Facts about K-Mart

Don’t ask why I was spending my Friday night this way, but I was just reading about Juno, the ISP that I assumed went out of business a decade ago. It turns out that they merged with NetZero (another ISP I forgot all about), and formed United Online. (The interesting thing about their merger is that they were in a ferocious legal battle, and somehow decided that, rather than continuing to sue each other, they were better of merging into one company. That seems like the least likely outcome.) Wikipedia mentioned that United Online also holds a third Internet service — Kmart’s BlueLight ISP. This “WTF” sentence led to me reading a lot about Kmart.

So first things first, Kmart is still in business. I was surprised to learn this. I asked my roommate and he was too. We both just kind of assumed that, like Juno and NetZero, they had gone out of business when their names faded from our memory years ago. It turns out that Kmart has about 1,300 stores in the United States.

I glossed over the company’s history, but it’s interesting to note that the company was started by Sebastian Kresge — then working as a traveling salesman selling to Woolworth’s — in 1897. In 1912 he incorporated S.S. Kresge Corporation. In 1918, the corporation was listed on the NYSE. In 1924, Kresge’s personal net worth was estimated at $325 million. (In 1924 dollars.) It wasn’t until 1977 that S.S. Kresge Corporation was renamed to Kmart.

But back to random facts about Kmart. It turns out that, between 2004 and 2005, Kmart bought Sears. I apparently failed to notice this at any point in the past 6 years. The purchase was a mere $11 billion. The name was changed to Sears Holdings Corporation. (So it’s interesting to note that Kmart bought Sears, but Kmart is now a brand of “Sears Holdings Corporation,” which gives a confusing sense of who bought who.)

It also turns out that Sears Holding Corporation owns a lot more than I was aware of.

For example, Kmart bought Waldenbooks in 1984, and in 1994, Borders and Waldenbooks merged.

The Kmart-OfficeMax lineage hurts my head, but Kmart more or less bought OfficeMax in 1990 before taking it public in 1995 and then selling off its remaining shares.

Also in 1990, Kmart bought Sports Authority. Like with OfficeMax, Sports Authority was spun off from Kmart proper in 1995.

And as for Kmart’s ISP? It, too, has a confusing history. They started it as a dialup ISP in 1999, as a free service supported by in-browser ads. The company was later spun off from Kmart. In 2001, after becoming a paid service, Kmart bought BlueLight back. In 2002, Kmart filed for bankruptcy, and that’s when United Online stepped in to purchase BlueLight. (It seems that Kmart filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2003, and in 2004 it purchased Sears.)

Okay, so maybe I’m a little weird… But I found this moderately fascinating.

2 thoughts on “Facts about K-Mart

  1. We have a joint KMart/Sears Outlet near us, and knowing the KMart had filed for bankruptcy years ago, I assumed that Sears must have bought them. I was surprised to find that it was the other way around.

  2. I was just kicking back and started thinking about my first time on the internet. In fact the whole thing started off with the word lagging, lol. Its not a term we hear often. We used to have to wait patiently and see the ad bar and deal with the computer being slower some nights (Friday nights) then others. Start a download early afternoon to finish at damn near midnight. Its just crazy how fast things have advanced. I just wonder if the fact everything is so instantanous now a-days that maybe we were better off having it that way?? Anyways I really appreciate the info this article has some awesome information!!!

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