Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

storewanderer
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by storewanderer »

I see they have a freestanding Harmon Face Values in Los Angeles on West Pico which appears to have opened a couple years ago in an old... something. I think this is the only one of these freestanding stores on the west coast.
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by J-Man »

There's also one in Pasadena (Hastings Ranch.) It's been there for several years as well.
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by mbz321 »

storewanderer wrote: January 30th, 2020, 11:08 pm I see they have a freestanding Harmon Face Values in Los Angeles on West Pico which appears to have opened a couple years ago in an old... something. I think this is the only one of these freestanding stores on the west coast.

Interesting. A couple of the Harmon stores seem to be quietly closing by next month, including their lone 'freestanding' store in Pennsylvania (although a BBB down the road has a full Harmon department in it) and one far out in CT, and I think a few others (basically if you search and the store hours have been reduced to 7 PM, it is closing). The LA store looks to be safe for now.
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by klkla »

storewanderer wrote: January 30th, 2020, 11:08 pmappears to have opened a couple years ago in an old... something.
It used to be a Glidden Paint store. The building was built in 1942 so it was probably something else originally.
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by storewanderer »

Reviews all over are sure positive for those two Harmon Face Values in Pasadena and Los Angeles... but a lot of people seem happy with the $5 off $20 with Yelp check-in so they may be somewhat encouraging positive reviews indirectly with that offer.

I wonder how these stores actually do... to be very fair they have a really deep assortment of products and pricing is a lot lower than the drugstores. More in line with Target or Wal Mart Drug/HBA pricing.

I wonder if you took one of these and combined it with a World Market how the results would be... I wonder if they ever tried that?

Harmon Face Values runs on all Bed Bath and Beyond systems for registers, price labels, loyalty, coupons... World Market has its own systems and problems.
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by Bagels »

storewanderer wrote: January 17th, 2020, 7:08 pmAlso all cosmetics were on clearance 75% off; maybe they are exiting that category entirely. Previously the drug/HBA department had some sale items (monthly price cut or similar type thing), last night nothing was on sale (other than clearance items).
I was wondering about this - the nearby stores that had a Drug/HBA department seem to be clearing the inventory out. Given that only a faction of BBB had such departments, and most shoppers use coupons with these items, I ponder if they are big money losers and BBB is quietly getting rid of them. Their pricing was usually cheaper than Walmart if you used a coupon... and BBB has nowhere near the purchasing power.
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by Alpha8472 »

Cosmetics is a money loser due to theft. The items are so small that a single person with a large hand bag can wipe out entire displays.

Exiting this category is a smart move as it is a major source of shrink.
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by pseudo3d »

Alpha8472 wrote: February 1st, 2020, 6:01 am Cosmetics is a money loser due to theft. The items are so small that a single person with a large hand bag can wipe out entire displays.

Exiting this category is a smart move as it is a major source of shrink.
I don't think I've ever been to a single major store (Walmart, H-E-B) that doesn't either have the cosmetics department with a visible closed-circuit camera or essentially a dead-end in the store (to control one way in/one way out).
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by BillyGr »

We have the Harmon's section here in NY in our Christmas Tree Shops, so I don't know if the BB&B has it also (since they are basically across the street from the mall that Christmas Tree is in).

Didn't see any sign of change with it in there last I was in that area (just after New Years).
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Re: Bed Bath & Beyond: Dying?

Post by storewanderer »

Went into the Reno Store this week. It continues to be empty of merchandise. I was asked if I needed help finding anything by no fewer than 4 employees while in the store. They must really be pushing the employees to drive sales. Tough when you have so little product to sell.

At the front of the store, they have taken down one of the 20 foot high shelving areas which previously separated the seasonal area from the travel area. Most of this space is empty now since we are between seasonal sets and they moved the travel area to what was the cosmetics area.

Also at the front of the store they have installed two barriers for people to line up at, one for customer service and one for the main checkout. I am not sure why they need this, they hardly have any customers, often times the checkouts aren't even open and they just do checkouts through customer service. On the rare occasion that 3 or 4 people want to pay at once they typically handle it just fine by calling up additional cashiers. And with the way the cashier line forms it is to the back of the cashier behind register 1 so now they won't even see there is a line forming (but the customer service desk should be able to see a line forming).

There is an area in the back of the store that is a clearance area. It is full of salvage, broken, damaged, or spoiled merchandise most of which probably needs to be thrown away. This area has more and more junk every time I go into the store and they should really be embarrassed to present product this way. They need to take the write down on these items and just junk them.
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