Kmart Corporation is an American retail company that owns a chain of big-box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was incorporated in 1899 as S. S. Kresge Corporation and renamed Kmart Corporation in 1977. The first store with the Kmart name opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan. At its peak in 1994, Kmart operated 2,486 stores globally, including 2,323 discount stores and Super Kmart Center locations in the United States. As of early December 2023, that number was down to eight, including just two in the continental United States. From 2005 through 2019, Kmart was a subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation. Since 2019, Kmart has been a subsidiary of Transform SR Brands LLC, a privately held company that was formed in 2019 to acquire assets from Sears Holdings.
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.
Walgreens is an American company that operates the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States, behind CVS Health. It specializes in filling prescriptions, health and wellness products, health information, and photo services. It was founded in Chicago in 1901, and is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois. On December 31, 2014, Walgreens and Switzerland-based Alliance Boots merged to form a new holding company, Walgreens Boots Alliance. Walgreens became a subsidiary of the new company, which retained its Deerfield headquarters and trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol WBA. In 2021 the company was found by a federal jury to have "substantially contributed to" the opioid crisis.
Eckerd Corporation was an American pharmacy retail chain that was headquartered in Largo, Florida, and toward the end of its life, in Warwick, Rhode Island. At its peak, Eckerd was the second-largest pharmacy chain in the United States, with approximately 2,802 stores in 23 states as far west as Arizona.
Bi-Mart is an employee-owned chain of retailers located in the western U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. A typical Bi-Mart houses merchandise including electronics and small appliances, housewares, hardware and power tools, sporting goods, automotive, apparel, canned and packaged food, personal care products, and, through the end of 2021, a pharmacy at many locations. The median size of a Bi-Mart store is 31,000 square feet (2,900 m2). As of mid-2018, there are 79 store locations. Like Costco and Sam's Club, Bi-Mart stores are membership stores; unlike those chains, its members-only policy started as a workaround to fair trade laws established in the United States in the 1930s such as the Miller-Tydings Act] and those related to suggested retail prices. Membership for an entire family costs $5 and never expires.
ShopRite is an American retailers' cooperative of supermarkets with stores in six states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Rite Aid Corporation is an American drugstore chain based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1962 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, by Alex Grass under the name Thrift D Discount Center. It is the third-largest drugstore chain in the United States, with over 2,000 stores, and ranked No. 148 in the Fortune 500 in 2022.
Payless ShoeSource Worldwide, LLC, is an international discount footwear chain. Established in 1956 by cousins Louis and Shaol Pozez, Payless was a privately held company owned by Blum Capital, and Golden Gate Capital. In 1961, it became a public company as the Volume Shoe Corporation, which merged with The May Department Stores Company in 1979. In the 1980s, Payless was widely known in the U.S. for its Pro Wings line of discount sneakers, which often had Velcro straps instead of laces. In 1996, Payless became an independent publicly held company. In 2004, Payless announced it would exit the Parade chain and would close 100 Payless Shoe outlets. On August 17, 2007, the company acquired the Stride Rite Corporation and changed its name to Collective Brands, Inc. The company had a total revenue for 2011 of US$3.4 billion. The company also has a stunt premium banner, Palessi Shoes. Payless is currently owned by a group of investors led by Alden Global Capital and Axar Capital Management.
Longs Drugs is an American chain owned by parent company CVS Health with approximately 70 drugstores throughout the state of Hawaii and formerly in the Continental US.
Thrifty PayLess Holdings, Inc. was a pharmacy holding company that owned the Thrifty Drugs and PayLess Drug Stores chains in the western United States. The combined company was formed in April 1994 when Los Angeles–based TCH Corporation, the parent company of Thrifty Corporation and Thrifty Drug Stores, Inc., acquired the Kmart subsidiary PayLess Drug Stores Northwest, Inc. At the time of the merger, TCH Corporation was renamed Thrifty PayLess Holdings, Inc. and Thrifty operated 495 stores, PayLess operated 543 stores.
USA Drug was a convenience store and pharmacy chain in the United States that operated more than 160 stores in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. It was founded in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1986. Its headquarters are still located in Pine Bluff with additional offices in Little Rock, Arkansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Memphis, Tennessee. Its parent company, Walgreens, operates Super D Drug Stores and Ikes Deep Discount Drug, both acquired in October 1997, and May's Drug, Med-X Drug, Drug Warehouse, and Drug Mart, all acquired in July 2004, as "Part of the USA Drug Family". Wal-Mart and CVS/Pharmacy are two of its primary competitors. The company's slogan is "America's Low Price Drug Store".
Brooks Pharmacy was a chain of more than 330 pharmacies located throughout New England and New York and was a well-recognized name in the New England pharmacy industry for several decades. The corporate headquarters were located in Warwick, Rhode Island.
Farmacias El Amal, was a regional pharmacy chain operating throughout Puerto Rico. At its peak, it operated more than 60 pharmacies across Puerto Rico. The chain was privately held and was founded in 1973. It's largest competitors were Walgreens, Kmart and Walmart.
Drug Fair was a chain of drugstores based in New Jersey.
Sears Holdings Corporation was an American holding company headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the parent company of the chain stores Kmart and Sears and was founded after the former purchased the latter in 2005. It was the 20th-largest retailing company in the United States in 2015. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, and sold its assets to ESL Investments in 2019. The new owner moved Sears assets to its newly formed subsidiary Transform Holdco LLC and after that, Sears Holdings Corporation was closed.
Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (WBA) is an American multinational holding company headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, which owns the retail pharmacy chains Walgreens in the US and Boots in the UK, as well as several pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution companies. The company was formed on December 31, 2014, after Walgreens purchased the 55% stake in Alliance Boots that it did not already own. The total price of the acquisition was $4.9 billion in cash and 144.3 million common shares with fair value of $10.7 billion. Walgreens had previously purchased 45% of the company for $4.0 billion and 83.4 million common shares in August 2012 with an option to purchase the remaining shares within three years. Walgreens became a subsidiary of the newly created company after the transactions were completed. As of 2022, Walgreens Boots Alliance is ranked #18 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Retail apocalypse refers to the closing of numerous brick-and-mortar retail stores, especially those of large chains, beginning around 2010 and accelerating due to the mandatory closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transform SR Brands LLC is an American privately held company formed on February 11, 2019, to acquire some of the assets of Sears Holdings Corporation. The new company is owned by ESL Investments. Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Sears Holdings on October 15, 2018, Transformco purchased the surviving assets owned by Sears Holdings for $5.2 billion.
US$ 2.125 billion (2016) [1] 
