Kmart - Canada, Europe and Australia Stores

Canada, Europe and Australia Stores

Kmart was also once a major presence in Canada, with its first Kresge store opening in 1929. Kmart closed 5 Montreal stores and several other Quebec stores in 1983 due to the company restructuring. However, as a result of Kmart's ongoing financial difficulties, the Canadian division comprising 112 stores was sold to competitor Zellers of the Hudson's Bay Company in May 1998, after which the stores were either closed or converted to Hudson's Bay Company brands, mostly Zellers. A store in Saint-Laurent, Quebec (now Montreal) became a Canadian Tire instead because of the mall that used to house Kmart already having a Zellers.

Like Target stores, Kmart-branded stores in Australia belonged to Coles Myer before being acquired by Wesfarmers in 2007, which also holds the rights to the Kmart brand in New Zealand.

In 1992, Kmart purchased several communist-era department stores in Eastern Europe, including 13 in the former Czechoslovakia that were bought from the former Czechoslovak government. One of those stores was the old MAJ department store on Národní Třída in Prague. Many of these outlets were quite profitable, with the Bratislava location setting a single store sales record for the company. But Kmart's larger troubles in the United States caught up with its European operations later in the decade. In March 1996, The Kmart Corporation announced that it had agreed to sell the six Kmart stores in the Czech Republic and the seven in Slovakia to Tesco P.L.C. of Britain for about $117.5 million, to focus on its core operations in North America.