Man Buys Everything From Closing Kmart Store, Gives It All To Charity

Kmart has been closing down stores across the United States and when it came time to do the same in Clark County, Kentucky a local business owner jumped at the chance to turn a bad situation into a big win for his community.

Business owner Rankin Paynter entered the local Kmart before it closed its doors forever and he noticed that a lot of good items were not selling. When Paynter asked an employee what would happen to the items they said power buyers would eventually come in, buy the items on the cheap and resell them at other stores.

Mr. Paynter decided that was a waste of perfectly good and already severely marked down items so instead he started shopping and shopping and shopping, until eventually he had bought almost everything he could get his hands on. When all was said and done Rankin Paynter had spend $200,000 on Kmart goods.

It took six hours and four cash registers to pay for all the items and when he was done Paynter told the store to donate every single item to Clark County Community Services.

The idea to buy out the stores inventory came after Paynter, a jewelry exchange business owner watched local community members trade off their jewelry for desperately needed cash. The businessman tells NBC affiliate Lex 18:

“What I see is people coming in my store, needy people sell their stuff. It’s bad nowadays. I just told (the clerk) lets just give it away to charity.”

Pay for gold and jewelry exchange stores are infamous for low-balling customers, all of them apparently except for Mr. Paynter’s business who just gave back to his community in a tremendous way.