The Bed Bath & Beyond brand is about to be everywhere (2024)

The Bed Bath & Beyond brand—once the most powerful in its namesake categories—is going to be popping up in some unexpected places.

Under its new management, the company will license out the iconic Big Blue logo for everything from third-party retail distribution to any number of co-branded store partnerships. This branding bonanza is a play to reestablish Bed Bath & Beyond’s position in the marketplace while generating financial returns for its new owners. So far the parent company—Beyond Inc., formerly known as Overstock.com—has announced several such programs and hinted that more are to come.

Whether or not they work, there is no shortage of merchandising imagination or financial hope on display, all coming from the company’s impresario, TV personality and self-styled retail-turnaround guru Marcus Lemonis. The executive chairman is nothing if not bold in his plans. Absolutely not boring either.

Here’s what we know (or can speculate on) so far:

Licensing the BBB brand: Earlier this month Lemonis announced the company was licensing the Bed Bath & Beyond brand to home textiles resource Pem-America to produce home textiles for the wholesale market. Both companies said that the intended target destination for these goods, at least initially, would be third-tier off-price stores like HomeGoods, not the core Overstock or Bed Bath & Beyond sites. Pem debuted its first BBB products at this season’s New York Home Fashion Market Week.

There’s an ironic twist to all of this: The Bed Bath & Beyond brand—which the original retailer never used for its own private-label products—will still not be available from the company itself.

Physical retail stores: In keeping with Lemonis’s preference for an “asset light” business model where it does not own stores and relies largely on inventory fulfilled directly by its suppliers, he is licensing out the brand name to other brick-and-mortar retailers. The first is in Mexico, where the predecessor company at one time had a joint venture to operate BBB-branded locations. This time the deal will be strictly a license.

Shop-in-shops: Not announced yet and still subject to speculation are possible arrangements where existing retailers will operate in-store shops or departments under the Bed Bath & Beyond brand. Details are sketchy, but it could be retailers who are moving to shop-in-shop formats or specialty chains looking to add BBB merchandising categories to their existing mix, perhaps in a rebranding. Again, Lemonis is not going public with details, but he has said he is in negotiations with two retailers for such an arrangement.

Adding non-retail services: This is something Lemonis talked about when he first joined Beyond Inc. earlier this year. The company said it has already added products like home warranties and shipping insurance—again, through a third party—but there could be other add-ons, like mortgages, home repairs and loyalty programs encompassing multiple nameplates. Interestingly, adding services like credit cards, insurance and even brokerage capabilities was a strategy employed by what was once the largest retailer in the country, Sears. It launched Allstate, Coldwell Banker and the Discovery card in an effort to be more than just a retailer of refrigerators, car batteries and power tools. Ultimately it didn’t work, but history would suggest that had more to do with how Sears mismanaged it all—taking its eye off its core retail business—than with the strategy itself.

And that is the danger Lemonis and Beyond Inc. could face if they get distracted by all of these ancillary ventures. He’s not worried, however—at least that’s what he said at a recent investors conference: “I see something totally different. I see a holding company that becomes more of a data and fintech company using a much lower cost of acquisition to monetize that consumer in a different way after you build an affinity with them.”

Lemonis, as a TV business guru and a retail CEO (of Camping World and Good Sam), has always talked the talk of a big-picture strategy. Now he will need to walk the walk.

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Warren Shoulberg is the former editor in chief for several leading B2B publications. He has been a guest lecturer at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; received honors from the International Furnishings and Design Association and the Fashion Institute of Technology; and been cited by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other media as a leading industry expert. His Retail Watch columns offer deep industry insights on major markets and product categories.

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The Bed Bath & Beyond brand is about to be everywhere (2024)
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