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I don’t pretend to be a business genius, having come to running one only late in life, after decades of working for others. But I’ve always been interested in how a business works, and I’ve seen enough to know when a business decision is short-sighted, self-defeating or just plain ignorant.
Take Bed, Bath & Beyond, one of those themed big-box stores that once aspired to dominate a market segment but which went into bankruptcy a couple of years ago, shuttering its stores in Waynesboro and Harrisonburg and all across the country. Its assets were subsequently purchased by Overstock.com, but as with so many things, the company lived on as a digital ghost, marketing its wares on the internet.
That’s how we came to order a new kitchen table, paying less attention to the source than to the fact that it had the right combination of size, color and price. And boy, was the response prompt! Two days after I’d placed the order, and much to my wife’s delight, two men in a FedEx truck lugged a large, 78-pound box box into our hallway. After assuring myself the carton was intact, I was ready for the relatively simple task of attaching the legs to the tabletop.
But no. When I sliced open the tape and peeled back the box cover, I saw that one of the long frame pieces had broken in half and part of it was separating from the top itself. The break wasn’t catastrophic; had it been a bone, it would have been a simple rather than a compound fracture. A repair would have been as simple as tapping the separated half back into place, perhaps with a spot of carpenter’s glue where it met the table top, then screwing in a reinforcing one-by-three on the inside of the break, where it couldn’t be seen from the outside. That would have been a serviceable fix, leaving only a relatively minor cosmetic blemish where the two halves came together—but did I want to do that? Doing so might be less work than reboxing the whole thing and going through the hassle of contacting BB&B to replace the table, but still, did I want to pay full price for damaged goods?
I did not. And so, girding myself for a long telephone joust and arming myself with pictures of the damage, I called Bed, Bath & Beyond and eventually spoke to a very polite, very efficient and heavily-accented woman. I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say that my bottom line was that I was willing to keep the table as is, in return for a substantial discount—say, 40% to 50% off my original purchase price of $330. My counterpart, even after a full explanation of the situation and a review of the photographs I sent her, was unable to reward me with any more than a $73 store credit. Not a refund, mind you, but a credit, which presumed I would be rushing back to buy more of BB&B’s wares. Somehow, I wasn’t tempted.
I wound up sending back the damaged goods, for which BB&B had to pay the shipping. BB&B sent me a replacement table, for which it also had to pay the shipping. And then, of course, BB&B now has a broken table in its inventory that it has to figure out how to dispose of. Given that, I think a $132 refund would have been a bargain. And given the company’s inability to recognize that simple math, I think that perhaps this post-bankruptcy revival is not going to end well, either.
P.S. I subsequently learned that Overstock.com has been rebranded as Beyond Inc., which is owned by Marcus Lemonis, star of stage and screen—well, screen, as in appearances on “The Profit” and “The Celebrity Apprentice.” That puts him in the company of people like Donald J. Trump, another businessman who talks bigly but delivers far less.
Lemonis reportedly plans to continue BB&B’s resurrection by opening new storefronts around the country—but not in California, which he faults for having created “one of the most overregulated, expensive and risky environments for businesses in America.” Maybe, maybe not. But it’s not unlike Lemonis to blame others for his mismanagement of a business, as I learned when I was a campground owner and watched him run Good Sam Enterprises into the ground. His other day job, as the CEO of Camping World, isn’t looking much better. So—no surprise here that BB&B has such a self-defeating business model.
P.P.S. When our new table arrived, it was again delivered by FedEx—but with only one man on the truck to manhandle the box. Which he dropped. Which mildly crunched a table corner.
We kept it anyway. But there’s another story to be written about the way FedEx is understaffing its trucks and abusing its employees.
Looking askance 