night, and I popped into Kmart to grab a few small items. But Elizabethtown is a college town in the middle of nowhere, and as best I could tell, there wasn't much else to do on a cold Friday night but hang out at Kmart.)

I have no special knowledge about retailing, though I've been interested in it for a long, long time, and over the past year or so, I've obviously been doing a lot of research on retailing for my other project. So feel free to take this prediction with as much salt as you like. But I will be very surprised if there are any Kmart stores left in five years. (Surprised and impressed with Kmart's management.) I don't see how they can stay in business for much longer by operating empty stores.

Kmart's financial disclosures don't exactly paint a rosy picture, either. Sales at Kmart stores declined 4.5 percent during October, November and December of last year --- the Christmas shopping season, traditionally the biggest three months for retailers. That, according to a Kmart press release, was actually a "significant improvement": During the previous three years, sales in the fourth quarter had declined 12.8, 14.9 and 13.5 percent, respectively. Egad.

Now Kmart has merged with Sears, Roebuck & Co., though the surviving company is, effectively, Kmart. To twist an old metaphor, it's like a man swimming in shark-infested waters offering to rescue a man in a leaky lifeboat. I'm probably in Sears on a more regular basis than Kmart or Target, and the Sears stores I frequent are starting to look a lot like Montgomery Ward stores did in 1997 or '98. That's not a good sign.

I think Sears has the potential to last a few years longer than Kmart, mostly on the strength of its hardware, appliances, paint and other hard-lines. In fact, I wouldn't be terribly surprised in a few years to see Sears divest its clothing and jewelry lines altogether and turn its stores solely into hard-line outlets, in which case I also wouldn't be surprised to see whatever was left of Sears sold off to Best Buy, Circuit City or Home Depot.

It's worth noting that some Wall Street experts think I'm all wet. The "new" Sears stock --- which is Kmart's old stock --- was up to $148 per share yesterday. It was trading at less than $60 a year ago. But more than one person I've talked with thinks that the value of Sears and Kmart is solely in their real estate --- all of those prime mall and shopping center locations --- and that their stores are, to put it in technical terms, "dooky."

Time will tell if Sears Holdings, nee Kmart, can turn things around. In the meantime, if you're in a hurry, I suggest you try shopping at Kmart. You might get lonely, but at least you won't have to wait long at the check-out.






Your Comments are Welcome!

I’ve noticed the same things about K-Mart. Chalk that up to “image” and marketing (Wal-Mart = lowest prices, Target = hip, or so the pundits say). I won’t be too surprised if K-Mart, having been aced by its newer competitors, goes the way of Woolworth’s.

Wal-Mart seems to be all the things that are good and bad about America, all at the same time: profits, capitalism, bigger-is-better, wide selection of items, low prices, low wages, elimination of mom-and-pop businesses, elimination of some American jobs. I’m ambivalent about it all, but I still end up shopping at Sam’s Club.
L. K-Mart - June 02, 2005




Target’s hipster marketing strategy is relatively recent, and is reflected in the inflated prices of all but the hippest accoutrements…

When I moved back to the West Coast in the ’90’s, I mistakenly mistook Target for a corporate extension of Dart Drug, a chain of mercantiles whose origins could be found in Washington,D.C.

“If Best Foods mayonnaise if Hellman’s on the East Coast,” I thought, “then it follows that Dart and Target are corporately tied.”

Why? Target’s layout, clientele, lighting, inventory, prices and locations (second radian suburbs) were mirror images of Dart’s. More importantly, the logo was IDENTICAL.

Recently, however (okay, five minutes ago), I discovered that Dart was founded by a charismatic, if slightly unethical character named Herbert Haft, who not only played an important role in the retail and cultural history of the Beltway, but supposedly set the groundwork for the Targets and Wal-Marts of the world. It was his son, Robert Haft, who, in the ’80’s, declared to the world that ‘books cost too much!’ and selflessly committed himself to his mission of saving the world from costly literature via his Crown Books empire.

I’m assuming that any potential legal issues surrounding the ‘borrowing’ of Dart Drug’s logo were averted by Dart’s untimely commercial demise, which, I’m gathering, must have preceded Target’s ‘maiden voyage’ by about an hour and fourteen minutes.

Super-cool link: author reflects on the passing of Herbert Haft, and lends us his reminiscences of childhood Dart Drug shopping excursions….. that is, if you like that retail-store-history kind of thing….: http://mediocrefred.mu.nu/archives/044349.php
deep throat - June 03, 2005




Ugh, K-Mart. I hate going in that place. Dismal, run-down, poorly organized, merchandise heaped haphazardly on dirty shelves. I’ll admit it, I’m totally swayed by the context and branding of Target — but my perception is that merchandise that I buy at Target is of a decent quality, while anything that I buy at K-Mart is cheap krep.

That distinction probably is only in my perception, but it’s enough to sway me to drop a couple hundred bucks on items like patio furniture at Target without even considering that K-Mart might have similar product at a better price.

I am a sheep. Baaaah!
Bob (URL) - June 03, 2005




What I seriously learned when I lived “back east” was that if the ‘help’ was insanely unfriendly (i.e. if I found the ‘bomb’ skirt and walked away only to find it magically disappear, or if my salesperson ignored me for no reason) or the merchandise and lighting was generally skeezey, why bother?
I grew up with the pretentious, but customer-service driven Nordstrom (a global unknown pre-90’s, now a corporate retail mainstay) — a store nobody could afford (or fit into) but to which everyone claimed shopping rights.
If you think, for one second, that ‘context and branding’ (to say nothing of commission-based customer service) are anything to sneeze at, or that K’mart won’t continue to dig its own grave in this regard, well…....
[Parenthetically, I’m looking forward to the 1/2 off sale when Kmart folds — I’d already bought an expensive camera this way…..I guess we’re only willing to enter your domain if’n everythin’s pratic’ly free…........]
heather - June 27, 2005




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