The newly renamed (again) Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. — parent company of Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, BuyBuy BABY and a blockchain asset portfolio — has paid $10 million to buy the Kirkland’s Home trade name and related brand assets from the also recently renamed Brand House Collective.
The move expands on the two companies’ existing investment partnership and is aimed at accelerating the ongoing conversion of Kirkland’s Home stores to Bed Bath & Beyond Home locations. The first such conversion was completed in August in Nashville, Tenn. ending the brand’s two-year absence from brick-and-mortar retail.
BB&B Inc. also plans to expand the Kirkland’s Home brand into the wholesale market, with branded seasonal home décor and furnishings designed to “create a new, recurring revenue stream.” BB&B Inc. will continue to receive the same collaboration fee outlined in its existing arrangement with Kirkland’s, but that will now be broadened to include revenue from the wholesale channel.
“The excitement around the Bed Bath & Beyond brand has been undeniable with the first of many store conversions,” said Marcus Lemonis, Executive Chairman and Principal Executive Officer of Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc. in a statement. “This early success reinforces our conviction in the strategy and our commitment to accelerate the rollout nationwide. Kirkland’s Home design and product development will expand through both Bed Bath & Beyond Home stores and the wholesale market, and I have full confidence in Amy Sullivan and her team to drive this growth.”
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GrainChain to Analyze BB&B’s Supply Chains with an Eye to Improving Efficiency
At the same time, the company continues to make nontraditional moves, this time investing an additional $3 million in convertible notes in blockchain-based agricultural technology company GrainChain.
In explaining the move, Lemonis said, “while many people refer to the company as GrainChain, when I think about them, I think about supply chain.” Indeed, the company has separately engaged GrainChain to analyze its entire supply chain in order to improve efficiency, margin and inventory turns across international and domestic sourcing, fulfillment and last-mile delivery to stores.
But analyzing BB&B’s supply chain is just a side hustle for GrainChain at the moment. The company’s primary goal is to “reshape agriculture with end-to-end technology solutions that bring transparency, efficiency and security to commodity transactions.” This includes leveraging technologies such as blockchain, smart contracts and IoT-enabled systems to connect food producers, storage operators, buyers and financiers across the supply chain. To date, GrainChain has processed more than 22.5 billion pounds of commodities and operates in four countries (including the U.S., Mexico and Honduras). With BB&B’s additional $3 million investment, the company said it will continue to scale its technology, expand its reach and strengthen financial solutions for agricultural producers and buyers worldwide.
However, BB&B made clear in the announcement that it “believes that GrainChain’s technology has applications far beyond agriculture and is leveraging its own business to demonstrate the platform’s broader potential.” GrainChain is only one of a number of investments in blockchain technology made by BB&B, Inc, which also include tokenizing the IP of the BuyBuy Baby and Overstock brands and owning a piece of the blockchain trading platform tZero.
