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Comment by eej71 | Hacker News Reader

Kmart in Australia is best thought of as a fork from the original. The original in the United States is effectively defunct now.

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This is more common than you’d think - often subsidiaries are distinct enough that the Canadian or Australian version survives the US parent’s bankruptcy.

And sometimes it’s just a different store that licensed the name for 100 years.

My other favorite example of this is the A&W Restaurants which in the states was a bit more of a fast food establishment. It was never that successful, but you'd see them every so often. Gone now in the states, but I believe its Canadian successor is still going strong.

There's still quite a few A&W restaurants around in the US though they are rareish.

https://awrestaurants.com/locations-list/

400+ according to their wikipedia entry.

A&W is exceptionally rural now, and I'm not 100% sure why - it's a weird combination of fast food (drive thru) + waitress/sit down ordering that doesn't really exist anywhere else (kind of how there are a few carhop/drive UP restaurants that still exist).

The Canadian A&Ws are very good as far as fast food burger joints go. The American version is quite shitty though, last time I saw one years ago.

Canadian A&W is expensive though - like "only really go for a treat" expensive. Made McDicks somehow more reasonable.

There are bunch of A&W restaurants in Okinawa as well and as far as I know, it's popular.

Australia also still has E.B Games.

On a recent visit to the UK (from the US) I briefly thought I was in an alternate universe because their TJ Maxx stores are virtually identical but inexplicably called TK Maxx.

(Well, not quite inexplicably. Wikipedia cleared it up for me.)

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