Kmart Corporation. Sears Holdings, the parent company of Kmart, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. S. S. Kresge, the founder of the company that would become Kmart, met variety-store pioneer Frank Winfield Woolworth while working as a traveling salesman and selling to all 19 of Woolworth's stores at the time. In 1897 Kresge invested $6,700 saved from his job into a five-and-dime store in Memphis, Tennessee. He jointly owned the first store with his former tinware customer, John McCrory. Kresge and McCrory added a second store in downtown Detroit the following year. These were the first S.S. Kresge stores.
Chase-Newark Chase-Newark Chase-Newark was a short lived, upper middle-market Department Store based in Newark, New Jersey. The company also operated 2 suburban stores during its three-year history. Chase-Newark was founded early in 1964 when David Chase purchased the Kresge-Newark Department stores from the Kresge Foundation, and leased back 5 floors of the downtown Newark location [1]. When Sebastian Kresge (the founder of Kresge-Newark) died a foundation was set up to run the stores that bore his name. David Chase could have used the Kresge name but instead re-branded the stores Chase-Newark, as he planned to refocus the stores to be (like