Bed ‘n' Bath, beyond expectations Dheeraj Dogra!

From a 2,000-square-foot store to a chain of stores totalling more than 2.6 million square feet, within a few decades, Bed Bath & Beyond has grown beyond the imagination of its creators. Dheeraj Dogra, former member of the core team at Bed Bath & Beyond and an eyewitness to its incredible success, discusses the brand's famed voyage.





It is vision as also the timed opportunities that have shaped retail trade the world over. At present, the retail fraternity in India is busy organising seminars and workshops for better understanding of various concepts and formats, while back in 1993, the US-based Leonard Feinstein, one of the minds behind Bed Bath & Beyond (BBB), had told Chain Store Executive, “We had witnessed the department store shakeout, and knew that speciality stores were going to be the next wave of retailing.”

A brainchild of Leonard Feinstein and Warren Eisenberg, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is today one of the largest home furnishing speciality stores in the United States.

The duo perceived the beginning of the designer approach to linens and house wares, and saw this as “a real window of opportunity.” In 1971, they started by opening two Bed n Bath (the original name) stores, each spread across 2,000 square feet in high-traffic strip malls. The stock included known labels like Cannon, Wamsutta and Fieldcrest.

Throughout the company's short history, bigger has proven to be better. In the mid-1980s, Bed n Bath was a pioneer in the concept of superstores: large, well-stocked speciality shops with prices comparable to, or even lower than, department-store sale prices. Some BBB stores now have over 80,000 square feet of selling floor and offer more than 300,000 SKUs.

What's so special?
Backed by its ‘superstore concept', the company expanded rapidly in the early 1990s. It doubled the number of stores under the Bed Bath & Beyond banner, and tripled annual sales to $306 million by 1993.

The company's new superstore was an inspired act. Over ten times the size of the original Bed n Bath shop, the 20,000-square-foot outlet offered a comprehensive line of home furnishings in addition to their traditional linens and bath products.

While most department stores and speciality shops offered only a few select brands, Bed 'n Bath 's superstore offered seemingly every possible colour, style and size for each product. Until then, most independent home-textile retailers either copied department-store merchandising techniques or followed the mundane merchandising style used by discount retailers. Eisenberg and Feinstein did neither. Bed 'n Bath, along with chains such as Toys "R" Us and Blockbuster Video, became pioneering ‘category killers' – large speciality retail outlets that beat the competition by offering virtually every possible product in their specific category at ‘everyday low prices'. Other than semi-annual clearances to reduce inventory, the company never held sales. They claimed that their prices were already lower than other stores' sale prices.

Going beyond!
In 1987 Eisenberg and Feinstein changed the name of their organisation from Bed n Bath to Bed Bath & Beyond, in order to more accurately reflect their superstore format. By 1991 Bed Bath & Beyond had opened seven new superstores in New Jersey, California, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland and Florida, and expanded two existing stores into the superstore format. Sales reached $134 million that year, generating earnings of $10.4 million. Eisenberg and Feinstein funnelled the revenue back into the company.

What makes it special?
The company's success was considered unusual for the home products segment.
Industry analysts were of the view that “Bed Bath & Beyond took a less-than-strong category and made it important." It did so by making ordinary household products seem exciting, even romantic. Customer service was an essential part of this marketing strategy. The company strove to build word-of-mouth advertising through a unique combination of family atmosphere and attentive customer service. Both management and sales personnel worked the floor, arranging merchandise displays, helping shoppers carry products, and otherwise making themselves useful.

“As a department manager with the company, I (writer) was amazed to see Feinstein and Eisenberg gather on the floor on Saturday to clean merchandise and pick up bits of litter themselves.”

Check-out waiting time was reduced by increasing the number of cash registers, and the company developed a policy wherein, if the store ran out of a desired product, it would deliver the same to the customer's home, free of charge. Due to this strategy, Bed Bath & Beyond was able to keep paid advertising to a minimum. The company often saturated the market with advertising when a new store opened, then successfully relied on word-of-mouth to keep customers coming into the stores.

Another important aspect of the Bed Bath & Beyond success was its merchandise layout. Related product lines were grouped together, giving the impression that the store comprised several individual speciality stores for different product lines. To encourage impulse buying, seasonal products and other impulse items were arranged upfront; further back, products were grouped on enormous vertical displays that reached up to the ceiling. Such arrangements were designed to make it easier for customers to locate products and also to reinforce the perception that Bed Bath & Beyond offered an enormous assortment of goods. ”