Bed Bath & Beyond lives on!(line). Overstock.com buys rights to bankrupt retailer and changes name
NEW YORK –
Bed & Bath & Beyond will stay on, on-line at the least, after Overstock.com acquired the bankrupt retail chain’s mental property belongings for $21.5 million.
The on-line retailer Overstock.com is dumping its identify on-line and can turn into Bed & Bath & Beyond, which declared chapter earlier this 12 months. Overstock.com’s CEO Jonathan Johnson informed The Associated Press in a cellphone interview on Thursday that the corporate is contemplating altering its company identify however will not make any choices till after it digests the belongings.
The switcheroo to a really recognizable model was cheered on Wall Street. Shares of Overstock.com Inc., based mostly in Midvale, Utah, soared almost 20% throughout afternoon buying and selling Thursday.
The deal does not embrace Bed Bath & Beyond shops, the final of that are anticipated to be shuttered Friday, or the Buybuy Baby chain.
The identify change will roll out in Canada subsequent month and in August, a relaunch of the corporate’s web site and cellular app as Bed Bath & Beyond will seem within the U.S. Those visiting overstock.com can be redirected to bedbathandbeyond.com.
The identify Overstock nonetheless confuses some prospects and suppliers who thought it was a liquidator. That’s the way it bought its begin in 1999. It reworked in 2004 right into a basic merchandise retailer, promoting all kinds of things. In 2021, Overstock finetuned its technique to deal with furnishings and residential decor, eliminating objects like clothes.
When Bed Bath & Beyond’s monetary woes deepened final 12 months, Overstock.com tried to court docket the retailer’s suppliers but it surely met with some skepticism. But after its bid for Bed Bath turned public final week, it was in a position so as to add 100,000 mattress and bathtub objects to its web site, Johnson mentioned. He expects that tempo will choose up.
“I can’t count how many times we were asked when we were going to change the company name,” he mentioned. “This opportunity is too good to be true. We are Bed Bath and a bigger beyond.”
Johnson mentioned that it’ll supply some coupons to cater to the Bed Bath & Beyond prospects who have been used to the favored perk, however he famous that prospects can be stunned that the reductions supplied by Overstock.com are literally higher on an day-after-day foundation. He additionally added that Overstock plans to step up advertising to Bed Bath & Beyond prospects to make them conscious of the change.
He estimated Overstock.com has about 5 million prospects; Bed Bath & Beyond’s on-line prospects quantity about 10 million.
Bed Bath & Beyond – one of many authentic huge field retailers recognized for its seemingly limitless choices of sheets, towels and kitchen devices – filed for chapter safety in April. The submitting adopted years of dismal gross sales and quite a few makes an attempt to show the flailing business round.
