Bed, Bath & Beyond: Putting Customers in Danger on Black Friday?

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to hit record-high numbers daily, one of the nation’s most beloved home retailers has announced a decision that might put lives in danger across the U.S. 

Bed, Bath & Beyond has announced incentives to visit stores in person, rather than shop online, on Black Friday. This decision was shared at the same time that news reports listed the highest-ever rates of transmission from the ongoing viral outbreak.

Why would the major retailer make this decision, rather than promoting online shopping incentives?

The Importance of Black Friday

Thanksgiving has been an important holiday for retailers for decades; with people enjoying a long weekend off work, many chose to use their free time to get out of the house and spend money. They’d visit malls and get started on their holiday shopping. In the early 2000s, the industry fully capitalized on this trend by embracing and popularizing Black Friday. 

On the fourth Friday of November, stores began offering massive incentives to shop, dropping one-day sales, capitalizing on the preexisting urge people felt to go out and spend. Foot traffic increased everywhere, and dollars were dropped across the board: from clothes sellers to homewares to entertainment merchants. By joining together to turn this impulse into a formalized ritual, the entire industry benefited.

How to Do Things Different in 2020

But 2020, of course, is a little bit different. People aren’t shopping at brick-and-mortar stores the way that they used to. It requires donning a mask and staying 6 feet apart from other shoppers. Many stores are enforcing a limited capacity of shoppers at all times. 

So a rush of shoulder-to-shoulder competitive shoppers isn’t exactly the ideal. Many people were wondering how it was going to look this year. Of course, you’d think major retailers would turn their attention to e-commerce, as most have throughout 2020.

Black Friday success this year might involve:

• Reallocating resources to warehousing, shipping, and customer service
• Stocking up on sale items at strategic nationwide distribution centers
• Ensuring the website is capable of handling a surge in traffic
• Promoting online deals relevant to your overstock and best delivery rates
• Offering free shipping on all online orders with a maximum two-day turnaround

But Bed, Bath & Beyond chose to take a different route.

Bed, Bath & Beyond’s Biggest Mistakes

Bed, Bath & Beyond joins a long list of retailers impacted by the pandemic and its correlating economic downturn. In 2020, the homewares brand announced that it would be closing 200 stores over two years and named the first 63 store locations that it would be closing for good.

So we know that the brand is in trouble, and rallying its financial forces. This holiday season could be a big make-or-break point for the direction of the company. Decisions made right now, at the highest level—by CEO Mark Tritton, the recently appointed COO John Hartmann, and the new CFO Gustavo Arnal especially—could determine the very survival of Bed, Bath & Beyond.

One thing that the company decided to do this year to counter dwindling sales, apart from closing hundreds of its physical stores, was offer same-day delivery. This new offer costs $4.99 and is only available for orders over $59. 

To make this possible, Bed, Bath & Beyond had to partner with Instacart and Shipt (companies that already make local deliveries possible through third-party shoppers and drivers). The strategy to outsource last-mile deliveries in order to fulfill deliveries faster is a great move; it’s part of what we advocate at BigLynx. But in this case, it’s clearly not enough. Because if this is a real “solution”—you shouldn’t be charging your customers anything! 

Amazon Prime offers its members same-day deliveries on eligible orders for free, and that’s the primary competition for Bed, Bath & Beyond. So if you’re only outdoing your own outdated shipping models, you’re not doing enough. You need to be able to play on an internationally competitive field when it comes to e-commerce. Bed, Bath & Beyond might be a North American brand… but now it’s competing with the entire internet for pricing, products, and speed.

Maybe this is why the company decided to promote in-store and curbside shopping for Black Friday. Despite closing 200 stores, it might still feel that its biggest competitive edge is its widespread physical presence in North America. This year, shoppers will be able to take an additional 5% of all Black Friday promotions when they physically visit brick-and-mortar stores (even if this option seems like it should be a last resort with COVID-19 rates surging across the United States). 

Even if stores limit the number of people who are allowed inside, that means long lines outside in the cold as people wait for their turn to shop. Is that really worth the extra dollars saved? 

And when it comes to curbside pickup, how will this work? It will require staff to be pulled away from checkout registers and aisles inside to help ticket and distribute items in the cold parking lot to waiting vehicles. This might mean providing more holiday pay and more part-time hires. It will require those hires to quickly learn a new system that could be flooded during a busy sale.

Between losing 5% on each of those purchases, keeping extra staff hired onsite, and providing those services adequately at every store location, doesn’t it simply make more sense to shift the promotion to online and distribute those resources to distribution centers and delivery partners? 

Yes, that is certainly going to mean relying on partners and discovering a workable system for tracking, moving, and allocating stock across all stores, stopovers, and storage centers.

But that system can be reinforced beyond Thanksgiving. It can continue to serve the company for long-term benefits. Imagine if Bed, Bath & Beyond continued offering a small incentive to shop online, and continued offering same-day shipping...but it was always free?

Imagine how excited its loyal customers would be about a change like that. And imagine how many new customers would be drawn from lost-cost, nationwide competitors like Target, Walmart, and TJ Maxx—not to mention, of course, Amazon.

These things are possible to offer. And it’s the right direction to move in for the company to stay afloat. It’s not just a flash-in-the-pan, one-day promotion for Black Friday. It’s the permanent change that’s needed to keep the doors open past 2021.

What Retailers Can Learn From This Mistake

Instead of putting customers at risk to keep itself afloat, Bed, Bath & Beyond should consider ways to boost its sales by attracting customers through safe online incentives and 100% Free Shipping.

This might be a big misstep from a brand that’s ultimately struggling to keep its doors open in a shaky economy. Today’s shoppers will continue to seek out brands that put their needs and concerns first. 

Finding ways to look out for your customers, rather than your own bottom line, is imperative.

Other retailers should pay attention to this lesson and consider how their own e-commerce strategies might make or break their survival outcomes in 2021.

If you’re looking for ways to redistribute your finances to accommodate free shipping, explore the retail management tools available through BigLynx. Keep customers coming back for more, so you stay “in the black” well beyond Black Friday.

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