Speculation was rampant on who would be the retail winners with the collapse of Bed Bath & Beyond and who would pick up the pieces of its once massive market share in the home furnishings sector.
Now we know: HomeGoods and the entire TJX universe.
In reporting its second quarter numbers this week the big off-price chain – whose other brands include TJ Maxx and Marshalls – said comp store sales at its HomeGoods banner were up 4% for the quarter, which overlapped with the going-out-of-business period for BBB, which ended in July. “Overall home sales significantly improved and returned to positive [comparable] sales growth,” CEO Ernie Herrman said, adding that the retailer’s performance for the three months “were ahead of the company’s own expectations.” Those numbers also beat analyst expectations and investors rewarded the retailer with a nice bump in its stock price this week.
As recently as last year, Bed Bath & Beyond was doing about $5 billion in annual sales, including its BuyBuy Baby division, which was estimated to account for $1.5 billion of that overall total. In the previous years before BBB began its not-so-slow but painfully steady race to its demise the overall company was doing as much as $10 billion in sales a year, including some other nameplates like Cost Plus/World Market and Christmas Tree Shops which were subsequently sold off.
When Bed Bath filed for bankruptcy in April of this year and rather than attempt to restructure announced it was going straight to liquidation, there was informed speculation – OK, call it gossip – on who would be most likely to benefit from its departure. Most of that centered on the off-price sector, specifically the TJX banners but also Ross and Burlington. Other players like Target, Amazon and Wayfair were also thought to be winners to a lesser degree, with still smaller shares going to Walmart, Macy’s, Kohl’s and perhaps even independent home stores. Some portion of BBB’s former sales were also destined for Overstock.com which bought the name and rebranded itself online as Bedbathandbeyond.com. And some of it was predicted to just disappear as is often the case when a big retailer goes out of business and some portion of its sales that were driven by promotions and in-store purchase add-ons vaporized. The endless predictions were one thing but up until we saw real, hard numbers no one would know for sure where the business went.
And now we know.
WarrensReport 