Kmart’s blue light fades to black as it closes its last large-scale U.S. store

NEW YORK — Attention Kmart shoppers, the end is near!

The former retail giant, known for its Blue Light specials — featuring a flashing blue globe attached to a pole inviting shoppers to a flash sale — is closing its last large-scale store in the Americas.

The store, located in the upscale Bridgehampton, N.Y., Long Island neighborhood, is scheduled to close Oct. 20, according to Denise Rivera, an employee who answered the phone at the store Monday night. The manager was unavailable, she said.

That leaves just one small Kmart store in Miami. The company has a handful of stores in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Transformco, the company that bought the assets of Sears and Kmart during the 2019 bankruptcy of Sears Holdings, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

At its peak, there were more than 2,000 Kmarts in the United States.

Faced with competition from Walmart’s low prices and Target’s trendier offerings, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2002 – becoming the largest U.S. retailer to do so – and announced the closure of more than 250 stores.

A few years later, hedge fund executive Edward Lampert merged Sears and Kmart and vowed to return them to their former greatness. But the 2008 recession and Amazon’s growing dominance helped derail that mission. Sears filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018 and it now has only a handful of stores left in the United States, where it once had thousands.