I went to the grand opening of the Des Plaines Kmart and I had a blast.  This Kmart store located at 1155 E Oakton Street Des Plaines, Illinois has done a complete makeover and I’m here for it.  The grand opening was a real community event.  The day started with a ribbon cutting ceremony with Des Plaines Mayor Matthew Bogusz.  Then a meet & greet with Chicago Bulls’ all-star, Scottie Pippen.

There were plenty of kid activities like face painting and spin art.  RISE held a Basketball Challenge & Dunk Competition in honor of the launch of the band new sneaker line, which is exclusive to Kmart. The Rise show featured Risewear athlete and veteran dunker Taurian “Air-Up-There” Fontenette along with the nation’s top four dunkers, Chris Staples, Guy Dupuy, Porter Maberry and Jonathan Clark. During the meet and greet with the celebrity athletes there was an autograph session and sneaker giveaways with a free airbrushing/shoe-customization station.

Even with all the upgrades Kmart’s infamous “Bluelight Specials” remains.  The Des Plaines Kmart is one of the first stores that will offer hundreds of new products, thousands of lower prices, exciting new departments like Dollarpalooza.  They have amped up the customer service with programs like Kmart’s points program Shop Your Way and Kmart’s exclusive Shoparazzi program.  Shoparrazi is a total  FREE concierge shopping service that will not only other a personal shopper for you at Kmart but with go out and get items from other stores for you so that Kmart can truly offer your a one stop shopping experience.

I met with Kelly Cook, Kmart CMO.  She was so excited about all the changes being made to make the customer experience the main focus at Kmart.  She explained revamping the stores was a learning process.  Adding the biggest lesson was understand that their members are very connected to their local store often calling it my Kmart.  The Des Plaines Kmart added an aisle of WOW, a Shoppazi associate and VIP parking for pick ups, bringing in beauty experts on Saturday and Sunday, allowing customers to text the Happy To Help at 95550 for instant coupons.  Kmart also has a new customer leasing program that approves everyone no matter their credit rating.  Kmart wants you to take what you need home the same day.

Kmart gifted me with a pair of the new RISE gym shoe.  I got them customize with the words Future Leader on them.  I want to give these RISE gym shoes to a Chicago mom for her boy or girl.  The shoe is the youth (boy) glide 81092 size 1 in black.  I know Chicago moms are getting their children together for the start of 2016 school year and I’m offering these as gift to your future leader.  As a child of a single mother I know times can get rough.  This is a small token from thefatgirloffashion just leave a blog comment with the name of your Chicago neighborhood.

Use the hashtag #LifeisRidiculouslyAwesome to see all the Kmart fun!

FYI:

You can follow this blog on Bloglovin here.  Also lately I’ve be doing most of my posting on snapchat@fatgirl_fashion. My snapchat friends were the first to know about the location I selected for my blog’s 3rd year anniversary brunch that happened on June 12th. They saw first hand my Beyonce’s Formation tour experience, and my NYC trip for theCurvycon.  I was in L.A. in August for BlogHer & some fun in the sun.  Then off to ATL for TCFStyleExpo.  Followed up by trip to Florida for the Black Enterprise Golf Tennis Challenge.  Be sure to follow me on snapchat so you don’t miss any of the action.  thefatgirloffashion.com can be found on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter also.