Liquidation sales will begin on Sept. 22, and the stores will close their doors in mid-December, according to a person familiar with the closings who did not want to be named because they were not allowed to say so publicly.
According to a list published by Business Insider, most Georgia stores will escape closure. Only one -- in Augusta, Ga. -- is slated to close, the list states. Kmart's website lists 19 stores currently operating in the state, with a few in the metro area.
It is the latest round of cuts by the retailer. Its parent company Sears Holdings said in April that it would close 68 Kmarts this summer. Both Sears and Kmart have had a difficult time remaining profitable and competitive in a retail environment increasingly dominated by mass marketers and e-commerce sites.
The latest closures include 17 stores that were among 235 sold last year by Sears Holdings to Seritage. The deal included a provision that allowed Sears Holdings to lease those locations back from Seritage, but to have the option to vacate the lease if the store was losing money.
"As such, we have informed Seritage that we will soon be exiting 17 Kmart stores,'' says Sears Holdings spokesman Howard Riefs. "We have been strategically and aggressively evaluating our store space and productivity, and will be accelerating the closing of unprofitable stores as we have previously announced.''
Kmart and Sears are hardly the only traditional brick and mortar retailers who are struggling. Macy's said last month that it would close 100 of its 675 full line locations because of dwindling profits. Sports Authority is shutting all of its 460 stores after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And Walmart said in January that it was shuttering 269 locations across the globe.
