July 22, 2024
iStock.com/JHVEPhoto
Overstock.com Returns to Complement Bedbathandbeyond.com
Overstock.com officially relaunched as a stand-alone website with a return to its roots around clearance items across a wide range of categories. With the return, sister banner Bed Bath & Beyond will fine-tune its focus around bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen categories.
“For the last several decades, Overstock has been one of, if not the premier name in broad category online value shopping,” said Marcus Lemonis, executive chairman of Beyond Inc., the parent of Overstock and Bed Bath & Beyond, on the company’s first-quarter analyst call in May. “And while it veered in and out of products over time, its reputation always remains strong as the place to get a crazy good deal.”
Overstock.com was rebranded to bedbathandbeyond.com soon after Overstock acquired Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property out of bankruptcy proceedings in June 2023. The rebrand was seen as a way to combine Overstock’s strengths with a better-known and stronger brand name. Last October, Overstock changed its corporate name to Beyond Inc.
By February of this year, Lemonis, who’s also Camping World’s CEO and star of a CNBC reality show “The Profit,” was describing the shutdown of Overstock’s website as a “fatal mistake” to analysts on a quarterly call.
“While we were able to win the buy box on selling large items with high AOVs (average order values) as Bed Bath & Beyond, we had to do that by buying the business. Overstock.com has built a legacy on selling those types of products,” he said. “And when you try to convince people that a new brand is going to do the same thing, you lose them. Turning Overstock.com back on will not only allow Bed Bath & Beyond to expand its existing assortment and hone in on its historical legacy success, but it allows Overstock to do the same.”
Overstock in recent years had transitioned to focus on furniture and décor with the move paying dividends in the early stages of the pandemic but becoming a burden as home investments reversed in the latter stages.
With the relaunch, Overstock will continue to offer indoor and outdoor furniture, rugs, décor, and lighting while bringing back numerous categories, including apparel and footwear, jewelry and watches, sports and entertainment collectibles, home improvement, luggage, kids and baby, and pet supplies. The inventory lineup amplifies closeouts, liquidation, factory direct, and reverse logistics merchandise.
Lemonis sees Overstock becoming the go-to platform to reprocess returns for vendors. He added on Beyond’s first-quarter call, “We believe that if we can be part of improving their supply chain for the vendors on the backend, which is where the game is often won or lost, we’ll have found another way to monetize the Overstock brand again in an asset-light way.”
Meanwhile, Bed Bath & Beyond, an online-only business for now, will return to its historical categories after Beyond’s management found that the addition of historical Overstock categories, like family room furniture, large area rugs, and case goods, underperformed compared to targets for margin contribution and acquisition costs.
“Those results reaffirmed our conclusion during the quarter around the specific muscles that both brands can thrive separately while complementing each other,” said Lemonis. “We are optimistic that in its full mature state, that Bath has the potential to be north of a billion-dollar brand, with positive contribution and a higher frequency of visits, driven by our focus of life events like baby, wedding, home purchase, home renovation, college, et cetera, all the things everybody’s always known Bed Bath for. As part of that continued learning and reframing, we also believe Overstock has a clear path to return to its billion-dollar-plus revenue performance.”
BrainTrust
Gary Sankary
Retail Industry Strategy, Esri
Mark Self
President and CEO, Vector Textiles
Pamela Kaplan
Principal, PK Consulting
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Do you agree it was a mistake to rebrand Overstock.com as bedbathandbeyond.com?
What do you think of Overstock’s return and repositioning around clearance goods as well as the narrowing of Bed Bath & Beyond’s focus to legacy categories in bedroom, bath, and kitchen?
Does the merger still offer synergies?
Poll
Loading …
The merger of the two brands was botched because the company just lumped them together with no real thought about how to merge the different propositions and customer segments. As such, it was a huge failure.
The relaunch of Overstock will help somewhat. However, a lot of confusion has now been created among customers by all the chopping and changing. Time will be needed for things to stabilize. Moreover, it’s not as if Overstock was a powerhouse before the rebrand – it was a brand with poor awareness, declining relevancy, and where market share was being lost to players like HomeGoods and others.
That said, that the creation of three separate brand entities – Overstock, Bed Bath & Beyond, with the addition of Zulily – is the right approach. Beyond now just needs clear strategies for each.
Well said Neil, I Agree Absolutely. This was a mess with terrible brand dilution, and customer confusion. The re-set should be as helpful as possible to damage repair. They should consider some high visibility advertisment to alert people to the fact that Overstock.com is back.
They sure need to do something. The visibility was poor before the merger. It will be even worse now.
I’m glad the “neither” option was there. Proof positive of that mathematical identity you learned back in Junior High: if you add zero to something, it’s still the same….and if it was zero you started with….
What a confusing rollout. Customers are going to need some guidance from management.
For all of the reasons Marcus Lemonis points out, it was a huge mistake to rebrand Overstock as BedBathandBeyond.com. However, I must politely question the wisdom of combining those two brands in the first place. You’ve got to be kidding me!
In addition to the differences between the functionality of Overstock and Bed Bath and Beyond in terms of suppliers and vendors, the two separate brands as consumer brands could not be more different.
Overstock is considered to be a deep discount retailer, while Bed, Bath, and Beyond is thought of as a retailer that sells branded products with a higher price point than, for example, “My Pillow,” or Walmart.
Combining the two brands would have been like merging Nieman Marcus and Dollar General.
This new separation of the brands should work well, and I am confident that Marcus will make sure that it is done correctly. Db
Absolutely, “Combining the two brands would have been like merging Nieman Marcus and Dollar General.” so well said.
Stand-up comedy is in your future…I see it in your cards.
Beyond.com created substantial brand confusion by combining its identities into a single brand that stood for nothing. Given consumer focus on value pricing, overstock is the most likely of the brands to succeed as long as it stays focused on buybacks and heavily valued products.
When Overstock bought Bed Bath & Beyond, they should’ve tried a real estate play with some of the BBB locations. Today’s consumer loves a bargain, and despite all the hubbub that online shopping will win the day, the fact is that people like to see and touch things. Both brands could’ve co-existed in the same physical space, which might have helped BBB optimize its bloated catalog of SKUs. Hey, if Sephora can thrive inside Kohl’s and Ulta inside Target, why not try a full price/discount combo under one roof? Don’t like anything you see on the discount side? Well, step right over here…
Agree, this acquisition and merger of the brands was a huge mistake as it was very confusing and I’m not sure of the point. It should always be about the customer experience where this transaction completely disregarded the target audience. However, with the move to separate the 2 companies it feels like a good reset. And the return repositioning is an interesting strategy for Overstock. If they truly solve a pain point for returned goods it’s smart, this could work. It can’t be worse and it will be interesting to see how they do.
This is a case study of dumb decisions by people who don’t know what they are doing. They have chased away consumers for both brands. Once they are gone, they rarely come back.
I think the opportunity to build this brand back has passed. It’s hard to tell from this strategy, consumers are likey to be more confused than anything about this.
Not sure that these businesses are filling any kind of a gap in the world of online retail. Does anyone miss them?
Regrettably, I think the idea of buying the BB&B intellectual property was a mistake because there is nothing left of what consumers had known BB&B to be; retail chain they liked to shop. Returning Overstock to its roots may be the smartest move so far for Beyond. I predict that BB&B will not survive three years.
Obvious in retrospect, but yes, maintaining both brands would have produced the better outcomes. By combining brands they inadvertently shifted clients and incurred costs doing so. Not a good combination. Mr. Lemonis has some authentic, leverageable brand value that can help with crafting a narrative and adding credibility to the effort — I’d say there is a chance they can pull off a double-turnaround. However, it won’t be easy to re-set. .
In retrospect? This disaster was obvious from the beginning.
OK, points for Listening & Learning, but it did not take genius level IQ to arrive at this conclusion. And what an odd statement: “…we were able to win the buy box on selling large items with high AOVs (average order values) as Bed Bath & Beyond, we had to do that by buying the business.” Buying the business is not a win. It’s a scramble after a fumble, and these guys got tackled deep in their own territory. These guys have just learned the ‘First Rule of the Hole’. When you find yourself in a hole…STOP DIGGING! The climb out might not be so easy.
It’s so easy to be a Monday Morning quarterback on this one. It was a mistake because both of these companies had different pricing approaches and customer propositions. The closure of overstock.com did not make a lot of sense to me at the time since low-priced value retail was critical at that moment of high inflation. It would be interesting to hear if any consumer research was done to support such a drastic shift in name change. Hopefully, the new re-branding of Overstock.com and plans for the assortment for Bed Bath and Beyond will help right the ship.
Absolutely a mistake was made in the handling of the re-branding. There was a strong opportunity to transition the Bed Bath model to pure digital and leverage a much of the back end synergies. However, it will now take years to get back to where they could have been as two brand names leveraging the same back end systems and inventory.
There is no synergy here. None. Bringing back the website is the obvious move, however this merger is simply about two companies under one corporate roof, with (big maybe) some back office cost savings realized.
It has been a mess from the start. The change of the name is only one piece as the revolving door of leadership hasn’t helped. Banking on the BBBY name alone was a short sighted strategy. A corporate name doesn’t make a company, and if you can’t provide a clear value proposition to consumers with the name you have, nothing will change that. They may be able to gain back some Overstock customers, but this acquisition strategy failed for the company that acquired Linens & Things and will likely fizzle out here as well as a ghost of its former self.
It was a botched merger. Overstock could have bought out the inventories from BBB after bankruptcy and kept the trademark for future use. Instead overstock.com which has equity for online bargain hunters was replaced with a brand for home goods and kitchenware famous for couponing. Good to separate things back out, the question is what needs do each brand address going forward against the juggernaut of Amazon and Temu and AliExpress
Yes, re-branding overstock was a mistake, as was its last re-branding to O.co. The brand has suffered to keep its relevance since its initial surge. Rather than sticking to what it was good at, it tired to be all things to all people. The idea of returning to its roots and to be used as solution to the returns problem is interesting and could offer synergies, but they will have to spend money on customer acquisition to gain that relevance again.
More Discussions
Are US Small Business Owners Right To Be Optimistic About Sales Growth in 2026?
A recent Comerica survey suggested that American small business owners are optimistic about what 2026 holds…Should Retailers Be Charging Fees for Mail-In Returns?
The question of whether retailers should be charging fees for mailed returns continues to be a…Who Should Lululemon’s Next CEO Be?
Lululemon is being asked to consider a specific CEO candidate. Is this the right pick?
The merger of the two brands was botched because the company just lumped them together with no real thought about how to merge the different propositions and customer segments. As such, it was a huge failure.
The relaunch of Overstock will help somewhat. However, a lot of confusion has now been created among customers by all the chopping and changing. Time will be needed for things to stabilize. Moreover, it’s not as if Overstock was a powerhouse before the rebrand – it was a brand with poor awareness, declining relevancy, and where market share was being lost to players like HomeGoods and others.
That said, that the creation of three separate brand entities – Overstock, Bed Bath & Beyond, with the addition of Zulily – is the right approach. Beyond now just needs clear strategies for each.
Well said Neil, I Agree Absolutely. This was a mess with terrible brand dilution, and customer confusion. The re-set should be as helpful as possible to damage repair. They should consider some high visibility advertisment to alert people to the fact that Overstock.com is back.
They sure need to do something. The visibility was poor before the merger. It will be even worse now.
I’m glad the “neither” option was there. Proof positive of that mathematical identity you learned back in Junior High: if you add zero to something, it’s still the same….and if it was zero you started with….
What a confusing rollout. Customers are going to need some guidance from management.
For all of the reasons Marcus Lemonis points out, it was a huge mistake to rebrand Overstock as BedBathandBeyond.com. However, I must politely question the wisdom of combining those two brands in the first place. You’ve got to be kidding me!
In addition to the differences between the functionality of Overstock and Bed Bath and Beyond in terms of suppliers and vendors, the two separate brands as consumer brands could not be more different.
Overstock is considered to be a deep discount retailer, while Bed, Bath, and Beyond is thought of as a retailer that sells branded products with a higher price point than, for example, “My Pillow,” or Walmart.
Combining the two brands would have been like merging Nieman Marcus and Dollar General.
This new separation of the brands should work well, and I am confident that Marcus will make sure that it is done correctly. Db
Absolutely, “Combining the two brands would have been like merging Nieman Marcus and Dollar General.” so well said.
Stand-up comedy is in your future…I see it in your cards.
Beyond.com created substantial brand confusion by combining its identities into a single brand that stood for nothing. Given consumer focus on value pricing, overstock is the most likely of the brands to succeed as long as it stays focused on buybacks and heavily valued products.
When Overstock bought Bed Bath & Beyond, they should’ve tried a real estate play with some of the BBB locations. Today’s consumer loves a bargain, and despite all the hubbub that online shopping will win the day, the fact is that people like to see and touch things. Both brands could’ve co-existed in the same physical space, which might have helped BBB optimize its bloated catalog of SKUs. Hey, if Sephora can thrive inside Kohl’s and Ulta inside Target, why not try a full price/discount combo under one roof? Don’t like anything you see on the discount side? Well, step right over here…
Agree, this acquisition and merger of the brands was a huge mistake as it was very confusing and I’m not sure of the point. It should always be about the customer experience where this transaction completely disregarded the target audience. However, with the move to separate the 2 companies it feels like a good reset. And the return repositioning is an interesting strategy for Overstock. If they truly solve a pain point for returned goods it’s smart, this could work. It can’t be worse and it will be interesting to see how they do.
This is a case study of dumb decisions by people who don’t know what they are doing. They have chased away consumers for both brands. Once they are gone, they rarely come back.
I think the opportunity to build this brand back has passed. It’s hard to tell from this strategy, consumers are likey to be more confused than anything about this.
Not sure that these businesses are filling any kind of a gap in the world of online retail. Does anyone miss them?
Regrettably, I think the idea of buying the BB&B intellectual property was a mistake because there is nothing left of what consumers had known BB&B to be; retail chain they liked to shop. Returning Overstock to its roots may be the smartest move so far for Beyond. I predict that BB&B will not survive three years.
Obvious in retrospect, but yes, maintaining both brands would have produced the better outcomes. By combining brands they inadvertently shifted clients and incurred costs doing so. Not a good combination. Mr. Lemonis has some authentic, leverageable brand value that can help with crafting a narrative and adding credibility to the effort — I’d say there is a chance they can pull off a double-turnaround. However, it won’t be easy to re-set. .
In retrospect? This disaster was obvious from the beginning.
OK, points for Listening & Learning, but it did not take genius level IQ to arrive at this conclusion. And what an odd statement: “…we were able to win the buy box on selling large items with high AOVs (average order values) as Bed Bath & Beyond, we had to do that by buying the business.” Buying the business is not a win. It’s a scramble after a fumble, and these guys got tackled deep in their own territory. These guys have just learned the ‘First Rule of the Hole’. When you find yourself in a hole…STOP DIGGING! The climb out might not be so easy.
It’s so easy to be a Monday Morning quarterback on this one. It was a mistake because both of these companies had different pricing approaches and customer propositions. The closure of overstock.com did not make a lot of sense to me at the time since low-priced value retail was critical at that moment of high inflation. It would be interesting to hear if any consumer research was done to support such a drastic shift in name change. Hopefully, the new re-branding of Overstock.com and plans for the assortment for Bed Bath and Beyond will help right the ship.
Absolutely a mistake was made in the handling of the re-branding. There was a strong opportunity to transition the Bed Bath model to pure digital and leverage a much of the back end synergies. However, it will now take years to get back to where they could have been as two brand names leveraging the same back end systems and inventory.
There is no synergy here. None. Bringing back the website is the obvious move, however this merger is simply about two companies under one corporate roof, with (big maybe) some back office cost savings realized.
It has been a mess from the start. The change of the name is only one piece as the revolving door of leadership hasn’t helped. Banking on the BBBY name alone was a short sighted strategy. A corporate name doesn’t make a company, and if you can’t provide a clear value proposition to consumers with the name you have, nothing will change that. They may be able to gain back some Overstock customers, but this acquisition strategy failed for the company that acquired Linens & Things and will likely fizzle out here as well as a ghost of its former self.
It was a botched merger. Overstock could have bought out the inventories from BBB after bankruptcy and kept the trademark for future use. Instead overstock.com which has equity for online bargain hunters was replaced with a brand for home goods and kitchenware famous for couponing. Good to separate things back out, the question is what needs do each brand address going forward against the juggernaut of Amazon and Temu and AliExpress
Yes, re-branding overstock was a mistake, as was its last re-branding to O.co. The brand has suffered to keep its relevance since its initial surge. Rather than sticking to what it was good at, it tired to be all things to all people. The idea of returning to its roots and to be used as solution to the returns problem is interesting and could offer synergies, but they will have to spend money on customer acquisition to gain that relevance again.