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Many scaled back their business with Bed Bath & Beyond, leading to fewer products on shelves and unhappy customers. The large stock buyback sent an unsettling message to suppliers who ship merchandise to stores, with vendors fearing the company wouldn't have enough cash on hand to pay them, Basham said. Under Tritton's direction, Bed Bath & Beyond in 2021 also spent $625 million buying back shares in a move that later proved costly, Basham said. He redesigned the look of stores while shrinking the amount of merchandise on shelves.
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Key financial misstepĮxperts said Tritton's tenure at Bed Bath & Beyond was marked by two noteworthy moves.
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"They kept with the brick-and-mortar model and didn't introduce a website quickly enough," he said. But by then the company was nearly a decade behind leaders in the field, Basham said. "So it was too late to catch up quickly when retail started going online."īed Bath & Beyond finally hopped on the e-tailing bandwagon after naming Mark Tritton, a former top Target executive, CEO in 2019. "He thought that was all they needed to do and he wasn't willing to adjust," Basham said of Temares. Once products started arriving on their doorstep promptly and it became easier to return items purchased online, customers were sold, added Lindsey, an expert on consumer behavior.ĭuring its heyday, Bed Bath & Beyond was led by former CEO Steven Temares, who Wedbush analyst Seth Basham described as an "old-school retail merchant" whose business model came down to "stack it high and let it fly." By the early 2000s it had opened hundreds of stores across the U.S., including many large-footprint outlets that required a constant flow of customers and that characterized how many Americans preferred to shop at the time. E-commerce was already taking off by the early 2000s, and consumers embraced online shopping for home goods starting around 2010, said University at Buffalo professor Charles Lindsey. But momentum slowed once online shopping hit its stride.
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