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.
Kresge-Newark Kresge-Newark Kresge-Newark was an upper-middle market department store based in Newark, New Jersey. The firm was started in the 1920s when its founder Sebastian Kresge purchased the L.S. Plaut Department store in downtown Newark and rebranded the business Kresge-Newark. This store had no management connection to the S.S. Kresge 5 & 10 chain based in Detroit, Michigan. In 1926, Kresge replaced the original Plaut store, nicknamed "The Bee Hive," which had been built in 1891, with a larger flagship store that occupied the entire city block, between Broad and Halsey streets, and Cedar Street and Raymond Boulevard. It contained more