kohls was once a retail darling, building market share as a department store that catered to middle-income American consumers with loyalty-enhancing coupons and deals.
But over the past five years, Kohl’s stock has lost nearly 70% of its value and plummeted as retailers reported weak sales.
As department stores struggle to stay relevant and middle-income consumers face budget pressures, Kohl’s is now looking to revitalize sales by returning to its core value proposition and investing in the in-store experience to help customers find what they need and keep coming back for more. While Wall Street analysts believe the retailer still has a lot of work to do, investors are starting to take notice, with Kohl’s stock up more than 130% over the past year.
“The important thing for us is to make sure we choose our lanes,” CEO Michael Bender told CNBC. “Sitting in the middle of the retail industry like we do and selling a product where we obviously have more discretion than others means we have to choose our lanes and decide who we serve, and we really understand that customer.”
July 22, 2025 at a Kohl’s store in Sun Valley, California.
Alisha Jusevich | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The company went public in 1992 and peaked in the early 2000s as department stores gained traction across the United States. Kohl’s is known for its value, unique branding, coupons, and Kohl’s cash benefits, and has enjoyed success along with other department store chains such as: Macy’s And Bloomingdale’s.
At its peak, Kohl’s gained significant market share, with its stock reaching an all-time high of $82 per share at the end of 2018, and the company reported revenue of $20.23 billion for the fiscal year ending February 2019.
Cole’s 5 year chart
But soon after, the retailer began to lose momentum. While department stores in general have struggled during this time, Kohl’s has also faced specific challenges that have led to declining profits.
“Department stores have been struggling for years,” Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom told CNBC.
The company is now working to stabilize its business, get back on track for growth and win back a customer base that Bender said Kohl’s never completely lost.
lose the core
Mr. Grom said Kohl’s had “alienated” its core customers and forced them to leave for other customers by changing its assortment, restricting the use of coupons, and becoming more of an off-price retailer rather than its own brands.
Grom, who has covered Kohl’s for years, said the company’s focus on off-price retail was a mistake.
“I think companies need to be aware of who their customer base is and not try to be something they’re not,” he said. “I think too often retailers want to be like everyone else, and that often backfires.”
Bender said this led Kohl’s down the wrong path, leading to years of stagnant sales, declining customer traffic and a “drifting” business strategy. The company experienced rapid leadership changes and changes to its credit cards and promotions, both in response to increased competition.
“We have made the decision to eliminate categories such as petite and jewelry, for example, and as we have talked about in previous earnings calls and other public discussions, these are non-fungible categories,” Bender said. “We stopped listening to our customers.”
Coles paid the price. Wall Street lost confidence in the retailer after quarter after quarter of weak sales. At the same time, competitors want: walmart and TJ Maxx Coles and Amazon It was growing.
Attracting cost-conscious consumers has also become more difficult in the wake of rising inflation in recent years, as more retailers focus on value.
“There’s always a concern about whether department stores can actually grow over a meaningful period of time. There’s a lot of competition in terms of off-price specialty brands selling directly to consumers,” said Blake Anderson, an analyst covering Kohl’s at Jefferies. “This space has really evolved over time, and I think the way Coles has competed is very much tied to value, so it’s become very difficult to win customers based on value.”
Sonia Lapinski, managing director of retail at consulting firm AlixPartners, said the collapse of the traditional department store model, coupled with pressure on consumers, means the broader economy is not on Kohl’s side either.
“They’re looking for options that give them the best bang for their buck,” she says. “They want value, they want brand, they want to get it at the lowest possible price. And there are a lot of attractive offers from these other retailers.”
Lapinski added that Kohl’s priorities changed many times after the company’s peak, which partially led to its decline.
“Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of changes in Kohl’s strategy, whether it’s moving into sports and athleisure, whether we’re focusing on fashion, whether we’re growing our private labels, what customers can expect when they walk into a store is constantly changing,” Lapinski told CNBC. “I think that’s what caused the confusion.”
turn the page
Since taking over as CEO in late 2025, Bender said he is focused on getting back to what has always worked for Kohl’s: unique brands, values, coupons and ensuring customers can find the products they want at the right price.
“Back then, Kohl’s was known for taking care of families and making sure they got what they wanted: added value,” Bender said. “We think some of the reinstatement of themes that made Kohl’s great back then are still relevant today. Customers want convenience.”
In its latest earnings report last month, Kohl’s posted its highest sales growth in four years, despite a decline in sales. The retailer reported $3 billion in revenue, beating Wall Street expectations, and predicted full-year net sales and comparable sales would range from a 2% decline to flat.
At the time, Bender said this quarter was a time when Cole was “knocking on the door of growth.” The stock price soared 20% following the news.
Mr Grom, an analyst at Gordon Haskett, said he believed Coles would have been a “problem” for the retailer had it not returned to its core identity.
“I think their strategy actually makes a lot of sense at this point,” Grom said. “I think getting back to who they are is going to be important for them to be successful.”
While Kohl’s has traditionally catered to older shoppers, it is also trying to attract younger consumers, particularly through Sephora’s shop-in-shops, which are aimed at drawing Gen Z into its stores.
While Sephora’s stores struggled a bit in the company’s most recent quarter — Bender said on a conference call with analysts that the business was “underperforming” with a low-single-digit decline — the company has historically delivered billions of dollars in sales and is gaining momentum.
“The really interesting development for them is how they can use their square footage creatively to not only generate sales but also attract new customers and younger customers,” said Anderson, the Jefferies analyst. “There is often a backlash that department stores were founded by different generations and some of their customers skew older, so it is important to ensure they remain relevant to younger consumers.”
Bender said Kohl’s believes young people are “the people we’re going to grow up with” and is working to convert customers who come to Sephora to buy more deeply inside the store.
Despite Mr. Kohl’s progress, Wall Street may not yet be convinced that the company is returning to being a household name.
Analysts at TD Cowen wrote in a June note that they believed the company was “making the right strategic decisions,” but were holding the stock unchanged due to weaker results in its apparel and footwear business.
“Kohl’s remains a ‘show me’ story, but (at comparable sales) performance appears to be better than feared,” analysts wrote after the latest earnings report. “We continue to see promotion simplification, inventory rebalancing and leveraging the success of junior tiers as key to the turnaround. On the face of it, product and inventory progress is encouraging, but pressure on core credit consumers and ‘other revenue’ remains a key issue.”
Lapinski said Kohl’s has a reputation for sales and promotions, so it needs to offer a strong value proposition in addition to a rewarding in-store experience that sets it apart from other retailers.
“They have to have an attractive product offering, they have to price it right, they have to have products that consumers want to go into the store with, and they have to know they’re getting the best deal. That’s what consumers really want, and that’s what they went elsewhere for,” she said.
Lapinski added that while Kohl’s is clearly trying to improve its balance sheet and earnings, the market will have to wait and see how it deals with increased competition as it tries to win back customers.
Still, Bender said while the signs of recovery are encouraging, this is just the first step on a long road to a “neighborhood” of growth.
“It hasn’t arrived yet,” Bender said. “We don’t want anyone to feel like we’ve planted a flag and said, ‘It’s over.’ To be honest, we’re still in the early stages, but we’re moving in a direction that’s more positive and more aligned with where we want the company to go.”
