Bed, Bath and Bye Bye: Company is officially in default

[veteran+]

Was able to walk BBB and Baby in Roseville this week.

VERY surprised. The Baby Store had moderate traffic and was actually well stocked. It was by no means overstocked but it felt full enough. No empty awkward spaces. It had quite a few employees. Noticed at checkout the plastic bags they were using were those "THANK YOU" bags from Sam's Club or Amazon or someone. There was some customer traffic in this place.

The BBB directly next door again I am very shocked but this store was fully stocked. This is also a giant BBB. The customer service desk (across entry from front end) had signs saying it was closed and to go to checkout for returns or pick ups. Many shelves have been lowered. There were some empty spots in certain departments but you really had to look for them. No self checkout but they moved to a checkout counter against the front wall type set up. The store has way too much open space in the walkways, etc. The displays were neat and organized and the store felt pretty healthy. Except, it only had a few other shoppers and I only saw ONE employee in the entire store.

As far as maintenance goes both stores were clean, all of the lights were on, etc. Very surprising.

I have a different opinion. What they did near me is remove a great number of the short gondolas, everything from the racetrack, and basically put the product back on the walls that were empty for months. Kohl's and BB&B until now had the same strategy - pull the product off the walls and mass it around the racetrack to give the impression of being in stock - plus traditionally racetrack stacks used to deliver higher sell through similar to endcaps. To any of us with retail experience we see right through it. Now someone obviously advised BB&B to stop junking up the racetrack while leaving those bare walls. Ironically by removing all the fixtures that should have gone away years ago anyway they create the illusion that the store has been restocked when it hasn't. My guess is that the Hilco folks told them to do this as it matches their merchandising strategy for liquidation sales - spread out the merchandise in the most visually impactful manner and make room for lots of customers.

I absolutely believe that the concept is viable but only if taken over by a entity such as the one that acquired World Market, someone with the deep pockets needed to revitalize the chain. And when this happens step one is a full termination of the entire corporate office from top to bottom, without severance (since the line level employees didn't get any). I do not believe that any product is being purchased for the BB&B stores except for what they can get on low margin consignment deals, and the only place they spend any money is product for the more profitable baby stores. Unfortunately we are more than 9 months past the start of their company crisis so we can expect to see the baby business crash like the parent company. Expecting families have been walking into these problematic stores once and not again now, so the remaining families that had registries etc. are now basically done shopping there. The baby departments at Target have never been stacked higher with product and it is selling. They are absorbing this business.

The problem is that the entrenched executives have all set up Golden parachute plans for themselves and they have no intention of leaving. As a result they will see the company all the way to the grave versus face up to the fact that they all failed at their responsibility to their customers, employees, vendors and shareholders with this self serving effort to loot the company.

Well said, Sir!

[ClownLoach]

I have a different opinion. What they did near me is remove a great number of the short gondolas, everything from the racetrack, and basically put the product back on the walls that were empty for months. Kohl's and BB&B until now had the same strategy - pull the product off the walls and mass it around the racetrack to give the impression of being in stock - plus traditionally racetrack stacks used to deliver higher sell through similar to endcaps. To any of us with retail experience we see right through it. Now someone obviously advised BB&B to stop junking up the racetrack while leaving those bare walls. Ironically by removing all the fixtures that should have gone away years ago anyway they create the illusion that the store has been restocked when it hasn't. My guess is that the Hilco folks told them to do this as it matches their merchandising strategy for liquidation sales - spread out the merchandise in the most visually impactful manner and make room for lots of customers.

I absolutely believe that the concept is viable but only if taken over by a entity such as the one that acquired World Market, someone with the deep pockets needed to revitalize the chain. And when this happens step one is a full termination of the entire corporate office from top to bottom, without severance (since the line level employees didn't get any). I do not believe that any product is being purchased for the BB&B stores except for what they can get on low margin consignment deals, and the only place they spend any money is product for the more profitable baby stores. Unfortunately we are more than 9 months past the start of their company crisis so we can expect to see the baby business crash like the parent company. Expecting families have been walking into these problematic stores once and not again now, so the remaining families that had registries etc. are now basically done shopping there. The baby departments at Target have never been stacked higher with product and it is selling. They are absorbing this business.

The problem is that the entrenched executives have all set up Golden parachute plans for themselves and they have no intention of leaving. As a result they will see the company all the way to the grave versus face up to the fact that they all failed at their responsibility to their customers, employees, vendors and shareholders with this self serving effort to loot the company.

I think some of the current management team came off the Board of Directors. I'd like to see them re-assemble some of what they had pre-Target guy but I don't think they are in a position to recruit and at this point the best people from that era are probably long retired in Florida and don't want to go back to New Jersey and run a significantly damaged/downsized chain.

What is weird is the Reno unit still has merchandise throughout the racetrack. Various alcoves have many empty spaces. In Roseville that racetrack was entirely empty.

But there is definitely some restocking occurring. It is more than just rearranging and fake filling. There is still too much private label product but it feels like about half of the store at this point as opposed to the whole store. I saw significantly more branded items in bedding (not just Ugg) and kitchen electrics and some higher ticket items.

Still the way I am seeing virtually no customers buying stuff in these stores pretty much speaks for itself despite if I saw what I thought was a good looking store, the ultimate judge is the cash register, which was idle on a Saturday afternoon in a giant store with one employee.

I'd guess a lot of that private label was held for ransom when their vendors demanded cash up front. It isn't worth much to anyone else (Big Lots?) and they probably worked out a deal to pay for it. How much did you see in trendy, brand name, high dollar gadgets which kept this chain afloat? Instant Pot, Keurig, Nespresso, Roomba, Vitamix, Dyson, etc.? I didn't see many units themselves at my local store, just leftover accessories. They need the sales volume of these expensive items they don't have on hand.

[mbz321]

How much did you see in trendy, brand name, high dollar gadgets which kept this chain afloat? Instant Pot, Keurig, Nespresso, Roomba, Vitamix, Dyson, etc.? I didn't see many units themselves at my local store, just leftover accessories. They need the sales volume of these expensive items they don't have on hand.

Well, this one location had at least 33 Dysons on hand https://www.wfmj.com/story/48698606/pol ... n-boardman