Engaged couples struggle with Bed Bath & Beyond’s faltering marriage registration system. Suppliers rush to form new business partnerships. Landlords are quick to close deals on leases for suddenly vacant big-box locations. On TikTok, a customer’s daily trips to a Manhattan store have found a receptive audience.
Following Bed Bath & Beyond’s recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, the winding down of the 52-year-old home goods giant has led to frustration, heartache and a race to capitalize on its demise.
CC Manstrom is a person who feels abandoned. Since setting up her wedding registry at the retailer in January, she’s seen a majority of the 30 items on the list slowly become unavailable. When her great-aunt went to a location in Fargo, ND this month, she was told that the shopkeeper could no longer keep track of what was bought off the register. Ms. Manstrom is now concerned that she may receive several George Foreman grills or baking sets as gifts.
The retailer also stopped honoring credits, meaning Ms. Manstrom lost the $60 that was deposited into her account for gifts that were purchased but unavailable. She has not been able to get a customer service representative on the phone and when she went to her local store the employees were unable to help.
“It’s frustrating,” said Ms Manstrom, age 25. “It’s a new task you’ll face on the marriage checklist.”
As a backup, Ms. Manstrom and her fiancé, whose wedding is scheduled for July 23, decided to set up another registry on Amazon.
Julie Strider, a spokeswoman for Bed Bath & Beyond, said the retailer was looking for a third-party partner to hand over customers’ data so customers could complete their registers. She added that customers will still be able to view and download the existing registry data.
In the meantime, other companies come in to fill the void for the newly hired. Etsy unveiled a marriage registry on May 10 and said thousands of couples had signed up. Zola, an online registry company, has received “several hundred emails” from couples asking for their Bed Bath & Beyond registries to be transferred, said Emily Forrest, a spokeswoman for the company.
Competitors of Buy Buy Baby, which Bed Bath & Beyond owns and is also being liquidated, also see benefits. Babylist, an online registrar company, said the number of registries created on its platform in recent weeks since Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy was 35 percent higher than a year ago. According to Natalie Gordon, CEO of the company, more than 1,200 registry accounts have been transferred to the site.
Bed Bath & Beyond and Buy Buy Baby suppliers have been reviewing their strategies in recent months. Many withheld inventory and reduced resource allocation to the retailer as it attempted to work out a turnaround plan. But because Bed Bath & Beyond is known for its ability to carry a wide variety of products, it continued to attract smaller companies trying to raise their profile.
“I really think there’s going to be some missed opportunity for some brands,” said Steve Greenspon, the president of the International Housewares Association and CEO of home storage brand Honey-Can-Do, which stopped selling Bed Bath & Beyond last year.
Christina Carbonell and Galyn Bernard, founders of gender-neutral clothing brand Primary, are reconsidering their strategy to sell in stores now that Buy Buy Baby is going bankrupt. Shortly after their clothes hit the shelves in April last year, they felt the impact of the retailer’s financial problems. In August, as Bed Bath & Beyond rolled out its turnaround plan, Buy Buy Baby cut its order from Primary, as well as several other suppliers. In stores they saw that their trading stock was low.
The experience led the founders to focus on becoming profitable without relying on sales from the Buy Buy Baby partnership, which accounted for about 10 percent of their business, they said.
“If I were going into the next wholesale partnership, I would be more inclined to start small and learn and build on that learning than to go big right away,” Ms. Carbonell said.
Overstock.com, the online retailer known for selling larger furniture items such as sofas and beds, is taking advantage of this moment to bring Bed Bath & Beyond’s former suppliers to justice. In the second half of 2022, Overstock expanded its line of pots and pans and coffee makers from Keurig and Mr. Coffee steadily out.
“Today, Bed Bath & Beyond suppliers continue to explore alternative distribution channels and expand their footprint with us,” Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson said in an interview. “While others are struggling, more people are willing to sell products to us because they need distribution.”
Other retailers are using Bed Bath & Beyond’s proprietary tools to win over the shoppers they leave behind. The Container Store, Big Lots and regional department store Boscov’s have said they will honor the big blue coupons even after Bed Bath & Beyond stops accepting them. It is likely that these once ubiquitous business cards will continue to be in circulation for some time to come.
While the strategy of accepting the coupons distributed by a now-failing competitor is an intriguing strategy, it probably creates more buzz than sales, said Kelly Goldsmith, a professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University.
“Will it necessarily directly affect your earnings? Probably not,’ said Mrs Goldsmith. “But it’s a good way to remind people that you’re there and that you’re available if they need a replacement for Bed Bath & Beyond.”
Currently, a number of Bed Bath & Beyond locations remain open and shoppers are keeping a close eye on the liquidation sale. Since the bankruptcy announcement, Ellie Maeda has made it a habit to head to Bed Bath & Beyond’s latest Manhattan location every day as soon as the doors open to track the latest discounts and share them with her 5,400 followers on TikTok .
In her posts, she provides updates on what’s still well stocked (coffee pods and dining sets) and the new stacks of products that are popping up (purification systems and Breville blenders). She laments the merchandise that hasn’t been discounted enough to buy (KitchenAid mixers and bedding).
“I’m just a girl with a dream, manifesting 40 percent,” Ms Maeda, 27, said. “I want everyone to get what they want so badly. If we all wait together, hopefully sales will improve.”
Amazon, Walmart, Target and Kohl’s are expected to be the retailers that benefit the most once Bed Bath & Beyond closes its doors for good. While they may see an increase in sales, some analysts warn that not all of the bankrupt retailer’s sales will be absorbed by competitors. The market for household goods could well shrink.
“People who actually bought them won’t shop anywhere else,” said Dave Marcotte, a senior vice president of Kantar Consulting. “A lot of money disappears along the way.”
That was the case when Circuit City filed for bankruptcy in 2009, he said.
One notable difference between Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy and that of retailers during the 2008 downturn is that it probably won’t leave dozens of empty storefronts behind.
In the weeks since Bed Bath & Beyond said it would close its 480 stores by the end of June, Brandon Svec, who studies retail analytics at the real estate firm CoStar, has seen potential tenants rush in to sign leases for locations the retailer is moving out of. The demand is so high that some locations will never go on the open market because landlords and tenants negotiate directly, he said.
Grocers like Natural Grocers, low-cost retailers like Burlington, TJ Maxx, and Five Below, and gyms like Crunch Fitness and Urban Air are among the tenants that moved in after Bed Bath & Beyond’s departure. Canadian Tire paid $1.6 million this month to acquire 10 former Bed Bath & Beyond locations.
In some cases, the locations that housed Americans’ fading obsession with brick-and-mortar stores are giving way to a new favorite pastime: Landlords are moving pickleball gyms into old Bed Bath & Beyond stores.
“There’s a lot of good real estate out there,” Mr. Svec said. “It will be some locations that will take a little longer to sell. But for the most part, this seems like a good time to make this happen from a market perspective.”
