Throwing in the towel
Once a staple of retail outlets across the country, Bed Bath & Beyond is finally calling it quits, as the company announced it was filing for bankruptcy protection yesterday.
The news comes as no real surprise. The retailer needed loans to survive the holiday season and had to line up a series of last-minute deals to try and stave off its demise. These efforts ultimately came to no avail, as the company was crushed by falling sales, mounting losses and a pile of liabilities worth some $5.2 billion.
Reddit to the (almost) rescue
Last August, Bed Bath & Beyond execs found themselves with a new type of shareholder — traders from Reddit’s now infamous forum r/wallstreetbets.
Their collective interest in BBBY sent shares soaring nearly 400% between the end of July and mid-August of 2022 — firmly placing Bed Bath & Beyond in the basket of bonafide meme stocks, along with AMC Entertainment, Blackberry and GameStop.
But a (temporarily) soaring share price never helped the company address its core issues. Years of dealmaking had loaded Bed Bath & Beyond with debt, and under-investment in its online offering saw the company lose customers to Target, Walmart and — of course — Amazon. The pandemic didn’t help, but what appears to have been the final nail in the coffin was a sharp pivot to private label products in a bid to cut costs — a gamble that failed to work as customers missed the well-known brands in stores.
The company’s 360 Bed Bath & Beyond stores will remain open, for now, as large scale sales and restructuring efforts get underway.
