"sf" > wrote in message
...
> I was so used to seeing cruddy KMarts that I was actually shocked to
> see how neat & clean the one in Corvallis was when my mother moved up
> there.

The last time I went to the one in North Seattle was 2 years ago. It was
actually clean and neat and well stocked which was odd because I saw only
two employees working. What I didn't see was customers. We did see a few
but really very few given the size of the store. And we didn't have to wait
in line.

Where they really took a turn for the worse (I say worse because it wasn't
actually the worst. That would come later) was when they made the big
announcement that they wanted to attract a better customer base. They
wanted to be more like the Bon Marche. And that's not what people wanted.

They stopped selling the packages of candy that were 2/$1. Stopped selling
the Lander's cosmetics and cheap $1 hardware type tools and often broke
during the first use. Although I think I still have that $1 hammer that I
bought some 30 years ago. Granted I only ever used it for hanging pictures.
The type of customers they did attract did want that sort of stuff. I do
actually see the Landers cosmetics from time to time at various dollar
stores. And of course the cheap hardware.

And once they did that, that's when the profits stopped. They stopped doing
the blue light specials. Another thing that customers loved. They stopped
drastically marking down stuff that wasn't selling. I once bought a nice
red sweater at Nordstrom for $10 on the clearance rack. We sold the same
sweater for $20! Granted the prices were more likely $9.99 and $19.99 but
close enough. So instead of selling the cheaply made and cheaply priced
clothing, we brought in better stuff. I bought some YSL sweaters there once
that may or may not have been bogus but they did look nice. We even had
some Nike footwear. But people didn't come to K Mart for stuff like that.