Michigan

Brothers Tom and Louis Borders opened a bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1971 and built a chain of large-format superstores famous for deep inventories, in-store cafes, and racks of CDs and DVDs. Borders expanded aggressively but was slow to develop e-commerce — outsourcing its website to Amazon — and was caught flat-footed by digital books and online retail. Unable to restructure its debt, Borders liquidated its remaining stores in 2011.

The S. S. Kresge Company — itself a five-and-dime chain dating to 1899 — opened its first Kmart discount store in Garden City, Michigan in 1962, the same year Walmart and Target debuted. Kmart grew into the dominant U.S. discounter of the 1970s, known for the in-store 'Blue Light Special' and later for Martha Stewart Everyday home goods. A 2002 bankruptcy and a 2005 merger with Sears began a long contraction that left only a few stores standing two decades later.