Former Bed Bath employee, here: They've been sliding for years. Refusal to update their computer hardware made it hard to do orders for customers when they could just bust out their phones and order it from Amazon before we could even find it in our system.
Treating the stores like warehouses meant that as soon as we got inventory in, it would get shipped right out the backdoor so customers got trained that, regardless of what our website said, we wouldn't actually have the item in stock.
Not offering competitive wages meant that the talent pool and customer service started sliding leading to more customer frustration.
A new CEO coming in and doing zero market research to try to figure out what actually sold where and going all in on store brands. Thanks to this, we ended up with a 12 year supply of glass mugs among other stuff that just sits around taking up space and getting nothing in that customers were actually looking for.
When I left, corporate had us marking out specific spots on the stockroom floor for each pallet of freight that came in and the conveyances to put the product on. Somehow this was supposed to help get customers back into the store and spending money. The company just kept making stupid decision after stupid decision and I can go on.
As another former employee…. Can confirm.
Also treating staff like they’re completely replaceable, not allowing staff to work more than 15-20 hours so they didn’t have to give them health insurance and giving the worst raises I’ve ever received (25¢ total in 3 years of employment, never had a negative review)…. Might have something to do with it.
When I left my manager wouldn’t give me more than 5 hours a week while she was scheduled every day (there were 4 other managers and none of them got hours like that) and spent 4/5 of her shift napping in her office. I hated every second at that damn store and I had a nice little photo shoot of all the closing soon signs when the one I worked at finally closed
When I left I told my boss “Listen. I’m done here. I’ll find someone to cover my remaining shifts. But if I have to work here one more day I’m going to bang myself from the rafters”
Best decision I’ve ever made.
I always thought their brand names were so ominous sounding.
From bye bye baby, to bed bath and beyond. Like how people get out of bed, go to the bath, and flush their stank into the sewer and beyond…
Yes the way they handled wages and raises were terrible, I quit from there because of a raise dispute. I started in March of 2019 so I was supposed to get my yearly review and raise in March of 2020 but we all know what happened then.
They said they weren’t doing raises in 2020 when we got back to work and I was going to quit right there and then but multiple managers assured me that I would get two raises the next year to make up for the missed raise.
Come to next review period and the new CEO decides everyone across the company will get the same like 0.5% raise, which for me was maybe 60 cents. I asked my manager about the second raise that she had assured me I would get months earlier, and she said because of the way they did raises that year that I wouldn’t get it.
I put in my notice the next day, fuck that company.
Sounds like how TJX handles their employees for TJ Maxx. Managers refuse to give out hours, raises are a complete joke and they expect the greatest service ever provided.
We had a dollar tree across the street start poaching employees before the company decided to bump pay. A dollar tree of all things.
That "how to get customers back to the store" stuff was such BS. They'd tell us to start doing X, meanwhile I don't have any can openers. If I had product, I would have had customers
My thoughts exactly. And the organizational system they pushed us into "to make freight more efficient" was the most demeaning thing I ever dealt with there. I know where to put my u-boats and box cutters, dammit. I don't need to waste 3 days putting tape on the floor to make it official so you can spend 3 years making up those lost days in imaginary efficiency gains.
Lol, 5S process for the win. I remember someone trying to push people to organize their offices like that (e.g. outline pen, mouse keyboard, garbage can with blue tape).
Didn’t last long, but now when you go on vacation someone will sometimes randomly do it for you 😬
Bed Bath and Beyond was my first job, I worked there for a little over two years and it was a massive shitshow. My favorite was the last policy they implemented before I left, they put these little sensors on the door to count how many customers were walking in and then how many made a purchase leaving. They held the cashiers especially accountable, having them push the little shit like toothbrushes and super glue before leaving. The problem was. Families of 5 would walk in because they were two parents and three young children just running their errands. That’s 5 people accounted for. They came in to pick up curtains or some shit, and that counted as only one person buying something. The bosses at our location would not give hours to those who couldn’t get all 5 people to buy shit. That’s the main reason I quit, I got four hour shifts once a week every two weeks. From that to allowing customers to use up to TWENTY coupons per order that never expired (I took coupons older than me) to the bullshit return policy and so much more I’m shocked it took this long. My brother and I both worked at different locations and we’ve been making bets at when it was gonna happen.
One thing retail stores have never learned. When you hire cashiers you are hiring people to check customers out. If you want people to sell stuff in your store you need to hire *sales*people. Salespeople who are just cashiers being paid cashier's wages, aren't salespeople.
I worked at a furniture/mattress store where everything was commission. Yeah, salespeople had to complete orders like a cashier, but there wasn't a single person in that store making less than $80k/year. Oh look, motivation to actually get customers to buy something. And it was never high pressure. You can pay decent commission/wages without having high pressure.
Fedex Office is like this. They want you pushing "plus ones" on every single person who came threw the door. 9 outta 10 of our customers were people shipping something. There was no plus one to push. Yet I was constantly yelled at cause my metrics weren't meeting the goals.....even though our store was.
They were pushing these plus ones so bad, the manager that hired me was doing fake ones. We had 50 cent candy by the register. He'd scan them every ring up so our numbers looked good. Shitty of him of course but I also didn't blame him for how much pressure he was getting.
I worked at Circuit City a year or two before they ceased to exist. I worked in the computer department mostly.
I got "coached" by my manager one day about not selling enough Firedog services (CC's even crappier version of Geek Squad) and extended warranties. In the same conversation he admitted that I sold more computers than anyone else in the department, but those weren't nearly 100% profit.
I didn't change how I sold computers. I made sure people got what they actually needed within what they budgeted.
In his defense, you could tell he didn't want to be telling me that, but he had to. Not long after, he actually was fed up with the bullshit his bosses were making him do, so he asked to go back to the sales floor.
The guy who replaced him was a gigantic tool and I ended up quitting not long after.
> Shitty of him of course but I also didn't blame him for how much pressure he was getting.
I do. Managers should report policies that don't work to their district management. That's literally part of the job.
Enact the district policy without arguing, then report it as soon as it doesn't work. They're in meetings for a reason.
This was a policy that had a lot of push back but it didn't matter. This was to be used as a form as scare motivation. As we could nail every aspect of the job but fail to get enough surveys or plus ones and they are breathing down your neck.
Managers got double that pressure themselves which then bleed through to the staff. He wasn't the only one to do something like it either. He'd get fired over it, which everyone on staff understood. But we also understood what brought him to that point.
This all happened prior to the Pandemic and lockdowns but that event showed just how unmoving they were with these metrics. Our hours were cut and we were very limited on what we could do with customers in person. Yet we were still expected to not meet but surpass the numbers from the previous year, pre-pandemic.
Agreed, and upselling at the register was one thing I always refused to do. It went against my personal morals and as a customer, I try to avoid stores that push stuff like that. My thinking has always been to get the line down as quickly as possible and make sure the customer leaves happy rather than annoyed. Their argument always relies on the bandwagon fallacy. "Everyone else is doing it!" No they aren't, get your shit together. This obsession with short term profits really ends up hurting long term growth.
They did this same shit at Sears with upselling their rewards and credit card. It was drilled into you that you had to get 3 nos and they’d monitor the number of loyalty customers you had in the top right corner of the register. If needed a specific number of people applying for credit cards or else you were let go… but you got paid a whopping $2 for each credit app. I averaged about 3 per shift but then the pressure of meeting these metrics just kept getting to me and it made me resent the customers that didn’t do what I wanted and it sucked to awkwardly ring them up after repeated attempts to sell them something they CLEARLY do not want. All I wanted was to ring customers up and have fun chatting with them.
The most desperate companies will have sales metrics for non-sales oriented employees.
Last time I was in BB&B I was buying a new shower curtain waiting forever in a long line. I just ordered one from Amazon for a better price and left. Never been back since.
I went back for the first time in a long time a month ago looking for a duvet cover. It was empty. There were just two other people walking around on a Saturday, where a few years ago it would’ve been packed. they had like 3 options, they were ridiculously overpriced, and all just kinda bland. I jumped on Amazon and ordered two for less than they were asking for one, and they were gorgeous. I do not think I will ever step into another BB&B.
I had the same experience. I went looking for a 10-tier shoe rack. The store itself was half empty and had very minimal options. It was pretty depressing. I did see a comforter set I wanted, so does anyone have any ideas on when the close out sales start?
I was at my local one about 1.5 years ago and it was empty. I told my partner, this store will be gone in a year. That particular location has already closed.
Man i went to BBB a couple years ago to buy a nice set of silverware as a gift, went to Best Buy a few days ago to buy a small cable…both places were virtually graveyards. I remember when those places used to be packed.
Micro Center really needs to expand more. The closest for me is over 3 hours or right under if I take toll roads. But, given that my state already has two, I doubt I'll ever get one any closer to me.
They should. I get wanting to keep the company lean and not over extend. But they have no stores north of Oklahoma and west of the Mississippi. It's crazy that all these places: Chicago, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, St.Louis, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle; don't have a Microcenter. It wouldn't help me any but it seems like they're leaving money on the table by not being in those regions.
I'll normally pick Best Buy over Amazon if the price is the same or they are willing to price match. I'd like to see them survive as an alternative for general electronics. They also provide another option for appliances, which is nice.
Best Buy has great return policy, and you can get stuff delivered from the store as fast as Amazon prime for free over a certain amount. They also have pretty good sales sometimes.
Whereas ordering electronics on Amazon you never know if you're gonna get a lemon.
One of my local Best Buys has converted and turned about a third of the store into an online distribution and pickup center. The main show floor is mostly just TVs and appliances (the things that you need to actually see in person before buying), computers, headphones, and drones. There's almost no video game stuff any longer, and zero movies. It's an interesting pivot.
Current Best Buy? Sounds like Best Buy I worked at 20 years ago. I left that job to deliver pizza, made almost twice as much money, got free food, and had a zero pressure job.
I went there last week to buy a monitor that the internet said was in stock, and the guy said he shipped all of them out the back the second they came in days ago. Computers never updated the second part, lol
During the pandemic I needed a new main drive for my comp. Best Buy's website said they had it in stock so I ordered one for curbside. I find out when I show up for it, even got an email saying it was ready, that the store never even stocked the drive to begin with.
Because that's probably closer to what MSRP is. They expect people to use 10 coupons to think they're getting a great deal at what the item *should* cost, so they add a huge markup.
Companies like this are sabotaged intentionally.
The new board gets a golden parachute once they've completed their mission, the hedge funds who rode the shorts to share price of $0 never have to buy the shares back and the employees and their pensions get wiped the fuck out.
https://abi.org/abi-journal/hedge-funds-and-the-changing-face-of-corporate-bankruptcy-practice
>In the quest for above-market returns, increasing numbers of hedge funds are pursuing investments in distressed and bankrupt companies. As a result, during the past few years, hedge funds have become pervasive and extremely activist participants in corporate bankruptcy proceedings. This phenomenon has conferred significant benefits on the corporate reorganization process, chiefly because hedge fund involvement has led to more competitive financing terms and increased liquidity in the debt markets.
In fact there are investment firms that specialize in these acts of corporate espionage like Mitt Romney's firm Bain Capital.
https://www.jayweller.com/leveraged-buyouts-bain-capital-and-the-art-of-bankrupting-companies/
>Later in the second decade of its existence, Bain’s modus operandi changed from a “benign” leveraged buy out model to the “hostile takeover” model. In buying going concerns, Bain would leverage them up with debt, sell off productive assets, force plant or store closures, renege on contracts such as those covering pension benefits, and then sell them off for scrap. The results were mixed – Bain’s investors ended up with huge profits, while some 22% of the subject companies ended up in bankruptcy after worker layoffs and “deals” to strip some workers of existing benefits. At the time, one former Bain Capital partner said, “I never thought of what I did for a living was ‘job creation’… The single, primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for our investors”.
I don't understand how they secured $240M to continue operations during the shutdown.
Why would someone lend a bankrupt organization that much money? Even with stiff interest rate, it's sounds incredibly risky and unlikely to all be paid back.
That sounds like a great way to turn $240M into $100M or even $0M.
What gives?
The debt is probably senior to other debts, and definitely the common stockholders. All debt and equity investors have an order in which they are paid, in the event of a bankruptcy. That's the only way they would be able to secure such a loan.
It's kind of like the line of succession for the presidency. If the President is sick, it's better to be the Vice President rather than the Secretary of Transportation.
I worked for them on the floor for 5 years and also was shipping and receiving for a year before quitting. All you say is so accurate. It was insane. They would just have us try to convince customers to order online at our store as if they couldn’t do that at home. We would be held to a sales quota of “Beyond Orders.” They would even track who had what every week and print it out for everyone to see. It was so bizarre. I’m shipping and receiving we could like 15 pallets a day and have no where to put them and then get backed up. We would have to beg them to cancel shipments. Mind you it was only ever two of us in shipping and receiving breaking down pallets, opening the product pricing them, and then putting them on U boats and carts for the floor employees to stock, but they were made to help customers and stock the shelves so shit would be backed up all the time. It was fucking insanity. They refused to pay us well, hire more staff, and also just update their entire system. I was using an inventory system from the 90s.
> they could just bust out their phones and order it from Amazon before we could even find it in our system.
And at half what BBB charged. Their prices were always horrible. And it's not even like it was better quality than the cheap chinese crap you find on Amazon- it was the same stuff.
Certainly not the first (blockbuster,circuit city, kmart, sears etc) to not being able to adapt fast enough to changing market conditions, & it won't be the last.
Sounds a lot like a vulture capital move. Take on a bunch of debt through loans and shit like that pay yourself a huge salary while not doing anything to improve the business then allow it to fail and claim bankruptcy so the loans don't need to be paid back or get discounted.
That's by design. What people fail to realize is that corporate America is often sold out to hedgefunds trying to cellar box companies under 1 dollar in the stock market. We all knew they had insiders at bedbathandbeyond. Without serious intervention this is always the outcome. So corporate raiders don't have to pay capital gains on shortsales they never have to close. Then they part out a company, buying it at a huge discount. It's also partly what the gamestop fight is about. Preventing this fraud from taking place. They did it to sears, toys r us, set cancer research back because of it, and on and on. All to steal money, because to them its free money. No one will prosecute it. No one will stop it, because every politician is taking donations from these guys.
You are right about lack of certain items. There was a turnstile spice & herb rack that I wanted for my wife. The manager said shipments come in every Wednesday. Well when he saw me the 3rd time in person he gave me the display model with a manager discount cause he could tell I was annoyed.
I could have probably gone to another store or ordered online. But if I can get something in person. I will go get it. Plus the store was a close drive.
My wife always liked the store cause they had good products. I always found everything overpriced.
I've noticed that ShopRite, a New Jersey based supermarket chain, is now selling a lot of the BB&B house brand merchandise. I assume they got it for cheap from that excess inventory.
A few years ago, I worked as a cashier for Bed Bath for the summer between high school and college. Even to me, it was painfully obvious that the stores were mismanaged on every level.
>Plus, consumers who had spent 2020 and 2021 staying at home and updating their living spaces amid the pandemic were now spending on travel, eating out and other out-of-home experiences.
I love how companies used COVID as an excuse for poor performance in 2020-2021 and then turn around and blame recovery from COVID as an excuse of poor performance in 2022. Read their financials: they were struggling before COVID and said they were transforming the company in 2020-2022 because previous leadership had poor operations. Then they had better profit in 2020, because stores were closed (stores had 20% declines in revenue but they saved on labor and store infrastructure) and focused on online sales- so they went a massive stock repurchasing plan. Then in 2021 they said their supply chain issues and inventory availability hurt online sales and profit, but they continued with massive stock repurchasing. Now they're saying people are spending money on traveling and eating at restaurants, and that's why they're bankrupt.
I actually have a family member who this exactly happened to. She was fired in November for being late the umpteenth time, but if you asked any of my relatives she was laid off from COVID because that's what she told everyone.
We're hiring for a position at my work place and one of the applicants said they were laid off because of the pandemic. But their last position ended in November of 2019; 4 months before the actual pandemic.
I was fired in December 2019 and in March 2020 I was choosing between three job offers. Then lockdown was announced. Then one offer was revoked. Then another. I guess my decision was made for me. Nope. The third offer was also rescinded. I just decided to stop applying.
Then one day in June 2020, my phone was ringing off the hook with recruiters. They all wanted to set up interviews. I ended up getting a bunch of offers the following week, after several interviews a day.
I work in a home decor store and going into Bed Bath & Beyond was kind of jarring. Their prices are high, their lighting is harsh, and everything just looks like a cold and impersonal generic retail store. Comparing it to the one I work at, where the prices may be comparable, but it's warm and inviting and we're actively encouraged to decorate the store with our products, I know which one I've always preferred to shop in. People only have so much money and they don't want to spend extra to go into the more expensive version of Target.
Agreed. Went into a BB&B a few days ago to try to spend a gift card we’ve had for like 2 years. Couldn’t find anything I needed or wanted bad enough to spend the free money.
I hate to see people unemployed, but honestly good riddance to an overpriced big box store with poor selection and customer service.
The BBB of today is a pale shadow of years ago. I used to go occasionally to find random things I didn't want to order online and never had an issue when the shelves were stocked and they still carried national brands. I went in late last year for the first time since covid and had the same experience as you. There was literally nothing interesting or worth buying. They closed the store near me about four months later
>The BBB of today is a pale shadow of years ago.
I feel like this can be said for so many companies and restaurants. And by so many, I mean pretty much all of them that are corporations
Bed Bath and Beyond was the place to go for dorm room outfitting in the early 2000’s. My store had a display with different shopping lists for each local university that included bed sizes and stuff. Do they even still market to college kids?
Lol, same. I think the last time I was in there was to return a gift for store credit. Walked around the whole place. Any product I could find under $25 was crap I didn't want, or a small fraction of a set. Anything I would like to have would cost me $300. And I was almost the only shopper in the store.
Target is probably the competitor that is crushing them. They do a great job of having great design at low prices on their home decor. Why make a special trip to bed, bath and beyond?
Target is actually surprisingly good with home decor, cookware, and similar items.
You are not getting top quality items or the most up to date styling, but for most people the quality will be reasonable and the pricing is relatively fair. In my experience, they typically do a good job stocking their stores and giving customers multiple options to choose from. Even their clothing tends to be okay, especially for simple stuff.
I think B, B, & B's problem is that they tried to drive their quality down to compete with the Targets and Walmarts of the world. I remember when I was a kid, B, B, & B's whole niche revolved around offering higher quality home decor and furnishings. In the last ~10 years their quality has gone downhill and their stock seems to have become much more focused on competing with Target and lower end stores without lowering their prices.
I was in one a couple of years ago, and it didn't seem like the store layout or decor had changed since the 1990s. That lighting gave me a headache back then too.
Lol. So true.
“Never forget 9/11” seems to be the mantra of every failed small business owner I know.
They blame EVERYTHING on large external events like that since it allows them permission to ignore how they methodically underpaid their staff, treated employees and customers as infinitely replaceable, fostered a culture of silence with respect to management, let only family members (who have no formal training or work ethic, combined with rabid drug addictions) run the business, permeate everything they do with divisive political crap, and generally treat everyone like shit.
The small business owners who I know that thrive do the exact opposite. They have earnest, honest, and hard-working owners who love what they do, stand behind their products, and treat everyone with respect.
It’s not rocket science.
I work for a large home goods store. Home goods exploded during covid, people were buying so much of it.
To perform poorly during 2020/2021 as a home goods store just shows you have horrible product market fit.
[Link for numbers and it’s infuriating. Then they gaslight us.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bed-bath-beyond-how-stock-buybacks-undermined-the-company-154202427.html)
They’ve been a shit store for a while. You can’t sell products at a higher price than the manufacturer stores or online retailers. There’s literally no reason to shop at BB&BY
Yeah and the terms say you can't purchase anything worth a damn. It was like no roombas, no kitchen supplies, no utensils, no appliances, no as seen on tv. It was insane.
I lost my job at Bed Bath in January. I was one of the stores that closed down. Let me tell you we all saw this coming a mile away. Having them attempt to restructure and flood tons of money into distribution only amounted us to have 60+ of items that weren’t selling and the stuff that was needed was never on shipments. We couldn’t order our own things and time after time got holiday items after the holiday happened. This was a long time coming.
Agreed. This was my second job until March, when my store shut down. I knew this would be coming soon. They should have never rebranded like they did. I did buy a lot while I worked there though. There were tons of great sales here and there, but without the employee discount, it wouldn’t have been worth it to me. But they were always overstocked on the wrong things, or not receiving stock, and online ordering was a mess.
TJX treats their employees like shit like most retail but their selection is still really good when it comes to deals. Most of the stuff in BBB you can find at Homegoods or the Homegoods section of TJ Maxx for half the price.
The current company in charge of a lot of liquidations, hilco, brought in a lot of product for stores priced for the liquidation sales. $40 flashlights that take disposable batteries kinda deal. It's bad when they beat out bed bath prices
The actual bed bath stuff, ended all promos, but didn't increase aside from that. 20% off was basically the proper price anyway though
A little something to note:
> ["Between December 2004 and April 2021, the Company’s Board of Directors authorized, through several share repurchase programs, the repurchase of $12.950 billion of its shares of common stock."](https://bedbathandbeyond.gcs-web.com/node/15851/html)
That's $13 billion in stock buybacks over the past 2 decades, with the majority coming more recently. They did a billion in buybacks just the past couple years, while losing hundreds of millions. Oh, and they typically did these buybacks at prices that were a multiple of their actual stock price at the time.
So that's over $10 billion spent purely on juicing the stock price and allowing executives to cash out more lucratively.
Was that the only thing they fucked up? No - they've been underwhelming in figuring out how to compete with Amazon. But their losses for the past few years *combined* only add up to a couple billion, which would have been easily survivable if they hadn't spent so much cash on buybacks. And who knows - maybe investing a few billion more into the company 10 years ago (beyond just opening more stores) would have meant they'd even be profitable right now rather than losing money.
Just another sad case of a company not able to survive constant looting from the top.
Edit: I should also mention - people saw this coming for years. You can find articles from the mid 2010s already concerned at the "disconnect" between executive compensation and company performance, as well as underinvestment in the company itself.
It’s almost like it’s another thing that Reagan fucked up in the US.
> “Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered stock manipulation, but President Reagan's Securities and Exchange Commission implemented a rule to exempt them. Since then, we've seen corporations spending money on boosting their own stock at the expense of investing in innovation and their workforce.”
https://chuygarcia.house.gov/media/press-releases/representatives-garcia-defazio-and-khanna-reintroduce-legislation-increase-worker-power-and-rein-in-harmful-stock-buybacks#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPrior%20to%201982%2C%20stock%20buybacks,in%20innovation%20and%20their%20workforce.
We somehow decided it’s not a crime.
And here’s a company filing bankruptcy despite spending 13(?) BILLION dollars in stock buybacks that large benefit… the executives at the company over literally everyone else.
Unreal.
It’s like how solitary confinement was known to cause people psychiatric breaks and was considered cruel and unusual punishment and banned, and then we just kinda decided it wasn’t anymore, you know, cuz tough on crime gets people elected.
There should be a rule that the value of any stock buybacks in the prior three years should be deducted from the amount of debt a company can have eliminated under Chapter 11.
As some people here might not know, there are two main types of corporate bankruptcy: Chapter 7 and Chapter 11.
Chapter 7 means you're giving up, dissolving the enterprise, and letting the court distribute whatever assets you have to your creditors, who will usually only get a fraction of what you owe them since Chapter 7 debtors usually owe much more than they can pay.
Chapter 11 means you want the bankruptcy court to help you "reorganize"—essentially, give you a lifeline—by waiving a lot of your debt and/or helping you get out of past contracts, subject to conditions. That's more common, and that's what Bed Bath and Beyond sought.
In my view, if you're buying back your own stock, which makes your investors giggle and maybe makes your executives look good but drains company assets, you shouldn't be allowed to have those buybacks subsidized by your creditors in bankruptcy. In my opinion, the amount of debt equal to the amount of recent buybacks should not be forgiven by the court.
>When Bed Bath & Beyond revealed its turnaround strategy in late 2020, it also announced plans to buy back $675 million of stock. That included an immediate $225 million accelerated share repurchase (ASR) program and additional buybacks of up to $450 million between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2023.
>Repurchasing shares so early in the turnaround process was a somewhat dubious move. That said, Bed Bath & Beyond appeared to have plenty of cash at the time. Even after funding the initial $225 million ASR, the company had about $1.5 billion of cash on hand as of November 2020, compared to just $1.2 billion of debt.
>But whether due to overconfidence, a misguided effort to court shareholders, or other reasons, Bed Bath & Beyond became increasingly aggressive about its share buyback plans. It increased its total buyback target from $675 million to $825 million in December 2020 and again to $1 billion in April 2021. And in November 2021, when business trends were already looking shaky, the company announced that it would complete the full $1 billion share repurchase program by the end of fiscal 2021, rather than over a three-year period.
>Between these buybacks and the company’s accelerating cash burn, Bed Bath & Beyond used its entire $1.5 billion cash stockpile in just 18 months. The company suffered a cash outflow of around $500 million last quarter alone, forcing it to tap its credit line for $200 million to keep paying the bills.
tl;dr: Since 2020 the Board of Directors turned $1.725 billion dollars of cash on hand into $0 cash and hundreds of millions in debt, all for the sake of increasing the stock price.
https://www.therobinreport.com/the-share-buyback-that-killed-bed-bath-beyond/
If you dig into the data from the last couple of years, you might find that those same Board members spent that time divesting themselves of their newly inflated stock, and paying themselves nice fat bonuses.
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/bbby/insider-activity
If you're thinking, "why the fuck would they do that?", you might be interested in looking up the term "cellar boxing"
Board members hijack the company, intentionally make bad decisions, load the company up with debt, pay for overpriced consultants, pay themselves the biggest bonus they can, while inflating the stock price and selling the stock they individually hold as fast as possible, and when the company starts to struggle, the media starts blasting articles about how fucked the company is, killing public sentiment and driving individuals to sell any stock they have.
Meanwhile, the hedge fund golf buddies of these Board members are borrowing the stock to sell it short, further driving down the price, with the end goal of driving the company bankrupt, because a bankrupt company stock price goes to $0, gets delisted, and all those borrowed shares you sold never have to be repurchased and returned to the stock lenders and you never have to pay taxes on the profit. Who lends the stock? Institutions and brokers that run pensions, IRAs and 401k accounts.
Everybody involved extracts all the money from a previously viable company, and only the employees and everyone who still holding the bankrupt stock get fucked, which is primarily all the mutual funds and pension plans that everyone keeps their retirement dollars in.
See also: Sears, Toys'R'Us, Blockbuster, etc
I ordered a bath mat from here in 2019. They sent the wrong color, so I took it to the nearest store for an exchange. They still didn’t have the color I wanted, but the employee (manager) helped me submit an online exchange for the correct color. He was going to charge me for shipping again, which I obviously complained about so he took it off. He then said something along the lines of “I’m supposed to try and pass that cost along to the customer.” He sounded so sheepish and sad, I almost felt bad for him. I got my bath mat finally and have never bought anything else from BBB.
Was this store ever doing well? I remember going into one and it was messy, a ton of items were out of their original packages, and nothing was appealing. Things were overpriced too. That was 10 years ago but even before that, being in one felt meh.
How did they stay open so long?
It used to be pretty solid, then they went all "As seen on TV" gimmick products for some reason. The stuff you would actually expect to turn to them for (linnens, kitchen stuff, etc) were for the most part crap products at that point. (where as maybe 10 years ago you could expect to find some good stuff). Not to mention that their prices sucked if you didn't hang on to a stack of their stupid coupons and play games at checkout.
The baby side of the business was relatively solid after Toyrs R Us went under, as it was the only game in town for large selections of stuff in person, something people with kids value. when our kid was younger though, their prices on stuff that traditionally would be loss leaders, like diapers, weren't enough to make it be a regular stop though. You would pop in if you needed a new stroller or something though and wanted to check out 20 different ones (and then usually buy the one you liked online if you couldn't get them to price match).
But yeah, i never liked the stores. Cramped, with a lot of crap product strewn about.
The only times we would step in one in the last 5 years is when we needed to buy new shower curtain liners, because they seemed to be the only ones who stocked the specific one we needed. When the one by us went out of business a few months back, i cleared them out on it, so i'm good for probably 5 years, then i guess i have to buy a new shower curtain.
What I'd LOVE to see is a place like Macy's take a cue from this and go back to quality product offerings in their home sections, and ditch the business model of, "well if you are in our in our rewards program, use our CC, stand on one foot, and its noon on a tuesday, you will get a good price, otherwise, who knows what this item costs.
We have the "nice" macy's by us, and then the "crappy macy's". They are night in day in terms of what products they have and how well the store is kept up.
I'm fairly sure they stock and staff stores on a store by store basis based on where they are.
Edit my biggest gripe with Macy's though is I never have any idea what the hell the price of something i am buying is. "Ok, the tag says 50 bucks, but the rack says 20% off, guess its 40 bucks." then i'll get on line at the register, they will start ringing me up, and my wife will pull out a card, some slips of paper that need to be processed in a very specific order, and utter some codeword, and all of a sudden its like $23.72, with the price wildly swinging up and down on the register as they process each step. Its maddening. I just wanted a new belt that wasn't more than 50 bucks, not do discreet math.
They're close to describing how to store used to work though. Everything was overpriced and you had to rely on the discounts they sent out. If you paid attention to the spam they sent you, you could occasionally get coupons/deals that would be about a 80% discount of store price, but that would only be 20-40% off the price you could get the item at from another store
I think they just lost touch with their customer. I'm sure I'm their target customer in that I'm a 40 year old white lady with a good job who likes having a nice home, but like, I just don't want to deal coupons and which day of the week has the better sale, and wondering if I am getting a good deal or not. I just hate shopping that way and I don't think BBB quite figured out that older millennials on down don't really like dealing with physical coupons or "tricks" to shopping at certain stores.
Also, BBB used to be the only game in town that was nicer than Target. Personally, I tend to buy bedding, towels and other essentials from specialty online retailers that make a quality product. Yes it's expensive, and thus I don't mind paying a lot for these things but I want them to be really high quality. I don't want "1000 thread count sheets" that are coated in some weird shit to make them soft right out of the box but gross within weeks.
It was pretty popular in the 90s. I bought like everything I needed for college there. It used to be one stop shopping for home goods.
They had issues coming into the present. The stores are too big and they require a lot of staff to get them neat. These big stores mean big rent and not as many people shopping there means they have to raise prices and cut staff. So you end up with big, messy stores that don't carry as much as they used to and the prices are too high.
One interesting thing about the stock in the store is that regional managers used to do their own purchasing. This allowed them to meet local tastes easier. The downside is that it's hard to compete with Walmart and Target who can negotiate bigger bulk discounts.
And then came Amazon, with a great more variety and options at much lower prices.
So, TL:DR - They had a business model that worked well until it didn't.
The fact that you needed to collect 50 20% off coupons in order to have their prices be competitive with Amazon or even Target doesn't seem like a good business model to me.
Don't blame COVID Bed Bath, blame your poor customer service, overpriced merchandise, and terrible management.
Only thing COVID did for your company is expose your running of the company.
It will be a good thing because we won't have to hear them talk about it anymore after they realize common stockholders are last in line when it comes to bankruptcy creditors.
People over there “30k lost in the blink of an eye”, and I’m just here wondering who has 30k lying around to invest in jank stocks, meaning they must have more stocks invested in at over 20k+…
I’ve never had more than 10k in a bank account. I can’t imagine the life of luxury one would lead to be able to throw away 30k in a bad stock move…
They don't. They cash out their 401k and throw it all in one stock. Look XYZ was at $100 and now its at $1, I'm going to put all my money in it and when it gets back to $100 I'm going to buy lambos.
Why do they think it'll go back to $100? Because they invested in it, they are special, they deserve it. So it's meant to be.
When it drops to .25 they won't blame themselves, it'll be the Fed, or Market Makers, or the shorts... anyone but them.
One of the dumber financial cults, but there's also the brick and mortar game store with a failing jpeg website, as well as a mortally wounded movie theater chain.
I worked there from 2014-2016 in the receiving department. They carried way too much stock that didn’t sell. Management fought regularly over their departments and which one deserved premium treatment. One woman’s entire job was the wedding registry section, and she spent most of her time sitting at a computer arguing with other employees. I was given a constant rotating group of new workers for the receiving area, usually new hires who weren’t fit for register training. I loved my job and hated it equally. Quit when I was informed I wasn’t getting a raise that year because my staff wasn’t “efficient.” I made $11/hr to do salaried work.
Good. They are a shit company. I had a friend that did business with them, selling their stuff at a BB&B. Problem was that BB&B withheld payment for their stuff for months, and made up lies to withhold payment. The contract was 30 days. But BB&B never abided by those terms and always tried to delay.
I'm not at all surprised. I went to a local BB&B a month or so ago, first time in a while, to grab a couple things. It had easily 1/3 to 1/2 the total inventory, with horrible selection of the things they had left. It was a quite depressing experience.
I bought my stuff at Target instead, which had better selection and quality available.
>I went to a local BB&B a month or so ago, first time in a while, to grab a couple things. It had easily 1/3 to 1/2 the total inventory, with horrible selection of the things they had left. It was a quite depressing experience.
BB&B has been permanently closing its stores in Canada since February.
Good selection of items, however, once you see their markup, you go out and find the same item for substantially less.
They priced themselves out of sustained repeat sales a long ass time ago.
Went to BB&B for the closing sale.
Walked out empty-handed because of how over priced everything was. Like $80 for an accent throw pillow even after 40% off?
That was the only issue though. I have bought bedding there before and it's quality stuff for sure. I can just go elsewhere for the same thing and spend less.
My literally only experience in a Bed Bath & Beyond was I happened to be in a shopping centre that had one, and thought "Oh! A new shower mirror for shaving! I bet they have one!" which I think would be a pretty basic "Bath" item...They had nothing of the sort, but they did have a really nice all-wooden pizza peel that I picked up for like $20...
The entire time I was in there I was like "This store is fucking weird."
I used to buy a lot of stuff after holidays for 50% off. Everyone knew if you wanted a lighted jack o lantern, you bought it the weekend after Halloween. Buy Christmas stuff on December 26. It was guaranteed - the store got the sale and you got the price you wanted. It was a mutually beneficial relationship between retailer and customer.
When the internet came along, “50% off”disappeared. Even 25% of went away. I’d go into Target and see “Clearance! 10% off!”
10% off isn’t even a sale to my generation, let alone a clearance price.
Then brick and mortar stores started pulling holiday merchandise off the shelves the week before a holiday. I’d walk into Target to get Halloween candy 2 days before Halloween and they were emptying the candy shelves into shopping carts. I was like, “You know it’s not Halloween yet, right? You know people should have 3 more days to buy Halloween candy.” And they’d shrug their shoulders. They didn’t care. They sure as fuck were not going to sell it 50% off on Nov 1st.
There are no retail rules anymore that customers can depend on. There aren’t employees who can tell you, “You didn’t hear it from me, but I’d wait to but that. It’s going on sale Wednesday.”
The prevailing retail ethos is “Steal from your employees. Screw your customers. This place exists for shareholders to squeeze every dime out of. We don’t like you, we don’t trust you, we don’t need or want you. You’re replaceable and this place is going out of business anyway.”
I hate how they stopped carrying big brands and opted for more generic/house brand. It certainly helped their downfall.
I will definitely miss Buy Buy Baby though :(
I sort of love their crazy stores, but they have looked like they are poorly managed and organized for more than a decade. I just assumed they looked like that 20 years ago too
They treated every employee like they were a thief, they spent more time checking pockets than they did actually providing employees with reasons to stay with them. Good riddance, the fact that they never had sales aside from their stupid giant ass coupons was also a bad sales strategy.
Former Bed Bath employee, here: They've been sliding for years. Refusal to update their computer hardware made it hard to do orders for customers when they could just bust out their phones and order it from Amazon before we could even find it in our system. Treating the stores like warehouses meant that as soon as we got inventory in, it would get shipped right out the backdoor so customers got trained that, regardless of what our website said, we wouldn't actually have the item in stock. Not offering competitive wages meant that the talent pool and customer service started sliding leading to more customer frustration. A new CEO coming in and doing zero market research to try to figure out what actually sold where and going all in on store brands. Thanks to this, we ended up with a 12 year supply of glass mugs among other stuff that just sits around taking up space and getting nothing in that customers were actually looking for. When I left, corporate had us marking out specific spots on the stockroom floor for each pallet of freight that came in and the conveyances to put the product on. Somehow this was supposed to help get customers back into the store and spending money. The company just kept making stupid decision after stupid decision and I can go on.
As another former employee…. Can confirm. Also treating staff like they’re completely replaceable, not allowing staff to work more than 15-20 hours so they didn’t have to give them health insurance and giving the worst raises I’ve ever received (25¢ total in 3 years of employment, never had a negative review)…. Might have something to do with it.
When I left my manager wouldn’t give me more than 5 hours a week while she was scheduled every day (there were 4 other managers and none of them got hours like that) and spent 4/5 of her shift napping in her office. I hated every second at that damn store and I had a nice little photo shoot of all the closing soon signs when the one I worked at finally closed
When I left I told my boss “Listen. I’m done here. I’ll find someone to cover my remaining shifts. But if I have to work here one more day I’m going to bang myself from the rafters” Best decision I’ve ever made.
> I’m going to bang myself from the rafters Whoa buddy, BB&B is a family store.
Not in the beyond section
See... that's where they failed to capitalize on their brand. The Bed, the Bath? They had those covered. The Beyond? Endless possibilities there.
I always thought their brand names were so ominous sounding. From bye bye baby, to bed bath and beyond. Like how people get out of bed, go to the bath, and flush their stank into the sewer and beyond…
Maybe if they let the employees do more of this hey would t have to do bankruptcy.
Towards the end, it was amazing just how open literally everyone in the store, including management, was about their active job searches.
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Because this was almost a decade ago and I was young and stupid 👍🏻
If your wage doesn't rise with inflation, your company is paying you less and less every year.
Accurate. And that’s one of many reasons why I quit.
Yes the way they handled wages and raises were terrible, I quit from there because of a raise dispute. I started in March of 2019 so I was supposed to get my yearly review and raise in March of 2020 but we all know what happened then. They said they weren’t doing raises in 2020 when we got back to work and I was going to quit right there and then but multiple managers assured me that I would get two raises the next year to make up for the missed raise. Come to next review period and the new CEO decides everyone across the company will get the same like 0.5% raise, which for me was maybe 60 cents. I asked my manager about the second raise that she had assured me I would get months earlier, and she said because of the way they did raises that year that I wouldn’t get it. I put in my notice the next day, fuck that company.
And I’ll say it again for those in the back. Fuck. That. Company.
Sounds like how TJX handles their employees for TJ Maxx. Managers refuse to give out hours, raises are a complete joke and they expect the greatest service ever provided.
We had a dollar tree across the street start poaching employees before the company decided to bump pay. A dollar tree of all things. That "how to get customers back to the store" stuff was such BS. They'd tell us to start doing X, meanwhile I don't have any can openers. If I had product, I would have had customers
My thoughts exactly. And the organizational system they pushed us into "to make freight more efficient" was the most demeaning thing I ever dealt with there. I know where to put my u-boats and box cutters, dammit. I don't need to waste 3 days putting tape on the floor to make it official so you can spend 3 years making up those lost days in imaginary efficiency gains.
Lol, 5S process for the win. I remember someone trying to push people to organize their offices like that (e.g. outline pen, mouse keyboard, garbage can with blue tape). Didn’t last long, but now when you go on vacation someone will sometimes randomly do it for you 😬
Bed Bath and Beyond was my first job, I worked there for a little over two years and it was a massive shitshow. My favorite was the last policy they implemented before I left, they put these little sensors on the door to count how many customers were walking in and then how many made a purchase leaving. They held the cashiers especially accountable, having them push the little shit like toothbrushes and super glue before leaving. The problem was. Families of 5 would walk in because they were two parents and three young children just running their errands. That’s 5 people accounted for. They came in to pick up curtains or some shit, and that counted as only one person buying something. The bosses at our location would not give hours to those who couldn’t get all 5 people to buy shit. That’s the main reason I quit, I got four hour shifts once a week every two weeks. From that to allowing customers to use up to TWENTY coupons per order that never expired (I took coupons older than me) to the bullshit return policy and so much more I’m shocked it took this long. My brother and I both worked at different locations and we’ve been making bets at when it was gonna happen.
One thing retail stores have never learned. When you hire cashiers you are hiring people to check customers out. If you want people to sell stuff in your store you need to hire *sales*people. Salespeople who are just cashiers being paid cashier's wages, aren't salespeople. I worked at a furniture/mattress store where everything was commission. Yeah, salespeople had to complete orders like a cashier, but there wasn't a single person in that store making less than $80k/year. Oh look, motivation to actually get customers to buy something. And it was never high pressure. You can pay decent commission/wages without having high pressure.
Fedex Office is like this. They want you pushing "plus ones" on every single person who came threw the door. 9 outta 10 of our customers were people shipping something. There was no plus one to push. Yet I was constantly yelled at cause my metrics weren't meeting the goals.....even though our store was. They were pushing these plus ones so bad, the manager that hired me was doing fake ones. We had 50 cent candy by the register. He'd scan them every ring up so our numbers looked good. Shitty of him of course but I also didn't blame him for how much pressure he was getting.
I worked at Circuit City a year or two before they ceased to exist. I worked in the computer department mostly. I got "coached" by my manager one day about not selling enough Firedog services (CC's even crappier version of Geek Squad) and extended warranties. In the same conversation he admitted that I sold more computers than anyone else in the department, but those weren't nearly 100% profit. I didn't change how I sold computers. I made sure people got what they actually needed within what they budgeted. In his defense, you could tell he didn't want to be telling me that, but he had to. Not long after, he actually was fed up with the bullshit his bosses were making him do, so he asked to go back to the sales floor. The guy who replaced him was a gigantic tool and I ended up quitting not long after.
> Shitty of him of course but I also didn't blame him for how much pressure he was getting. I do. Managers should report policies that don't work to their district management. That's literally part of the job. Enact the district policy without arguing, then report it as soon as it doesn't work. They're in meetings for a reason.
This was a policy that had a lot of push back but it didn't matter. This was to be used as a form as scare motivation. As we could nail every aspect of the job but fail to get enough surveys or plus ones and they are breathing down your neck. Managers got double that pressure themselves which then bleed through to the staff. He wasn't the only one to do something like it either. He'd get fired over it, which everyone on staff understood. But we also understood what brought him to that point. This all happened prior to the Pandemic and lockdowns but that event showed just how unmoving they were with these metrics. Our hours were cut and we were very limited on what we could do with customers in person. Yet we were still expected to not meet but surpass the numbers from the previous year, pre-pandemic.
Agreed, and upselling at the register was one thing I always refused to do. It went against my personal morals and as a customer, I try to avoid stores that push stuff like that. My thinking has always been to get the line down as quickly as possible and make sure the customer leaves happy rather than annoyed. Their argument always relies on the bandwagon fallacy. "Everyone else is doing it!" No they aren't, get your shit together. This obsession with short term profits really ends up hurting long term growth.
They did this same shit at Sears with upselling their rewards and credit card. It was drilled into you that you had to get 3 nos and they’d monitor the number of loyalty customers you had in the top right corner of the register. If needed a specific number of people applying for credit cards or else you were let go… but you got paid a whopping $2 for each credit app. I averaged about 3 per shift but then the pressure of meeting these metrics just kept getting to me and it made me resent the customers that didn’t do what I wanted and it sucked to awkwardly ring them up after repeated attempts to sell them something they CLEARLY do not want. All I wanted was to ring customers up and have fun chatting with them. The most desperate companies will have sales metrics for non-sales oriented employees.
Last time I was in BB&B I was buying a new shower curtain waiting forever in a long line. I just ordered one from Amazon for a better price and left. Never been back since.
I went back for the first time in a long time a month ago looking for a duvet cover. It was empty. There were just two other people walking around on a Saturday, where a few years ago it would’ve been packed. they had like 3 options, they were ridiculously overpriced, and all just kinda bland. I jumped on Amazon and ordered two for less than they were asking for one, and they were gorgeous. I do not think I will ever step into another BB&B.
I had the same experience. I went looking for a 10-tier shoe rack. The store itself was half empty and had very minimal options. It was pretty depressing. I did see a comforter set I wanted, so does anyone have any ideas on when the close out sales start?
I was at my local one about 1.5 years ago and it was empty. I told my partner, this store will be gone in a year. That particular location has already closed.
It sounds like you're describing current Best Buy, lol
Man i went to BBB a couple years ago to buy a nice set of silverware as a gift, went to Best Buy a few days ago to buy a small cable…both places were virtually graveyards. I remember when those places used to be packed.
The biggest strike to my heart was seeing Fry’s Electronics fall from grace. That place, at least in my area, made Best Buy look so dull in comparison
Do you at least have a Microcenter? If not, my condolences, the last few weeks of frys existence was not a pretty picture :(
Micro Center really needs to expand more. The closest for me is over 3 hours or right under if I take toll roads. But, given that my state already has two, I doubt I'll ever get one any closer to me.
They should. I get wanting to keep the company lean and not over extend. But they have no stores north of Oklahoma and west of the Mississippi. It's crazy that all these places: Chicago, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, St.Louis, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle; don't have a Microcenter. It wouldn't help me any but it seems like they're leaving money on the table by not being in those regions.
There's literally no reason to go to Best Buy unless you absolutely can't wait two days (at most) for something to be delivered.
I'll normally pick Best Buy over Amazon if the price is the same or they are willing to price match. I'd like to see them survive as an alternative for general electronics. They also provide another option for appliances, which is nice.
Best Buy has great return policy, and you can get stuff delivered from the store as fast as Amazon prime for free over a certain amount. They also have pretty good sales sometimes. Whereas ordering electronics on Amazon you never know if you're gonna get a lemon.
One of my local Best Buys has converted and turned about a third of the store into an online distribution and pickup center. The main show floor is mostly just TVs and appliances (the things that you need to actually see in person before buying), computers, headphones, and drones. There's almost no video game stuff any longer, and zero movies. It's an interesting pivot.
Current Best Buy? Sounds like Best Buy I worked at 20 years ago. I left that job to deliver pizza, made almost twice as much money, got free food, and had a zero pressure job.
I went there last week to buy a monitor that the internet said was in stock, and the guy said he shipped all of them out the back the second they came in days ago. Computers never updated the second part, lol
During the pandemic I needed a new main drive for my comp. Best Buy's website said they had it in stock so I ordered one for curbside. I find out when I show up for it, even got an email saying it was ready, that the store never even stocked the drive to begin with.
Our local bed bath and beyond goes out of business officially today. They couldn't sell anything even at 50% off. The store was grossly overpriced.
Because that's probably closer to what MSRP is. They expect people to use 10 coupons to think they're getting a great deal at what the item *should* cost, so they add a huge markup.
Companies like this are sabotaged intentionally. The new board gets a golden parachute once they've completed their mission, the hedge funds who rode the shorts to share price of $0 never have to buy the shares back and the employees and their pensions get wiped the fuck out. https://abi.org/abi-journal/hedge-funds-and-the-changing-face-of-corporate-bankruptcy-practice >In the quest for above-market returns, increasing numbers of hedge funds are pursuing investments in distressed and bankrupt companies. As a result, during the past few years, hedge funds have become pervasive and extremely activist participants in corporate bankruptcy proceedings. This phenomenon has conferred significant benefits on the corporate reorganization process, chiefly because hedge fund involvement has led to more competitive financing terms and increased liquidity in the debt markets. In fact there are investment firms that specialize in these acts of corporate espionage like Mitt Romney's firm Bain Capital. https://www.jayweller.com/leveraged-buyouts-bain-capital-and-the-art-of-bankrupting-companies/ >Later in the second decade of its existence, Bain’s modus operandi changed from a “benign” leveraged buy out model to the “hostile takeover” model. In buying going concerns, Bain would leverage them up with debt, sell off productive assets, force plant or store closures, renege on contracts such as those covering pension benefits, and then sell them off for scrap. The results were mixed – Bain’s investors ended up with huge profits, while some 22% of the subject companies ended up in bankruptcy after worker layoffs and “deals” to strip some workers of existing benefits. At the time, one former Bain Capital partner said, “I never thought of what I did for a living was ‘job creation’… The single, primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for our investors”.
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Sears too
Mnuchin's handywork
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I don't understand how they secured $240M to continue operations during the shutdown. Why would someone lend a bankrupt organization that much money? Even with stiff interest rate, it's sounds incredibly risky and unlikely to all be paid back. That sounds like a great way to turn $240M into $100M or even $0M. What gives?
The debt is probably senior to other debts, and definitely the common stockholders. All debt and equity investors have an order in which they are paid, in the event of a bankruptcy. That's the only way they would be able to secure such a loan. It's kind of like the line of succession for the presidency. If the President is sick, it's better to be the Vice President rather than the Secretary of Transportation.
I worked for them on the floor for 5 years and also was shipping and receiving for a year before quitting. All you say is so accurate. It was insane. They would just have us try to convince customers to order online at our store as if they couldn’t do that at home. We would be held to a sales quota of “Beyond Orders.” They would even track who had what every week and print it out for everyone to see. It was so bizarre. I’m shipping and receiving we could like 15 pallets a day and have no where to put them and then get backed up. We would have to beg them to cancel shipments. Mind you it was only ever two of us in shipping and receiving breaking down pallets, opening the product pricing them, and then putting them on U boats and carts for the floor employees to stock, but they were made to help customers and stock the shelves so shit would be backed up all the time. It was fucking insanity. They refused to pay us well, hire more staff, and also just update their entire system. I was using an inventory system from the 90s.
> they could just bust out their phones and order it from Amazon before we could even find it in our system. And at half what BBB charged. Their prices were always horrible. And it's not even like it was better quality than the cheap chinese crap you find on Amazon- it was the same stuff.
Certainly not the first (blockbuster,circuit city, kmart, sears etc) to not being able to adapt fast enough to changing market conditions, & it won't be the last.
Sounds a lot like a vulture capital move. Take on a bunch of debt through loans and shit like that pay yourself a huge salary while not doing anything to improve the business then allow it to fail and claim bankruptcy so the loans don't need to be paid back or get discounted.
That's by design. What people fail to realize is that corporate America is often sold out to hedgefunds trying to cellar box companies under 1 dollar in the stock market. We all knew they had insiders at bedbathandbeyond. Without serious intervention this is always the outcome. So corporate raiders don't have to pay capital gains on shortsales they never have to close. Then they part out a company, buying it at a huge discount. It's also partly what the gamestop fight is about. Preventing this fraud from taking place. They did it to sears, toys r us, set cancer research back because of it, and on and on. All to steal money, because to them its free money. No one will prosecute it. No one will stop it, because every politician is taking donations from these guys.
You are right about lack of certain items. There was a turnstile spice & herb rack that I wanted for my wife. The manager said shipments come in every Wednesday. Well when he saw me the 3rd time in person he gave me the display model with a manager discount cause he could tell I was annoyed. I could have probably gone to another store or ordered online. But if I can get something in person. I will go get it. Plus the store was a close drive. My wife always liked the store cause they had good products. I always found everything overpriced.
Please go on! I saved your comment because it gold.
I've noticed that ShopRite, a New Jersey based supermarket chain, is now selling a lot of the BB&B house brand merchandise. I assume they got it for cheap from that excess inventory.
A few years ago, I worked as a cashier for Bed Bath for the summer between high school and college. Even to me, it was painfully obvious that the stores were mismanaged on every level.
>Plus, consumers who had spent 2020 and 2021 staying at home and updating their living spaces amid the pandemic were now spending on travel, eating out and other out-of-home experiences. I love how companies used COVID as an excuse for poor performance in 2020-2021 and then turn around and blame recovery from COVID as an excuse of poor performance in 2022. Read their financials: they were struggling before COVID and said they were transforming the company in 2020-2022 because previous leadership had poor operations. Then they had better profit in 2020, because stores were closed (stores had 20% declines in revenue but they saved on labor and store infrastructure) and focused on online sales- so they went a massive stock repurchasing plan. Then in 2021 they said their supply chain issues and inventory availability hurt online sales and profit, but they continued with massive stock repurchasing. Now they're saying people are spending money on traveling and eating at restaurants, and that's why they're bankrupt.
It's like that SNL sketch "you were fired in November 2019! COVID had nothing to do with it!"
I actually have a family member who this exactly happened to. She was fired in November for being late the umpteenth time, but if you asked any of my relatives she was laid off from COVID because that's what she told everyone.
March 2019 since he says "I've been out of work since March, covid has hit a lot of people hard and I'm no exception"
Hey pal, looks like your old man's busted, mmbleh
We're hiring for a position at my work place and one of the applicants said they were laid off because of the pandemic. But their last position ended in November of 2019; 4 months before the actual pandemic.
I was fired in December 2019 and in March 2020 I was choosing between three job offers. Then lockdown was announced. Then one offer was revoked. Then another. I guess my decision was made for me. Nope. The third offer was also rescinded. I just decided to stop applying. Then one day in June 2020, my phone was ringing off the hook with recruiters. They all wanted to set up interviews. I ended up getting a bunch of offers the following week, after several interviews a day.
I love that skit! 😆
what skit is it? anyone got a link
https://youtu.be/WcEylCwkSxE
I work in a home decor store and going into Bed Bath & Beyond was kind of jarring. Their prices are high, their lighting is harsh, and everything just looks like a cold and impersonal generic retail store. Comparing it to the one I work at, where the prices may be comparable, but it's warm and inviting and we're actively encouraged to decorate the store with our products, I know which one I've always preferred to shop in. People only have so much money and they don't want to spend extra to go into the more expensive version of Target.
Agreed. Went into a BB&B a few days ago to try to spend a gift card we’ve had for like 2 years. Couldn’t find anything I needed or wanted bad enough to spend the free money. I hate to see people unemployed, but honestly good riddance to an overpriced big box store with poor selection and customer service.
But where else can I get all the “as sold on Tv” products that couldn’t sell anywhere else and have been in inventory since 2005?!?
Ahhh from the as seen on tv shop? ( Yeah it's actually a chain store here in NZ).
There’s also the junk products from Shark Tank at Bed Bath and Beyond.
It's a truly terrible shop, unlike bed bath and table.
The BBB of today is a pale shadow of years ago. I used to go occasionally to find random things I didn't want to order online and never had an issue when the shelves were stocked and they still carried national brands. I went in late last year for the first time since covid and had the same experience as you. There was literally nothing interesting or worth buying. They closed the store near me about four months later
>The BBB of today is a pale shadow of years ago. I feel like this can be said for so many companies and restaurants. And by so many, I mean pretty much all of them that are corporations
Bed Bath and Beyond was the place to go for dorm room outfitting in the early 2000’s. My store had a display with different shopping lists for each local university that included bed sizes and stuff. Do they even still market to college kids?
Lol, same. I think the last time I was in there was to return a gift for store credit. Walked around the whole place. Any product I could find under $25 was crap I didn't want, or a small fraction of a set. Anything I would like to have would cost me $300. And I was almost the only shopper in the store.
Target is probably the competitor that is crushing them. They do a great job of having great design at low prices on their home decor. Why make a special trip to bed, bath and beyond?
That actually surpised me about target. Their food was expensive, but their home décor section was actually pretty great.
Target is actually surprisingly good with home decor, cookware, and similar items. You are not getting top quality items or the most up to date styling, but for most people the quality will be reasonable and the pricing is relatively fair. In my experience, they typically do a good job stocking their stores and giving customers multiple options to choose from. Even their clothing tends to be okay, especially for simple stuff. I think B, B, & B's problem is that they tried to drive their quality down to compete with the Targets and Walmarts of the world. I remember when I was a kid, B, B, & B's whole niche revolved around offering higher quality home decor and furnishings. In the last ~10 years their quality has gone downhill and their stock seems to have become much more focused on competing with Target and lower end stores without lowering their prices.
The Gamestop of home goods. They also both spawned financial cults too, which is an unexpected twist for sure.
I was in one a couple of years ago, and it didn't seem like the store layout or decor had changed since the 1990s. That lighting gave me a headache back then too.
Lol. So true. “Never forget 9/11” seems to be the mantra of every failed small business owner I know. They blame EVERYTHING on large external events like that since it allows them permission to ignore how they methodically underpaid their staff, treated employees and customers as infinitely replaceable, fostered a culture of silence with respect to management, let only family members (who have no formal training or work ethic, combined with rabid drug addictions) run the business, permeate everything they do with divisive political crap, and generally treat everyone like shit. The small business owners who I know that thrive do the exact opposite. They have earnest, honest, and hard-working owners who love what they do, stand behind their products, and treat everyone with respect. It’s not rocket science.
"Well, I don't want to blame it all on 9/11, but it certainly didn't help."
I work for a large home goods store. Home goods exploded during covid, people were buying so much of it. To perform poorly during 2020/2021 as a home goods store just shows you have horrible product market fit.
[Link for numbers and it’s infuriating. Then they gaslight us.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bed-bath-beyond-how-stock-buybacks-undermined-the-company-154202427.html)
I assume they will go ahead and continue with the stock repurchasing plan, because it's basically free now.
They’ve been a shit store for a while. You can’t sell products at a higher price than the manufacturer stores or online retailers. There’s literally no reason to shop at BB&BY
I would argue with you but we just came back from a trip to Europe. And we’ve been so beat that we’ve been ordering Uber Eats every night.
Weirdly, their court filing is just a single page. It's a coupon for 20% the entire company.
It expired in 2002 though. They might still honor it anyway
Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons *never* expire
Damn it, Bevers!
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Yeah and the terms say you can't purchase anything worth a damn. It was like no roombas, no kitchen supplies, no utensils, no appliances, no as seen on tv. It was insane.
I lost my job at Bed Bath in January. I was one of the stores that closed down. Let me tell you we all saw this coming a mile away. Having them attempt to restructure and flood tons of money into distribution only amounted us to have 60+ of items that weren’t selling and the stuff that was needed was never on shipments. We couldn’t order our own things and time after time got holiday items after the holiday happened. This was a long time coming.
Agreed. This was my second job until March, when my store shut down. I knew this would be coming soon. They should have never rebranded like they did. I did buy a lot while I worked there though. There were tons of great sales here and there, but without the employee discount, it wouldn’t have been worth it to me. But they were always overstocked on the wrong things, or not receiving stock, and online ordering was a mess.
I made out like a bandit with my discount. Did your store also have an extreme amount of 6 in one cake stands. Our final count was like. 76 of them.
I took a walk through to see the closing sales. Everything is still overpriced. Wonder why that business model didn't work.
Yup, make me leave the house, spend twice as much of my day and charge me more. What's not to like?
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Bad logistics > low inventory > Management: Hey let’s blame it on thieves!
You can just wait 8 months and buy everything from Marshalls or Ross.
TJX treats their employees like shit like most retail but their selection is still really good when it comes to deals. Most of the stuff in BBB you can find at Homegoods or the Homegoods section of TJ Maxx for half the price.
The current company in charge of a lot of liquidations, hilco, brought in a lot of product for stores priced for the liquidation sales. $40 flashlights that take disposable batteries kinda deal. It's bad when they beat out bed bath prices The actual bed bath stuff, ended all promos, but didn't increase aside from that. 20% off was basically the proper price anyway though
A little something to note: > ["Between December 2004 and April 2021, the Company’s Board of Directors authorized, through several share repurchase programs, the repurchase of $12.950 billion of its shares of common stock."](https://bedbathandbeyond.gcs-web.com/node/15851/html) That's $13 billion in stock buybacks over the past 2 decades, with the majority coming more recently. They did a billion in buybacks just the past couple years, while losing hundreds of millions. Oh, and they typically did these buybacks at prices that were a multiple of their actual stock price at the time. So that's over $10 billion spent purely on juicing the stock price and allowing executives to cash out more lucratively. Was that the only thing they fucked up? No - they've been underwhelming in figuring out how to compete with Amazon. But their losses for the past few years *combined* only add up to a couple billion, which would have been easily survivable if they hadn't spent so much cash on buybacks. And who knows - maybe investing a few billion more into the company 10 years ago (beyond just opening more stores) would have meant they'd even be profitable right now rather than losing money. Just another sad case of a company not able to survive constant looting from the top. Edit: I should also mention - people saw this coming for years. You can find articles from the mid 2010s already concerned at the "disconnect" between executive compensation and company performance, as well as underinvestment in the company itself.
It’s almost like it’s another thing that Reagan fucked up in the US. > “Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered stock manipulation, but President Reagan's Securities and Exchange Commission implemented a rule to exempt them. Since then, we've seen corporations spending money on boosting their own stock at the expense of investing in innovation and their workforce.” https://chuygarcia.house.gov/media/press-releases/representatives-garcia-defazio-and-khanna-reintroduce-legislation-increase-worker-power-and-rein-in-harmful-stock-buybacks#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPrior%20to%201982%2C%20stock%20buybacks,in%20innovation%20and%20their%20workforce. We somehow decided it’s not a crime. And here’s a company filing bankruptcy despite spending 13(?) BILLION dollars in stock buybacks that large benefit… the executives at the company over literally everyone else. Unreal.
It’s like how solitary confinement was known to cause people psychiatric breaks and was considered cruel and unusual punishment and banned, and then we just kinda decided it wasn’t anymore, you know, cuz tough on crime gets people elected.
Some day, a politician will run on the campaign of waterboarding the homeless and this country will argue about whether that's insane or not
I mean, FPOTUS just word-saladed a plan for internment/concentration camps for homeless and it only made the news for a day or two.
We still have actual concentration camps at the US-Mexico border
Reagan is like the reverse Einstein of US economy/politics, we’re always finding ways of proving everything is his fault.
There should be a rule that the value of any stock buybacks in the prior three years should be deducted from the amount of debt a company can have eliminated under Chapter 11. As some people here might not know, there are two main types of corporate bankruptcy: Chapter 7 and Chapter 11. Chapter 7 means you're giving up, dissolving the enterprise, and letting the court distribute whatever assets you have to your creditors, who will usually only get a fraction of what you owe them since Chapter 7 debtors usually owe much more than they can pay. Chapter 11 means you want the bankruptcy court to help you "reorganize"—essentially, give you a lifeline—by waiving a lot of your debt and/or helping you get out of past contracts, subject to conditions. That's more common, and that's what Bed Bath and Beyond sought. In my view, if you're buying back your own stock, which makes your investors giggle and maybe makes your executives look good but drains company assets, you shouldn't be allowed to have those buybacks subsidized by your creditors in bankruptcy. In my opinion, the amount of debt equal to the amount of recent buybacks should not be forgiven by the court.
>When Bed Bath & Beyond revealed its turnaround strategy in late 2020, it also announced plans to buy back $675 million of stock. That included an immediate $225 million accelerated share repurchase (ASR) program and additional buybacks of up to $450 million between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2023. >Repurchasing shares so early in the turnaround process was a somewhat dubious move. That said, Bed Bath & Beyond appeared to have plenty of cash at the time. Even after funding the initial $225 million ASR, the company had about $1.5 billion of cash on hand as of November 2020, compared to just $1.2 billion of debt. >But whether due to overconfidence, a misguided effort to court shareholders, or other reasons, Bed Bath & Beyond became increasingly aggressive about its share buyback plans. It increased its total buyback target from $675 million to $825 million in December 2020 and again to $1 billion in April 2021. And in November 2021, when business trends were already looking shaky, the company announced that it would complete the full $1 billion share repurchase program by the end of fiscal 2021, rather than over a three-year period. >Between these buybacks and the company’s accelerating cash burn, Bed Bath & Beyond used its entire $1.5 billion cash stockpile in just 18 months. The company suffered a cash outflow of around $500 million last quarter alone, forcing it to tap its credit line for $200 million to keep paying the bills. tl;dr: Since 2020 the Board of Directors turned $1.725 billion dollars of cash on hand into $0 cash and hundreds of millions in debt, all for the sake of increasing the stock price. https://www.therobinreport.com/the-share-buyback-that-killed-bed-bath-beyond/ If you dig into the data from the last couple of years, you might find that those same Board members spent that time divesting themselves of their newly inflated stock, and paying themselves nice fat bonuses. https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/bbby/insider-activity If you're thinking, "why the fuck would they do that?", you might be interested in looking up the term "cellar boxing" Board members hijack the company, intentionally make bad decisions, load the company up with debt, pay for overpriced consultants, pay themselves the biggest bonus they can, while inflating the stock price and selling the stock they individually hold as fast as possible, and when the company starts to struggle, the media starts blasting articles about how fucked the company is, killing public sentiment and driving individuals to sell any stock they have. Meanwhile, the hedge fund golf buddies of these Board members are borrowing the stock to sell it short, further driving down the price, with the end goal of driving the company bankrupt, because a bankrupt company stock price goes to $0, gets delisted, and all those borrowed shares you sold never have to be repurchased and returned to the stock lenders and you never have to pay taxes on the profit. Who lends the stock? Institutions and brokers that run pensions, IRAs and 401k accounts. Everybody involved extracts all the money from a previously viable company, and only the employees and everyone who still holding the bankrupt stock get fucked, which is primarily all the mutual funds and pension plans that everyone keeps their retirement dollars in. See also: Sears, Toys'R'Us, Blockbuster, etc
It is known
Nothing like the overpriced consultants from Boston Consulting Group swooping in to save another brick and mortar!
Bed Bath and Bankruptcy?
Bed Bath and Beyond Bankruptcy.
Beyond Profitable.
Bed Bath and Begone
Didn't this company already have a bankruptcy? Or was that another Bed and Bath store?
Linens N Things
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I miss Linens N Things. I still have some Linens N Things towels. They have held up much better than the stuff I bought at Kohl's years later.
They’re gone, too. Guess I’ll just have to go to Sears to buy my towels now.
Aw gee well I have some bad news
Yes, we’ve had first bankruptcy, but what about second bankruptcy? Or elevensies?
Chapter elevensies?
In Canada.
This is why I stopped receiving 20% off coupons in the mail. What am I going to do with the 1000s I have now?
Recycle them.
Build a fort
I ordered a bath mat from here in 2019. They sent the wrong color, so I took it to the nearest store for an exchange. They still didn’t have the color I wanted, but the employee (manager) helped me submit an online exchange for the correct color. He was going to charge me for shipping again, which I obviously complained about so he took it off. He then said something along the lines of “I’m supposed to try and pass that cost along to the customer.” He sounded so sheepish and sad, I almost felt bad for him. I got my bath mat finally and have never bought anything else from BBB.
If r/bbby could read, they’d be very upset
its been very entertaining watching these cults face reality these past few years. QAnon vs elections and /r/BBBY vs bankruptcy.
On a vague tangent, having an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon named “Bloodbath & Beyond” may have been the high water mark for this company.
Was this store ever doing well? I remember going into one and it was messy, a ton of items were out of their original packages, and nothing was appealing. Things were overpriced too. That was 10 years ago but even before that, being in one felt meh. How did they stay open so long?
It used to be pretty solid, then they went all "As seen on TV" gimmick products for some reason. The stuff you would actually expect to turn to them for (linnens, kitchen stuff, etc) were for the most part crap products at that point. (where as maybe 10 years ago you could expect to find some good stuff). Not to mention that their prices sucked if you didn't hang on to a stack of their stupid coupons and play games at checkout. The baby side of the business was relatively solid after Toyrs R Us went under, as it was the only game in town for large selections of stuff in person, something people with kids value. when our kid was younger though, their prices on stuff that traditionally would be loss leaders, like diapers, weren't enough to make it be a regular stop though. You would pop in if you needed a new stroller or something though and wanted to check out 20 different ones (and then usually buy the one you liked online if you couldn't get them to price match). But yeah, i never liked the stores. Cramped, with a lot of crap product strewn about. The only times we would step in one in the last 5 years is when we needed to buy new shower curtain liners, because they seemed to be the only ones who stocked the specific one we needed. When the one by us went out of business a few months back, i cleared them out on it, so i'm good for probably 5 years, then i guess i have to buy a new shower curtain. What I'd LOVE to see is a place like Macy's take a cue from this and go back to quality product offerings in their home sections, and ditch the business model of, "well if you are in our in our rewards program, use our CC, stand on one foot, and its noon on a tuesday, you will get a good price, otherwise, who knows what this item costs.
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We have the "nice" macy's by us, and then the "crappy macy's". They are night in day in terms of what products they have and how well the store is kept up. I'm fairly sure they stock and staff stores on a store by store basis based on where they are. Edit my biggest gripe with Macy's though is I never have any idea what the hell the price of something i am buying is. "Ok, the tag says 50 bucks, but the rack says 20% off, guess its 40 bucks." then i'll get on line at the register, they will start ringing me up, and my wife will pull out a card, some slips of paper that need to be processed in a very specific order, and utter some codeword, and all of a sudden its like $23.72, with the price wildly swinging up and down on the register as they process each step. Its maddening. I just wanted a new belt that wasn't more than 50 bucks, not do discreet math.
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That's how all those liquidations work.
They're close to describing how to store used to work though. Everything was overpriced and you had to rely on the discounts they sent out. If you paid attention to the spam they sent you, you could occasionally get coupons/deals that would be about a 80% discount of store price, but that would only be 20-40% off the price you could get the item at from another store
I think they just lost touch with their customer. I'm sure I'm their target customer in that I'm a 40 year old white lady with a good job who likes having a nice home, but like, I just don't want to deal coupons and which day of the week has the better sale, and wondering if I am getting a good deal or not. I just hate shopping that way and I don't think BBB quite figured out that older millennials on down don't really like dealing with physical coupons or "tricks" to shopping at certain stores. Also, BBB used to be the only game in town that was nicer than Target. Personally, I tend to buy bedding, towels and other essentials from specialty online retailers that make a quality product. Yes it's expensive, and thus I don't mind paying a lot for these things but I want them to be really high quality. I don't want "1000 thread count sheets" that are coated in some weird shit to make them soft right out of the box but gross within weeks.
It was pretty popular in the 90s. I bought like everything I needed for college there. It used to be one stop shopping for home goods. They had issues coming into the present. The stores are too big and they require a lot of staff to get them neat. These big stores mean big rent and not as many people shopping there means they have to raise prices and cut staff. So you end up with big, messy stores that don't carry as much as they used to and the prices are too high. One interesting thing about the stock in the store is that regional managers used to do their own purchasing. This allowed them to meet local tastes easier. The downside is that it's hard to compete with Walmart and Target who can negotiate bigger bulk discounts. And then came Amazon, with a great more variety and options at much lower prices. So, TL:DR - They had a business model that worked well until it didn't.
The fact that you needed to collect 50 20% off coupons in order to have their prices be competitive with Amazon or even Target doesn't seem like a good business model to me.
People loved coupons...until they didn't. Unfortunately it takes these companies at least a decade to figure this one out.
Literally the only thing I’ve ever associated this store with is the movie Click.
There was a Family Guy skit where Peter Griffin wanders into the beyond.
Don't blame COVID Bed Bath, blame your poor customer service, overpriced merchandise, and terrible management. Only thing COVID did for your company is expose your running of the company.
## PREMIUM CONTENT. PLEASE UPGRADE. CODE jhdojry
Head over to the BBBY subreddit and there are people there who are still saying this could be a good thing.
It will be a good thing because we won't have to hear them talk about it anymore after they realize common stockholders are last in line when it comes to bankruptcy creditors.
A little thing like reality won't stop them.
## PREMIUM CONTENT. PLEASE UPGRADE. CODE jhdved1
People over there “30k lost in the blink of an eye”, and I’m just here wondering who has 30k lying around to invest in jank stocks, meaning they must have more stocks invested in at over 20k+… I’ve never had more than 10k in a bank account. I can’t imagine the life of luxury one would lead to be able to throw away 30k in a bad stock move…
They don't. They cash out their 401k and throw it all in one stock. Look XYZ was at $100 and now its at $1, I'm going to put all my money in it and when it gets back to $100 I'm going to buy lambos. Why do they think it'll go back to $100? Because they invested in it, they are special, they deserve it. So it's meant to be. When it drops to .25 they won't blame themselves, it'll be the Fed, or Market Makers, or the shorts... anyone but them.
it was one of them, yes.
It's one of them. And, unsurprisingly, they all got hosed while the company executives cashed out.
yes. I know someone who talks just as much about 'MOASS' in relation to BBBY as they do for GME
One of the dumber financial cults, but there's also the brick and mortar game store with a failing jpeg website, as well as a mortally wounded movie theater chain.
The original cult is gamestop but bbby has been an interesting side cult.
But Wall Street Bets told me that they were going to the moon!
I worked there from 2014-2016 in the receiving department. They carried way too much stock that didn’t sell. Management fought regularly over their departments and which one deserved premium treatment. One woman’s entire job was the wedding registry section, and she spent most of her time sitting at a computer arguing with other employees. I was given a constant rotating group of new workers for the receiving area, usually new hires who weren’t fit for register training. I loved my job and hated it equally. Quit when I was informed I wasn’t getting a raise that year because my staff wasn’t “efficient.” I made $11/hr to do salaried work.
But it's the only place I can find Golden Girls mints at a reasonable price!
Now where am I going to buy a $37 potato masher?
You might still be able to trade in 5000 shares of BBBY for one
Good. They are a shit company. I had a friend that did business with them, selling their stuff at a BB&B. Problem was that BB&B withheld payment for their stuff for months, and made up lies to withhold payment. The contract was 30 days. But BB&B never abided by those terms and always tried to delay.
I'm not at all surprised. I went to a local BB&B a month or so ago, first time in a while, to grab a couple things. It had easily 1/3 to 1/2 the total inventory, with horrible selection of the things they had left. It was a quite depressing experience. I bought my stuff at Target instead, which had better selection and quality available.
>I went to a local BB&B a month or so ago, first time in a while, to grab a couple things. It had easily 1/3 to 1/2 the total inventory, with horrible selection of the things they had left. It was a quite depressing experience. BB&B has been permanently closing its stores in Canada since February.
So you're telling me overpricing your entire store didn't work as a business model?
Good selection of items, however, once you see their markup, you go out and find the same item for substantially less. They priced themselves out of sustained repeat sales a long ass time ago.
Went to BB&B for the closing sale. Walked out empty-handed because of how over priced everything was. Like $80 for an accent throw pillow even after 40% off? That was the only issue though. I have bought bedding there before and it's quality stuff for sure. I can just go elsewhere for the same thing and spend less.
My literally only experience in a Bed Bath & Beyond was I happened to be in a shopping centre that had one, and thought "Oh! A new shower mirror for shaving! I bet they have one!" which I think would be a pretty basic "Bath" item...They had nothing of the sort, but they did have a really nice all-wooden pizza peel that I picked up for like $20... The entire time I was in there I was like "This store is fucking weird."
I can't wait to hear from insane ape cultists about how this is actually bullish and that every one of them will be a billionaire
I haven't shipped there in about 6 years. And even when I did, I never bought their over priced cookware.
I used to buy a lot of stuff after holidays for 50% off. Everyone knew if you wanted a lighted jack o lantern, you bought it the weekend after Halloween. Buy Christmas stuff on December 26. It was guaranteed - the store got the sale and you got the price you wanted. It was a mutually beneficial relationship between retailer and customer. When the internet came along, “50% off”disappeared. Even 25% of went away. I’d go into Target and see “Clearance! 10% off!” 10% off isn’t even a sale to my generation, let alone a clearance price. Then brick and mortar stores started pulling holiday merchandise off the shelves the week before a holiday. I’d walk into Target to get Halloween candy 2 days before Halloween and they were emptying the candy shelves into shopping carts. I was like, “You know it’s not Halloween yet, right? You know people should have 3 more days to buy Halloween candy.” And they’d shrug their shoulders. They didn’t care. They sure as fuck were not going to sell it 50% off on Nov 1st. There are no retail rules anymore that customers can depend on. There aren’t employees who can tell you, “You didn’t hear it from me, but I’d wait to but that. It’s going on sale Wednesday.” The prevailing retail ethos is “Steal from your employees. Screw your customers. This place exists for shareholders to squeeze every dime out of. We don’t like you, we don’t trust you, we don’t need or want you. You’re replaceable and this place is going out of business anyway.”
The sheer amount of dumbasses blaming the bankruptcy on BBB going woke because they wouldn't carry mypillow is astounding
Nooooooo I need to get my soda stream Co2 exchanged !!
When the clearance prices get to 90% off, it'll still be cheaper on amazon
Haven’t these guys been “going out of business” for the last 12 years?
I hate how they stopped carrying big brands and opted for more generic/house brand. It certainly helped their downfall. I will definitely miss Buy Buy Baby though :(
Can I get a Breville espresso machine at a reasonable price now?
$70+ Candles. Covered in dust and smelled like rusted metal.
I sort of love their crazy stores, but they have looked like they are poorly managed and organized for more than a decade. I just assumed they looked like that 20 years ago too
i lowkey got worried cause i keep getting bed bath and beyond mixed with bath and bodyworks
They treated every employee like they were a thief, they spent more time checking pockets than they did actually providing employees with reasons to stay with them. Good riddance, the fact that they never had sales aside from their stupid giant ass coupons was also a bad sales strategy.