120 Days of Retail: Day 50 - Bed Bath Begone

In my neighborhood of Bay Ridge Brooklyn, an empty megastore looms over the neighborhood, closed down for years. When I moved to New York all anyone talked about was Century 21. The East Coast has its own ecosystem of retail stores that aren't as common out west, where I grew up, and after moving here in 2019 I only got to enjoy one year of "Oh- you should see if they have it at Century 21" before they closed all their doors for good.

As of this week the same is true of everyone's favorite random home stuff store- Bed Bath & Beyond.

To tell you the truth, the last few years of BBB had gotten sadder and sadder. Each time I went felt more depressing and strange. When I went to the West Seattle store with my dad to make a return last year, the cashier barely looked up from their phone to make the return, and didn't even tell us when the transaction was complete. She just kept scrolling away on her phone. After a strange beat of silence my dad had to ask, "are we good?" before we were lazily dismissed. I remember looking around the store thinking it looked more like a warehouse of unwanted junk than an appealing home goods store.

Apart from the customer service- independent retailers can learn valuable lessons from the death of the iconic store. According to the Associated Press, "...for the last decade or so, Bed Bath & Beyond struggled with weak sales, largely because of its messy assortments and lagging online strategy that made it hard to compete with the likes of Target and Walmart".

Recessions tend to vet out who has been keeping up with trends and who isn't. Not just fashion trends but the actual trends in the ways that customers like to shop. The death of BBB harkens back to collapses of other household name icons from the post-2008 retail cemetery JC Penney and Bon Marche, other stragglers to the online game.

Like the 2008 death knell that took out so many stores, the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 forced many retailers to reevaluate their methods of bringing in customers and selling. For Bed Bath & Beyond, "it was never able to use the health crisis to pivot to a successful online strategy as others had".

Meanwhile, in other parts of the retail sector things are sunny and bright. Famed Swedish value home furniture store Ikea is investing $2.2 billion in its US presence and opening 17 new stores. According to CNBC, the investment will "go toward omnichannel growth, including new stores, pickup locations, sustainability efforts and other developments".

Omnichannel again is the fancy business word for- integrating the online and offline shopping experience and incorporating in-store pickup as a main part of its new strategy. "The whole intention here is to be closer to many more Americans," according to Javi Quiñones, CEO and chief sustainability officer at Ikea U.S.

Having proximity to shoppers and the availability of in-store pickup is so important, "...the majority of Ikea’s pickup locations will be tied to Ikea stores, and some stores will have multiple pickup locations" said Quiñones.

For smaller retailers who may not even have a website. Strategies like Ikea's omnichannel push may seem completely alien, or just impossible. This is why ListIt is making it possible for even small, independent retailers to get online in minutes, at little expense, with no technical expertise or coding.

Retailers who sign up with ListIt will be able to list their products in seconds and make their inventory shoppable for local customers. According to the Harvard Business Review, implementing Buy Online Pickup In-Store increases store sales for an ancient and intuitive reason- more shoppers in store means more people get to see your inventory, even to make unplanned purchases.

"Eighty-five percent of consumers who have used BOPIS say that they have made additional unplanned in-store purchases when picking up an order placed online."

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for ListIt today and implement pickup for your store for free today. It costs nothing and only takes a few seconds to upload your first product. Just snap a picture and upload to your store's page. When you've given us a try, let us know how easy it was. You'll be glad you did.

ListIt is the Buy Online Pickup In-Store solution for local retailers. It’s free and takes only seconds to upload your first product. Reach out to me directly at james@listit.one