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A12 BUSINESS
Monday 24 april 2023
Struggling Bed Bath & Beyond files for

bankruptcy protection

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Bed
Bath & Beyond — one of
the original big box retail-
ers known for its seemingly
endless offerings of sheets,
towels and kitchen gad-
gets — filed for bankruptcy
protection, following years
of dismal sales and losses
and numerous failed turn-
around plans.
The beleaguered home
goods chain made the fil-
ing Sunday in U.S. District
Court in New Jersey and
said it will start an orderly
wind down of its opera-
tions, while seeking a buyer A Bed Bath & Beyond customer enters a store in Mountain View,
Calif., Wednesday, May 9, 2012.
for all or some of its busi- Associated Press
nesses. In the bankruptcy
filing, the retailer said it an- nancing from Sixth Street niture and home décor.
ticipates closing all of its Specialty Lending, Inc. to In late 2019, Bed Bath &
stores by June 30. allow it to keep operating Beyond tapped Target ex-
For now, the company's during the bankruptcy pro- ecutive Mark Tritton to take
360 Bed Bath & Beyond cess. the helm and turn around
stores and its 120 Buy Buy Founded in 1971, Bed Bath sales.
Baby sites as well as its & Beyond had for years en- Tritton quickly reduced
websites will remain open joyed its status as a big box coupons and started to in-
to serve customers. retailer that offered a vast troduce store label brands
It listed estimated assets selection of sheets, towels at the expense of nation-
and liabilities in the range and gadgets unmatched al labels, a strategy that
of $1 billion to $10 billion. by department store rivals. proved disastrous for the
The move comes after the It was among the first to in- retailer.
company failed to secure troduce shoppers to many And the pandemic, which
funds to stay afloat. of today's household items happened shortly after his
In a statement, the com- like the air fryer or single- arrival, forced the retailer
pany, based in Union, serve coffee maker, and its to temporarily close its
New Jersey, said it volun- 15% to 20% coupons were stores. It was never able to
tarily made the filing "to ubiquitous. use the health crisis to pivot
implement an orderly wind But for the last decade to a successful online strat-
down of its businesses while or so, Bed Bath & Be- egy as others had, analysts
conducting a limited mar- yond struggled with weak said. And while many re-
keting process to solicit in- sales, largely because of tailers were grappling with
terest in one or more sales its messy assortments and supply chain issues a year
of some or all of its assets." lagging online strategy ago, Bed Bath was among
The store closings will put that made it hard to com- the most vulnerable, miss-
thousands of jobs at risk. pete with the likes of Tar- ing many of its 200 best-sell-
The company employed get and Walmart, both of ing items including kitchen
14,000 workers, according which have spruced up appliances and personal
to the court filing. That's their home departments electronics, during the holi-
drastically down from the with higher quality sheets day 2021 season.
32,000 as of February 2022. and beddings. Meanwhile, The retailer ousted Trit-
Bed Bath & Beyond said it online players like Wayfair ton in June 2022 after two
secured a commitment of have lured customers with back-to-back quarters of
roughly $240 million in fi- affordable and trendy fur- disastrous sales. In recent
months, the company, un-
der the stewardship of re-
cently appointed president
and CEO Sue Grove, went
back to its original strategy
of focusing on national
brands, instead of pushing
its own store labels. But the
company has had a hard
time having suppliers com-
mit to delivering merchan-
dise because of the retail-
er's financial woes.q