Loss Leader: How Wal-Mart Outdid A Once-Touted Kmart In Discount-Store Race --- When Antonini Took Over, His Chain Was in Front; Walton's On-Line Bet --- Shabby to Chic -- and Back By Christina Duff and Bob Ortega Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal 03/24/1995 The Wall Street Journal A1 (Copyright (c) 1995, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.) Was Sam simply smarter? The forced resignation Tuesday of Joseph Antonini represents an official verdict. For seven years, he led a discount store to battle against what appeared to be its twin. The two chains looked alike, sold the same products, sought each other's customers. They even dated back to the same year -- 1962 -- and bore similar names: Kmart and Wal-Mart. The competition, however, is over: Sam Walton's Wal-Mart Stores Inc. won. So bleak are the prospects for Kmart Corp. that in February an advertising agency bidding for its business, N.W. Ayer & Partners, recommended that it stop competing against Wal-Mart and transform itself into a big convenience chain where customers could go for milk and cigarettes. "It seems that the only way for [Kmart] to survive is to find a different niche," says one person familiar with the presentation. Kmart rejected the idea. Though a savvy new leader could spark high hopes for ringing cash registers, Kmart still has "major operational and managerial issues to deal with," says Marilyn Weinstein of the College Retirement Equities Fund, a Kmart shareholder. While an air of inevitable defeat had recently settled over Kmart, a short look back finds many observers believing deeply in Kmart and Mr. Antonini. In fact, many of the investors who demanded his ouster as president and chief executive officer this week gambled on him to outfox his counterparts at Wal-Mart not so long ago. They questioned some of the strategies of Mr. Walton, Wal-Mart's founder. They also thought Mr. Antonini had more