Bed Bath and Beyond Looks For a New CEO As the Company Resets Again

Well, it looks like Mark Tritton and his team of retail Avengers has reached the end of their runway as the company’s Board has ousted its CEO and Chief Merchant.

One likely thing that will happen next is the sale of buybuyBaby. The baby market is a huge and the retailer is a big player in that market alongside Target, Walmart, and others. However, is that really the right thing to do? I think there is a serious argument to be made that instead you should keep buybuyBaby and jettison the rest.

But what went wrong here? That’s obviously a more complex story. The short answer is turnarounds are hard for a reason. And turnarounds in a pandemic are near impossible. Mark Tritton had a solid plan and a reasonable idea, but Boards these days are impatient and you only get so much time. It could be said that perhaps it was doomed from the beginning, but the alternative of not trying to transform was worse.

More practically, I think most valuable consumers had already moved on from Bed Bath and Beyond, and so what’s left are price sensitive or promotional shoppers. Trying to go even slightly up-market and reducing the merchandise options and promotional activity scares away even the remaining consumers that are left. This itself can lead to a tailspin.

My only other thought is the idea of partnering with Kroger could be seeing as taking your eye off the ball. Your number 1, 2, and 3 issues are to get consumers coming back into your Stores, period. There are no other priorities. I think Bed, Bath and Beyond failed to find that reason to keep consumers coming back regularly in that front door.

What’s next? The Board has already retained Russell Reynolds to help the company look for a new CEO, and Berkeley Research Group to further optimize some of its inventory and costs. Until this happens, a Board member will serves as Interim CEO.

Not that they weren’t there before, but this puts Bed Bath and Beyond firmly in the camp of other retailers like Kohl’s that are still out there searching for their reason to exist. Will they end up finding it?

I just shook my magic 8-ball and it just came up: “All signs point to no.”