Australia: A Land Where Dead U.S. Retail Brands...Thrive?

A country where Kmart, Toys R Us and Woolworths are large, growing and thriving retail enterprises?

It isn’t the U.S. of the 1960s.

But rather Australia today - a country where dead and dying U.S. retail brands apparently thrive.

That is certainly the case with Kmart which currently operates over 320 stores in Australia and New Zealand - including nearly 100 that were opened in just the past decade.

One of Kmart’s newest Australia stores is a flagship, multi-story location that it opened roughly two years ago in the central business district of Melbourne and that, at about 5,000 square meters (~50,000 square feet), is also its largest location.

Kmart has so many locations in Australia that over 80% of Australians live within 10 kilometers (~6 miles) of a Kmart store.

Kmart originally came to Australia in the late 1960s as a joint venture between the U.S. company and the Coles Group, an Australian retailer.

But the U.S. Kmart chain divested its remaining stake in the Australian joint venture roughly thirty years ago and has no current ties to the business.

Toys R Us is making a comeback in Australia as well.

Prior to its 2017 bankruptcy, Toys R Us had retail operations not only in the U.S. and Canada but also in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Australia where it had 44 stores and more than 700 employees.

Australian retailer Funtastic acquired rights to the Toys R Us brand in Australia and New Zealand in 2020 and opened a 200,000 square foot, state-of-the-art logistics center and warehouse in Melbourne where products are sorted and picked by automated mobile robots.

Now the new Toys R Us Australia New Zealand (ANZ) is planning to develop a 30,000 square foot store adjacent to its logistics center that will include activities for children, a cafe and even a viewing room for customers to watch the robot-driven warehouse in action.

Additional pop up Toy R Us locations - and perhaps even additional Big Box stores - are also on tap for 2024 and beyond.

And Toys R Us ANZ plans to leverage brand equity in the iconic Toys R Us mascot Geoffrey the giraffe who is prominently featured in its marketing materials and preliminary store designs.

The largest Australian retailer with a familiar sounding name, though, is Woolworths, which operates over 1,000 supermarkets throughout the country.

Woolworth is best known in the U.S. as the originator of the “five and dime” stores that ultimately evolved into a discount general merchandise store format and was copied and enhanced by the likes of Kmart, Walmart and Target.

The first Woolworth store opened way back in 1879.

By 1912 the F.W. Woolworth Company operated nearly 600 U.S. stores and had become a brand known throughout the world.

The Australian Woolworths is also no upstart — 2024 marks its 100th year of operation.

And while it never had any ties to the U.S. Woolworth business, the Australian chain’s founders chose the Woolworths name to capitalize on the well-known U.S. brand as F.W. Woolworth had not registered or trademarked its brand in Australia.

While Kmart, Toys R Us and Woolworths are thriving in Australia, the same cannot be said for these retailers in the U.S.

After multiple bankruptcies over the past couple of decades, Kmart now operates just two remaining stores in the U.S.

Toys R Us went bankrupt in 2017 and permanently closed its 700 U.S. stores in 2018.

And as for Woolworth in the U.S.?

It closed its last remaining U.S. general merchandise stores way back in 1997 and shifted its focus to selling sporting goods, athletic apparel and footwear under other chains and banners that its parent company owned and operated.

But despite closing its namesake stores over 25 years ago, the Woolworth company still exists today - though it has long since rebranded under one of its better known chains.

You may know it as Foot Locker.