Bankrupt retailers find new life: Why Bed Bath & Beyond won't go away completely
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Liquidating retailers have a peculiar way of sticking around years after their stores are closed — and it looks like Bed Bath & Beyond will have a similar sort of afterlife.
The big picture: The Bed Bath brand is going the way of several major bankrupt retailers that have liquidated in the past but have continued as online brands sold by other companies.
- Circuit City, Linens 'n Things and Radio Shack are long gone, but their websites are alive and well and selling goods — under different ownership.
- Similarly, Toys R Us closed its stores — but the brand was then sold to WHP Global, which struck a deal with Macy's to open several hundred toy shops within the department store's locations.
Catch up fast: Bed Bath said Thursday that Overstock.com had officially won an auction to acquire the chain's intellectual property and digital assets.
- Its stores, which are not part of the deal, are still on track to close within weeks.
State of play: Overstock declined to comment on its plans for Bed Bath, but the company is expected to keep it running online.
- "Overstock values the brand name of Bed Bath & Beyond and particularly the traffic that it can drive digitally," GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders tells Axios in an email.
- "While it has no interest in running physical stores, Overstock will likely run Bed Bath & Beyond as an online entity but will integrate the operations of the business into its own existing infrastructure."
Yes, but: Not all bankrupt brands live on into perpetuity.
- When Borders liquidated in 2011, rival Barnes & Noble bought the defunct bookstore chain for the sole purpose of extinguishing its competitor.
- To this day, Borders.com redirects to Barnesandnoble.com.
What to watch for: Bed Bath has several potential bidders for its Buy Buy Baby chain, which analysts have long considered its most lucrative asset.
- Bidders could include Go Global Retail and Babylist.
- And unlike Overstock's plan for Bed Bath & Beyond, it’s likely that some of Buy Buy Baby's physical footprint will survive.
The bottom line: Many bankrupt retailers are never really gone.
