Overstock.com is changing its name.
The online home furnishing seller has completed its $21.5 million acquisition of Bed Bath & Beyond’s (BBBY) intellectual property, and with it, taken the failed retailer’s name, according to a Wednesday (June 28) press release.
The company plans to relaunch the Bed Bath & Beyond website in Canada in the coming days, following suit with a website, mobile app and loyalty program in the U.S. “weeks later,” the release said.
“This acquisition is a significant and transformative step for us,” Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson said in the release. “Bed Bath & Beyond is an iconic consumer brand, well-known in the home retail marketplace. The combination of our winning asset-light business model and the high awareness and loyalty of the Bed Bath & Beyond brand will improve the customer experience and position the company for accelerated market share growth.”
Overstock won an auction last week to buy BBBY’s intellectual property and some of its digital assets. Not included in the deal are BBBY’s 360 brick-and-mortar stores, which are expected to soon close, or its sister businesses, Buy Buy Baby and Harmon’s.
Buy Buy Baby has attracted a pair of potential buyers, one of which is Babylist, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) baby registry website. The company saw $290 million in revenue last year, claims it is profitable and counts more than 1 million new parent sign-ups annually.
BBBY filed for bankruptcy in April following months of warning that it faced a bleak financial future and after being unable to secure financing to stay afloat.
PYMNTS explored BBBY’s struggles in January soon after the company said it had doubts about its remaining time as a “going concern.”
The report noted that “the demise of the 52-year-old retailer has caught many by surprise as the chain had been a category stalwart since its founding in the early 1970s and subsequent expansion into its Buy Buy Baby and Harmon brands.”
However, the company had struggled to keep up with online retailers such as Amazon, which now counts furniture and home furnishing as key product lines.
In a call with investors earlier this year, BBBY CEO Sue Gove stopped short of discussing the chain’s digital shortcomings, but did say “that the beleaguered brand recognized and embraced the fact that its customers shop differently today, saying they visit stores less frequently.”
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