Bed Bath & Beyond plans to close its Visalia store in 2023, along with 86 others, five buybuy Baby stores and all of its Harmon beauty stores
VISALIA – Local shoppers will have to look beyond a national retailer on the brink of collapse for their home and bath needs next year.
On Jan. 30, Bed Bath & Beyond announced it will be closing another 87 stores in 2023, including the Visalia store at 3125 S. Mooney Blvd. in Visalia. Other California closings for the company include stores in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Glendora, Folsom, Culver City, San Diego, Upland, Carlsbad, Hawthorne, and Palm Desert. The company also closed five of its buybuy Baby stores, which sells baby clothes and accessories, and all of its Harmon stores, a discount retailer for beauty, health and cosmetics products. In all, the company plans to shutter 142 stores this year.
The closures mean the multi-chain retailer will have closed 268 stores across all three brands by the end of this year, nearly 100 more than it expected to close two years ago.
“Our organization is more streamlined and we have adopted a more focused infrastructure that reflects our current business,”” Interim CEO Sue Gove said in the most recent earnings report.
In August 2022, the company announced it was right-sizing in response to second quarter earnings being lower than expected. Sales were down 28% overall, store-to-store comparisons were down 26% and net income dropped by $293 million.
In response to the second quarter losses, the company announced it was closing 150 low-performing stores and laying off 20% of its workforce. Interim CEO Sue Gove said the moves would help cut costs and put the company back on sound financial footing.
“We have worked quickly to deploy strategic and financial changes swiftly to increase cash through business growth and lowering our cost structure by approximately $250 million in the second half of fiscal 2022, or an expected $500 million on an annualized basis. We are confident that our current liquidity will enable the necessary changes we are implementing.”
The strategy didn’t pay off, as net sales for the third quarter were down 33%, contributing to an overall loss of $385 million. The company was expecting for cash flow to break even by the end of 2022, but industry analysts say this may be the end of the
“For decades, Bed Bath & Beyond has set the pace across the sector and we have commanded our position in retail through many different economic cycles and alongside a continuously evolving customer,” Gove said in a released statement. “We believe our concrete advantages in defining categories, offering broad and curated selections, and delivering for customers are compelling reasons why we will continue to command a formidable presence in the Home and Baby categories into the future.”
The company’s steep financial decline began in the first half of 2020 when it announced it would close 200 stores in the next two years due to store closures during the early days of the pandemic. In the first quarter of 2020 alone, Bed Bath & Beyond reported revenue was half that of the previous year.
As of May 28, 2022, the Company had a total of 955 stores, including 769 Bed Bath & Beyond stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada, 135 buybuy BABY stores and 51 stores under the names Harmon, Harmon Face Values or Face Values. During the Fiscal 2022 first quarter, the Company opened 5 buybuy BABY stores. Additionally during the fiscal 2022 first quarter, the Company closed 3 stores including 2 Bed Bath & Beyond stores and 1 Harmon store. The joint venture to which the Company is a partner operates 12 stores in Mexico under the name Bed Bath & Beyond.
The Company operates websites at bedbathandbeyond.com, bedbathandbeyond.ca, buybuybaby.com, buybuybaby.ca, harmondiscount.com, and facevalues.com.
