There isn’t a casino in Vegas that would have given you odds on this one: that Cost Plus/World Market would be the only physical brand in what was once the giant $12 billion Bed Bath & Beyond stable of nameplates left standing.
With the news last week that the winning bidder for the BuyBuy Baby unit has no plans to keep its stores open and that Christmas Tree Shops will liquidate its entire 72-door operation, they join the parent brand in retail deconstruction. These names may live on in the virtual world of e-commerce but it appears all of those cumulative thousands of physical locations are about to disappear.
That leaves the bifurcated Cost Plus/World Market brand – stores go by one name or the other or sometimes both in a logic that defies…well, logic – as the only survivor. BBB sold the brand in late 2020 during the early days of former CEO Mark Tritton’s plan to divest marginal operations and concentrate on its core brands. It had been bought in 2012 under the prior management team led by president Steven Temares and at the time it was explained, at least partially, as a move to better understand the consumables business for which CP/WM had been well-known for, including food, wine and other alcohol.
As with so many acquisitions it made at the time, BBB did not aggressively expand the chain and in fact never made much progress on integrating food and beverage into the mothership stores. While there were some moves on the back end on product development, buying and sourcing and operations, the Cost Plus stores didn’t change appreciably during the eight years BBB owned them.
When it was sold there were about 243 stores with a meager e-commerce side as well. The buyer was Kingswood Capital Management, a Los Angeles-based company that describes itself as “a private investment firm primarily focused on businesses that are undergoing varying degrees of operational, financial or market-driven change.” According to SEC filings, it paid $110 million for the business. Cost Plus’ annual sales, then and now, have not been disclosed.
Its other holdings include California-based supermarket chain The Save Mart Companies and MEC, a Canadian sporting goods retailer, as well as tech and operations companies outside consumer product retailing. Kingswood has not responded to previous inquiries regarding its Cost Plus acquisition and it’s unknown what it has done or plans to do with the brand. The Cost Plus website currently lists 242 locations in 39 states across a broad swath of the country. Jane Baughman, who has been with the company for 27 years, has been president since 2013, according to her LinkedIn profile.
With Bed Bath & Beyond in the final stages of closing its final 300 or so stores and its digital assets bought by Overstock.com, those stores being auctioned off to the highest Big Box bidder and Christmas Tree and Baby both in the midst of liquidation sales that will probably run another month or two, the legacy of what was once one of the best retailing companies in America will rest with Cost Plus/World Market.
It was a long-shot to be sure.
WarrensReport 