Blue Light Special
- Wade
First read this. (Then come back.)
The last thing I remember hearing about K-Mart was that it was filing for bankruptcy, closing stores left and right Apparently Martha Stewart's trial generated good pub for the Big K, as they've now snatched up Sears and become the #3 U.S. retailer, behind Wal Mart and Home Depot. Incidentally, the new K-Sears pushes local darling Target Boutique down to #4.
Have you been to a K-Mart lately? Me neither. The last time I went into a K-Mart was May of '02, visiting the one less than a mile from my house in Richfield. Frankly, it was depressing-- confusing layout, crowded aisles, dirt and dust everywhere, and no employee whose first language was English. They didn't have what I was looking for, although admittedly I didn't stick around very long to look. As I walked out and attempted to not get run over by kids having a cart demolition derby, I swore I'd never cheat on Target again.
I gave K-Mart a chance because a) I hate lines and it's hard to be in Target without being in a line, and b) from my birth until I was eight, K-Mart was the hip place to shop for Austinites. It was our small-town version of Mecca, including its own cafeteria. (And if you never enjoyed the K-Mart cafeteria french fries, you had a deprived childhood.) Kids my age knew what a blue-light special was-- if you were ever walking around the store and saw the flashing blue light in the toy department, it was a mad race of kids over to pick up whatever crap was on sale and guild parents into buying said item. Then, a retail sea-change occurred: ShopKo opened in 1984, annexed to the mall. The slightly-burnt orange aura of ShopKo pushed K-Mart out of the limelight. K-Mart then moved "out north of town" to a new facility, but never quite regained its crowd.
ShopKo, too, in recent days, has lost appeal-- in 1999 Target set up shop in town. I predicted that it would go the way of the Rainbow that opened next to it: closed within a year. Rainbow and Target were too "suburby" to make it in my small town. Target is still alive and, seemingly, kicking, even though I'm betting a lot of residents won't go there because it's too fancy. K-Mart is still there, too. How a town of 20,000 can support three major retailers within 300 yards of each other is beyond me, although Austin supports approximately 15 grocery stores and 179 liquor stores, so maybe I'm just not that smart.
Regardless of what does and doesn't happen in SPAMtown, this latest marriage of Martha Stewart to Bob Vila can only mean one thing to consumers: less competition, so higher prices. But that seems moot-- it's doubtful any store will ever be able to compete with Wal Mart's "sweatshop" discount. Even though Wally World has no blue light specials, and their french fries aren't that great.
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