A five-and-dime chain that renamed itself after its discount stores.

Kmart grew out of a variety-store chain. Its corporate history dates the business to 1899, when, it says, Sebastian Spering Kresge opened a five-and-dime store in downtown Detroit selling goods at five and ten cents. English Wikipedia tells the start differently: in 1897 Kresge, then a travelling salesman, invested in a five-and-dime in Memphis, Tennessee, with John G. McCrory; the partners added a store in downtown Detroit the following year, and Kresge later traded his Memphis share for full ownership of the Detroit store. CNN, in 2024, described the chain as beginning in the late 19th century with a five-and-dime in downtown Detroit bearing Kresge’s name.

The S. S. Kresge Company was incorporated in Delaware in 1912 and reincorporated in Michigan in 1916, and its shares were listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1918, according to both the Kmart timeline and Wikipedia. The company’s history describes its early stores by colour: by the mid-1920s Kresge was opening “green-front” stores selling items for a dollar or less, often next door to its traditional red-front five-and-dimes. It says Kresge took up newspaper advertising early, followed by radio and, from 1968, television commercials. In 1937, the company says, Kresge opened a store at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, a suburban shopping centre.

The change of direction came under Harry B. Cunningham, who became Kresge’s president in 1959 and had been studying discount houses, the company says. Kmart’s corporate history places its Kmart discount department store in Garden City, Michigan, a Detroit suburb, in 1962; Wikipedia gives that store’s opening date as March 1, 1962, and also records a smaller Kmart-branded store that opened in San Fernando, California, on January 25 that year. CNN put it simply in 2024: in 1962 the chain adopted the Kmart brand. In 1977, with Kmart stores producing the bulk of its sales, the company renamed itself K Mart Corporation, Wikipedia says, settling on the spelling Kmart Corporation in 1991; in 1987 it sold its American Kresge and Jupiter variety stores to McCrory Corporation, the Kmart timeline says.

Red K, turquoise mart and a blue light.

Kmart’s visual identity has been built from a few elements: a letter K, the word “mart” and colour. The company’s timeline describes the logo it used until 1990 as a red “K” with a turquoise “mart”; Wikipedia describes the K in that mark as an old-style italic. In 1990, the timeline says, Kmart announced “a new updated identity” — a large red K with a white “mart” — which it said signalled its commitment to change. Wikipedia describes the 1990 design as a red block-letter K with “mart” written in script inside it, and says stores were remodelled shortly afterwards; it adds that a Kmart in Hamilton, Montana, that closed in 2022 still carried the pre-1990 logo on its front.

The mark changed again in the late 1990s and 2000s. The timeline records a new Big Kmart store format and logo in 1997, for remodelled stores that moved a “Pantry” department of everyday consumables to the front, and on July 23, 2004, according to Wikipedia, Kmart announced a logo with a large red K and the word “kmart” in small lowercase block letters underneath.

The device many shoppers connect with the name was a light. Wikipedia describes the Blue Light Special as a short in-store sale advertised with a rotating blue light, similar to a police light, and announced over the public-address system with the words “Attention, Kmart shoppers.” CNN, in 2024, gave the same dates as Wikipedia: the promotion began in 1965 and was discontinued in 1991, and Kmart tried to bring it back several times afterwards. The company carried the idea online in 1999 with BlueLight.com, an e-commerce venture launched with SoftBank Venture Capital and Yahoo!, its timeline says; that site later became kmart.com.

Kmart also sold names. The timeline records a Jaclyn Smith sportswear collection in 1985, Martha Stewart joining as a lifestyle spokesperson and consultant in 1987, Kathy Ireland swimwear in 1994 and, in 1997, the Martha Stewart Everyday line of bed and bath goods with a complementary paint range, later extended to garden and baby products. The same year Kmart launched a Sesame Street clothing line for newborns, infants and toddlers under an agreement with Children’s Television Workshop, the timeline says.

Design and documentation.

A department store brand is carried less by any single product than by the things a shopper sees on the way in and on the way out: the name above the entrance, the lettering on the shopping bag, the colour of a carrier or a box, and, for many stores over the years, the cover of a printed catalogue. Each of those surfaces works at a different distance. Signage has to read from across a car park or a city street; a bag has to read from a few steps away, often folded or creased; a catalogue cover has to read on a doormat or a kitchen table.

Store identities also change as companies change hands. A name may be redrawn, shortened, recoloured or moved onto a new mark when a business is sold, merged or reorganised, and older versions can stay in view for years on buildings that are not refitted at once.

Bankruptcy, Sears Holdings and Transformco.

Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 22, 2002, and emerged on May 6, 2003, its corporate history says. In November 2004 Kmart Holding Corporation announced it would acquire Sears, Roebuck and Co., and in 2005 the two were brought together under Sears Holdings Corporation, Wikipedia says; CNN reported in 2024 that the merger was engineered by the hedge-fund operator Eddie Lampert. Kmart’s headquarters moved from Troy, Michigan, where Kresge had moved in 1972, to Hoffman Estates, Illinois, according to Wikipedia and the Kmart timeline.

Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 in October 2018, and in 2019 Kmart became a subsidiary of Transform SR Brands LLC, a privately held company formed that year to acquire assets from Sears Holdings, according to Wikipedia. The business operates as Transformco, which has owned Kmart since 2019; its website lists Kmart among its brands.

Closures followed in waves. CNN reported that the Kmart in Bridgehampton, New York, on the eastern end of Long Island, which had opened in 1999 in a former Caldor store, would close on October 20, 2024, as the last full-size Kmart in the mainland United States, leaving a smaller store in Miami and a few stores in the US Virgin Islands and Guam. Wikipedia says the Miami store, in the Kendale Lakes area, now trades from its former garden centre with a limited range of clothing, appliances and household goods.

The Kmart timeline says Kresge set up Kmart (Australia) Limited with G. J. Coles & Coy in 1968 and exchanged its stake for an interest in Coles in 1978.

For a design guide, Kmart shows how a retailer can keep one letter and one colour through decades of redesigns, from the red-front Kresge stores to the red K. Compare Sears, its corporate sibling since 2005, and Target, another American discount retailer with a red mark. For this guide we use K red, a turquoise and a blue-light blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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