“Why not just tell the customer that we’ll give you a discount on the item you want - and not the one that we want to put on sale? We’ll mail a coupon, and it will be a lot cheaper,” Bed Bath & Beyond co-founder Warren Eisenberg, now 92, said in a 2020 New York Times interview. It spent little on advertising, relying instead on print coupons distributed in weekly newspapers to attract customers. The company was something of an iconoclast. The 1,000th Bed Bath & Beyond store opened in 2009, when the chain had reached $7.8 billion in sales. In 1987, the company changed its name to Bed Bath & Beyond to reflect its expanded merchandise and bigger “superstores.” The company went public in 1992 with 38 stores and around $200 million in sales.īy 2000, those figures leaped to 241 stores and $1.1 billion in sales. “It was the beginning of the designer approach to linens and housewares and we saw a real window of opportunity.” “We had witnessed the department store shakeout and knew that specialty stores were going to be the next wave of retailing,” co-founder Leonard Feinstein reportedly said in 1993. Unlike department stores, it didn’t rely on sales events to draw customers. Stores were a fixture for shoppers around the winter holidays and during the back-to-school and college seasons, and Bed Bath & Beyond also had a strong baby and wedding registry business.įounded in 1971 by two veterans of discount retail in Springfield, New Jersey, the chain of small linen and bath stores - then called Bed ‘n Bath - first grew around the northeast and in California selling designer bedding, a new trend at the time. Plus, the open-store layout encouraged impulse buying: Shoppers would come in to buy new dishes and walk out with pillows, towels and other items.īed Bath, once a retail pioneer, was slow to adapt to changes in consumer habits. Brands coveted a spot on Bed Bath & Beyond’s shelves, knowing it would lead to big sales. The retailer attracted a broad range of customers by selling name brands at cut-rate prices. The blue-and-white coupons became something of a pop culture symbol, and millions of Americans wound up stashing them away in their cars, closets and basements. Those companies, too, ultimately filed for bankruptcy.īed Bath & Beyond became known for pots and pans, towels and bedding stacked from the floor to the ceilings at its cavernous stores - and for its ubiquitous 20%-off coupons. Here’s how Bed Bath & Beyond, once a retailer pioneer, veered to the edge of bankruptcy and where it turns next.īed Bath & Beyond had been a crown jewel of the era of so-called “category killers”: chains that dominated a category of retail, such as Toys “R” Us, Circuit City and Sports Authority. If Bed Bath & Beyond comes up short in the current version of its turnaround plan, the likelihood of a liquidation increases. It will be a complicated turnaround and the company’s future remains uncertain. “Slow the cash burn is the name of the game for the next 6 to 12 months and allow the company to pivot into a profitable position.” “They are essentially doing a reorganization outside of bankruptcy court,” said Daniel Gielchinsky, an attorney at DGIM Law specializing in bankruptcy. Got a stash of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons? You'd better use them soon A Bed Bath & Beyond coupon is seen on January 6, 2023.
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