The Bed Bath & Beyond nameplate will live on in name only.
Overstock.com was named the winner of Wednesday’s bankruptcy court auction for some of Bed Bath & Beyond non-store assets. The bankruptcy court is expected to approve the sale on Tuesday.
The online home retailer is set to acquire Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property and digital assets. Overstock was named the stalking-horse bidder this month after offering $21.5 million for the assets it won at auction, a number unchanged after the auction failed to field better bids, according to court documents.
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Jowa Brands was named as the backup bidder for the Wamsutta IP assets, Bed Bath & Beyond’s private-label sheets and towels brand. Also named as a backup bidder was Ten Twenty Four, but only for the Beyond.com domain, which developed pricing software under the Beyond Pricing banner that helps property owners get higher revenue for vacation rentals.
Not known yet is the outcome of the Buybuy Baby assets, long considered Bed Bath & Beyond’s crown jewel. In an unusual move, those assets will be auctioned next Wednesday. Other assets still up for grabs are leaseholds for the Bed Bath & Beyond stores currently in the process of shutting down.
Overstock began as an online discount retailer that was founded in 1999. At the time, it offered a broader range of product categories that included women’s and men’s apparel, accessories and jewelry in addition to furniture and home decor. Following the pandemic, the e-tailer in February 2022 refocused on home-only merchandise.
Jefferies hardlines retail analyst Jonathan Matuszewski earlier this month said that Overstock’s acquisition of the Bed Bath & Beyond IP rights “could prove valuable in terms of new customer acquisition and strengthened vendor relations.” He believes the customer list and loyalty program of 20 million customers could prove beneficial to Overstock, as well as Bed Bath & Beyond’s “sizable mindshare with young adults via its College Savings Pass.”
While it wasn’t clear how Overstock plans to use the soon-to-be acquired assets, one option Matuszewski floated was the redirection of visitors from Bed Bath & Beyond to Overstock.com.
Bed Bath & Beyond filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 23 in a New Jersey court after a years-long decline.
One of its biggest missteps was buying upscale home flash-sale site One Kings Lane in June 2016 for about $11.8 million. As part of a February 2020 restructuring initiative overseen by former CEO Mark Tritton, the business was sold in April of that year for an undisclosed price to technology platform CSC Generation. CSC also owns the membership home goods buying platform DirectBuy. In fashion retail, CSC is best known for paying $900,000 to buy The Bon-Ton‘s IP when the department store retailer was liquidating during its 2018 bankruptcy before selling to BrandX.com in 2021 in an online-only reboot. Furniture retailer Bassett rejected CSC’s takeover offer last year.
Bed Bath & Beyond sold off PersonalizationMall.com, now-bankrupt Christmas Tree Shops, Linen Holdings, and Cost Plus World Market when Tritton was trying to refocus the company’s business model. The former CEO also introduced a rash of margin-friendly private-label brands two years ago when consumers were looking for popular national brands. He was summarily dismissed a year ago after a disastrous first quarter. Tritton sued Bed Bath & Beyond in April claiming the retailer didn’t pay some of the $6.8 million severance it owed him, but that’s on hold because of the bankruptcy.
