Bed Bath & Beyond's rebirth is on a fast track.
Most of the existing 309 Kirkland's Home stores will be converted to Bed Bath & Beyond Home locations over the next 24 months, according to officials at Brand House Collective, once known as Kirkland's. The changes are coming as a result of a deal between Brand House, based in Nashville, Tennessee, and Bed Bath & Beyond, headquartered in Utah.
Brand House outlined its latest expansion plans for Bed Bath & Beyond when it reported its second-quarter fiscal 2025 results this week. The company said that its first Bed Bath & Beyond Home location, which replaced a Kirkland's store at 1624 Galleria Blvd. in Brentwood, Tennessee, in August has been a success.
So Brand House is speeding up its plans to convert the rest of its Kirkland's fleet.
"The debut of our first Bed Bath & Beyond Home store was met with overwhelming demand, exceeding our expectations, and generating nationwide excitement that affirms the strength of this iconic brand," Brand House CEO Amy Sullivan said in a statement. "That early success gives us confidence to accelerate the conversion of Kirkland's Home stores."
Last October then-Kirkland's and the company then called Beyond — later changing its name to Bed Bath & Beyond — said they were teaming up to relaunch the liquidated retailer as a brick-and-mortar chain. The strategy was to covert some Kirkland's stores to the banner. The partnership was later expanded to include Buy Buy Baby and to launch Overtock.com as a physical retailer. Bed Bath & Beyond owns those three brands.
Past attempts to resurrect once-defunct retailers as brick-and-mortar businesses have had mixed results. WHP Global was able to successfully relaunch Toys R Us and Babies R Us, but a prior effort by another company to revitalize Buy Buy Baby failed.
Brand House now plans to close about 25 Kirkland's stores when their leases expire in January. The firm said it will convert 250 to 275 of the remaining locations to Bed Bath & Beyond Home stores, Sullivan said on Tuesday's earnings call.
That's a more aggressive rollout than Brand House announced in June, when it said it planned to transform about 75 of its Kirkland's stores into Bed Bath & Beyond Home sites and another 30 of them into brick-and-mortar Overstock.com outposts. At that time, Kirkland's also announced it was renaming itself as Brand House Collective, "reflecting the company's transformation into a multi-brand merchandising, supply chain and retail operator," effective July 24.
Near term, Brand House aims to open five additional Bed Bath & Beyond Home stores in the greater Nashville market in fiscal 2025. Plans to open stores for the other Bed Bath & Beyond brands, including Buy Buy Baby and Overstock, are in development, according to Brand House. The first Buy Buy Baby store is slated to debut in fiscal 2026.
"We are also unlocking new opportunities by monetizing the Kirkland's Home name, both inside Bed Bath & Beyond stores and through wholesale partnerships with independent retailers, creating an exciting new chapter for a brand with a 60-year legacy," Sullivan said in her statement.
Earlier this week Brand House sold the Kirkland's Home intellectual property rights to Bed Bath & Beyond for $10 million and closed a $20 million expansion of the existing credit agreement with the company, to support current operations as well as store conversion and channel expansion plans.
In the second quarter Brand House's net sales were $75.8 million, compared to $86.3 million in the prior-year period, driven by a 9.7% decline in consolidated comparable sales and a roughly 5% decline in store count.