Bed Bath and Beyond seems to be headed for that great Pier 1 Imports in the sky
If you were getting married, your first stop was Bed Bath and Beyond. If you were getting divorced, your first stop was Bed Bath and Beyond.
If you were getting a new apartment, same. Or going off to college, or remodeling a bathroom.
If you saw someone in Bed Bath and Beyond, you knew why they were there. They had purpose, often through the experience of some life-changing event.
So now that it appears Bed Bath and Beyond is dying or, as they say in the business, going to that great Pier 1 Imports in the sky, a lot of people are going to be vaguely sad, even if they can’t put their finger on why.
BBB was not particularly stylish. It was a sort of a yard sale of new products. But neither would it let you make a fool out of yourself. If you’d finally had it with your old job, left your boyfriend, moved to a new city and vowed to decorate your apartment in velveteen zebra stripes, Bed Bath and Beyond would say, “No, no, no girl, here, have some sensible sage dish towels — and if you insist on getting your inner freak on, they also come in a willow-leaf print.”
BBB didn’t carry anything you had to have from a style standpoint, but it carried everything you — well, had to have. It was also kind of genius in the way it had just enough knife sharpeners and grill accessories to keep a guy entertained, leaving his wife free to accumulate merch free from the deep sighs, watch-checking and other tools of male civil disobedience when forced against their will into, say, a Yankee Candle outlet.
It didn’t totally surrender, like those women’s clothing shops that just put a couple of overstuffed chairs for the guys to sit in while their wives shopped. Instead, it walked right up to the edge — but stopped just short — of the worst of the “as seen on TV” products, like hands-free toothpaste dispensers or sauna pants.
If your partner said she needed to stop off at BBB, you might shrug, but you didn’t cringe.
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There was an optimism to Bed Bath and Beyond as well. An air of new beginnings, or even excitement as young couples picked out the seed corn of a new life. Even a jug of Mr. Clean had a certain romance to it because this was going to be a small part of Our Future Together.
On the other hand, no matter how bitter the divorce, it offered the hope that everything might once again be OK if you just had a new faux-pewter soap dish.
There have been several purported reasons for the collapse of Bed Bath and Beyond, most notably an ill-advised $1 billion stock buyback — the classic move of dopey CEOs who put the care and feeding of Wall Street above the requirements of their own customers. Strapped for cash, inventory suffered, shelves emptied and shoppers moved on to Target or Amazon.
Not to mention that even in the best of times, no one paid full price for anything at BBB due to its ubiquitous discount mailers. In fact, there are aboriginal tribes in Malaysia whose only contact with the outside world is a 20% off coupon for Bed Bath and Beyond.
Even on the very rare chance you didn’t have one, the person in front of you in line would invariably try to pass one (or six) off on you, whether you wanted them or not. For years, BBB coupons were the zucchini of retail.
What happens now? I suppose the name Bed Bath and Beyond will stay with us, but it will be bought up by some bottom-feeding private equity firm and use the brand name to hawk cheap air purifiers and tactical sunglasses.
But BBB as we’ve always known it? Fittingly, I suppose, it’s curtains.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Home goods store's apparent end a sad note in life's journey
