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Five Dramatic Before-And-Afters On The New Bed Bath & Beyond Flagship

This article is more than 2 years old.

If you remake it in New York, you can remake it anywhere…at least that’s what Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY is counting on.

Today, the Big Box retailer reopened its flagship store in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, a complete top-to-bottom gut job renovation of what has been its largest single store and one that had personified everything that was wrong about the home furnishings chain: cramped, convoluted and completely overwhelming to shop.

In its place is a transformed retail space with a clean, open floor plan, expansive sightlines, bold and creative signage and displays and a totally remerchandised product assortment that reflects BBB’s new focus on “owned” private labels mixed with legacy national brands.

With a 44% reduction in skus on the selling floor coupled with a 14% cut in overall space the new store — still an expansive 92,000 square feet — is the very personification of what the new management’s strategy for the company is: “This store is the manifestation of our transformation,” CEO Mark Tritton said during a preview walk-through of the store earlier this week.

The Manhattan store is the most dramatically changed of any of the retailer’s units, which will number about 800 once a two-year process to close 200 doors is completed. More than half of those remaining stores — about 450 — are slated to get some sort of a reno, from complete to cosmetic, over a $250-million three-year period, although the company says only about 30 locations have been completed so far. Results from these stores are good, Tritton said, without providing details. Nor is the company ready to talk about how the reduction of goods for sale on the selling floor might affect sales-per-square-foot productivity even as it ramps up its online and omnichannel efforts to be less dependent on its physical store revenue.

Contrasting the before and after of the Chelsea store, however, presents a remarkable picture of how the new Bed Bath & Beyond is shaping up:

  1. Display: Before, merchandise was stacked to the ceiling and hung from every conceivable vertical and horizontal surface. After, fixtures are low, spread out and organized by category or brand, more coherently than in the past.
  2. In-Store Anchors: Before, while this store had a snack bar/café it was at the entrance to the store and did not serve as a mid-shop respite. Likewise there were few if any destination shop-in-shops to break up the relentless overwhelming aisles. After, the Café 3B (get it?) is half-way into the store and is joined by a number of high-profile “experiential” areas, including a Casper shop, a SodaStream Bubble Bar and an “interactive” pod to test and try out vacuum cleaners, complete with supplied household dirt.
  3. Signage: Before, if there were signs they were difficult to see through the clutter and made navigating the store a challenge for even the most frequent shoppers. After, overhead signs are clear, clever (“College Happier”) and color-coordinated in the store’s signature blue. (No coincidence either, perhaps, that on the press tour prior to the store’s opening every one of the executives on hand was dressed in some variation of that same blue.)
  4. Brands: Before, private store-branded merchandise had accounted for less than 10% of revenue in the past and while there were plenty of national brands they were supplemented by what at best could be called “labels.” After, six owned brands have now been rolled, about half of the expected plan over the next year or two, and they were well represented on the selling floor, usually in their own fixtures with distinctive signage. They are expected to eventually account for a third of company sales, as much as $3 billion.
  5. Merchandise mix: Before, while the two-level store retains its “beyond” assortment on the main level and “bed and bath” one floor down, with the hodgepodge layout that previously existed it was difficult to distinguish departments and merchandise was often mixed in on any empty fixture where there was room. After, the main floor houses a vastly expanded home décor area — a category vastly underrated before — and home textiles merchandise is now more elegantly merchandised downstairs.

To get the true before-and-after story, one needs to have previously shopped the store and return anytime starting today. The changeover is as dramatic as any retail transformation in recent history. And now it’s ultimate success is up to you, New York, New York.