Beyond, Inc. — the owner of BuyBuy Baby’s former sister company Bed Bath & Beyond — has signed an agreement to reunite the two brands with a $5 million acquisition of BuyBuy Baby. The deal includes BuyBuy Baby’s databases, domains, intellectual property (IP) and vendor relationships, currently owned by New Jersey-based baby retailer Dream on Me.
BuyBuy Baby was a casualty of the 2023 bankruptcy of then-parent company Bed Bath & Beyond’s. After struggling to find a buyer for the babycare retailer, former BuyBuy Baby vendor Dream on Me came through with a last-minute acquisition of the retailer’s trademark, digital assets and 11 store leases in July 2023.
The BuyBuy Baby website relaunched shortly thereafter, and by November 2023 the 11 brick-and-mortar stores had been reopened. At the time, BuyBuy Baby CEO Pete Daleiden said the plan was to open upwards of 100 locations within the next three years, but in October 2024 the company shifted tack and announced that it was closing its existing stores and becoming a digital-only brand. While there was no mention of a potential sale of the brand at that time, Dream on Me has clearly decided to offload the brand after its short-lived turnaround attempt.
Beyond’s Ambitious Plans for BuyBuy Baby Include Tokenized IP, Blockchain Project
Marcus Lemonis, Executive Chairman of Beyond — which also owns the Overstock and Zulily brands in addition to Bed, Bath & Beyond — has laid out an ambitious strategy to breathe new life into the baby brand.
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“Bed Bath & Beyond and BuyBuy Baby have historically been synonymous with supporting families, their homes and all of life’s milestones,” said Lemonis in a statement. “Our goal is to go beyond the traditional omnichannel mindset, focusing on the four corners of the property, and the four walls of the home. It is our objective to help homeowners enhance, protect and unlock the value of their most important assets and information related to their homes and lives.”
This will take form in three strategic initiatives:
- Opening standalone stores that will be operated by home décor retailer Kirkland’s, which entered a strategic partnership with Beyond, Inc. in October 2024 to bring Bed Bath & Beyond back to physical retail as well. Lemonis said that the new BuyBuy Baby stores “will be a destination for parents, offering curated selections of the best brands for every stage of childhood.”
- Potentially “tokenizing” part of the BuyBuy Baby IP — Lemonis said that the company is currently “deeply exploring” the potential to offer BuyBuy Baby’s IP to shareholders in the form of a digital token. The deal would be facilitated in partnership with tZERO, a fintech firm that makes traditional investments such as real estate, stock and, apparently, IP available in digital forms. The company is considering two separate offerings on the tZERO platform — the first would be a digital dividend available to current holders of Beyond; the second would be an offering to new investors interested in owning a share of the intellectual property. In both cases, the goal is for the token to provide a share of the omnichannel revenue generated by the brand, along with loyalty benefits “across the Beyond platform.”
- Creating a blockchain-based ledger that would act as a centralized database for important life documents, which Lemonis is calling a “LifeChain” — “We see an unprecedented opportunity to leverage tZERO’s blockchain technology and the BuyBuy Baby assets to build the first ledger that records all significant life events, starting from birth records, medical records and life milestones to educational records, financial products, insurance and purchases,” explained Lemonis. The solution would integrate a consumer’s financial and digital assets into a single, secure digital wallet, supported by Salesforce and its Agentforce technology.
“This acquisition, combined with Beyond’s existing portfolio of assets and investments, drives us toward our mandate of operating a profitable company focused on traditional revenue and earnings growth,” concluded Lemonis. “We are leveraging our belief in the evolution of tokenizing assets and the critical importance of securing data related to your home and life.”
Incorporating BuyBuy Baby into the Beyond ‘Data Cooperative’
The latter two proposed initiatives for BuyBuy Baby continue Lemonis’ transformation of the brands under the Beyond, Inc. umbrella, moving them from traditional retail enterprises into data and technology-centered companies that do more than simply sell products.
“We are in the process of transforming our asset-light business into an affinity and data monetization model with a strong technology focus, comprised of a collection of brands offered on a comprehensive platform from which customers can unlock value within the four walls of their home and four corners of their property,” said Lemonis in a statement on Beyond’s Q3 results in October 2024. “We are still in the early innings of creating a robust data cooperative that will serve as the affinity and loyalty program foundation, and having recently announced partnerships with both The Container Store [which has since been canceled] and Kirkland’s Home, we are well on our way. What we are ultimately building at Beyond is intended to leverage the combined strengths of all involved parties, driving improved financial performance and shareholder value.”