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Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

nytimes.com

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Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#221

Post by crazygringo »

solarmist wrote: post #151
crazygringo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, BBB had low quality crazy overpriced items. Yes it was good to be able to see and try items before buying, but then they'd just fall apart. With Amazon, yeah it sucks I sometimes have to return things because you couldn't try it in person. But on the other hand, I wind up buying much higher quality items on Amazon, and at a cheaper price, because the top 15 reviews together usually give really solid feedback on h…

BBB had high prices, but I've never gotten the impression that there was anything low quality. Besides the as seen on tv crap they added over the last few years. EDIT: I didn't know about the store brand push.

It wasn't just the store brands that came more recently, but the longtime "name" brands that made lines of items exclusively for BBB. This was especially the case with things like bedding, shower curtains, towels, bathmats, anything with memory foam, and so forth. They were just overpriced crap, you'd discover after a few months.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#222

Post by polygamous_bat »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #208
humanlion87 wrote: post #8

I find the whole situation fascinating. Bed Bath continued to sell hundreds of millions of shares while they were preparing for bankruptcy and retail investors (or meme stock investors) continued to buy them. I assume Bed Bath did all the paperwork that is necessary (like calling out risks, that the raised capital will go to creditors first, etc) for such a stock sale. But it is clear they were doing it out of bad-fa…

> As usual Matt Levine's take on this is a good read. Link?

He regularly writes a column on Bloomberg called Money Stuff, you can see a few examples of him talking about BBBY here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#223

Post by bombcar »

jwozn wrote: post #214
Animats wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to buy a mattress. Mattress review sites are all phony. Amazon is all phony reviews. Mattress FIRM is hugely overpriced. Bed, Bath, and Beyond's brands were just names they'd acquired. That entire industry has managed to shoot itself in the foot. Probably better to order from an actual manufacturer on Alibaba.

I went to a hotel and loved the mattress so I emailed them, and it was a Classic Brands Cool Gel. I bought one and am very happy with it, and it was relatively cheap compared to some of the DTC brands out there and extremely cheap compared to mattress stores. You can get it on amazon but some of the branding is confusing. I think we bought the Cool Gel Chill, although a quick glance online shows there are fairly simi…

this is relatively common, some hotels even list the brand on the website and I’ve seen one that had a coupon.

Nothing like spending a night or few on the mattress to test.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#224

Post by cratermoon »

menage wrote: post #83
cratermoon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite of the moment is 'gluten free'. Seen on things that physically cannot have gluten in them, unless it's contaminated somehow.

But cross-contamination in a shared production facility can happen fairly easily (and is important for folks who are sensitive to a few parts-per-million of gluten), hence why lots of packets have that warning in the small print. An obvious "gluten-free" label means that the producer is asserting that this cross-contamination hasn't occurred and you don't have to search the small print.

That's true, and I made a conscious decision not to mention cross-contamination, knowing that the hn community would fill in the gaps.

The short answer is that no, the label gluten free alone does not say anything about cross-contamination.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#225

Post by dv_dt »

rblatz wrote: post #92
nate wrote: post #63

I'm gonna miss it. I always thought it had an interesting Job to be Done when I observed my behavior with the store. We had one a few blocks from my home, and though I order from Amazon like I'm trying to win some kind of game, I'd go to BBB when I needed something that day and didn't want to spend any time on research. It was almost guaranteed that the thing I'd buy would just naturally be at the top of a review sit…

That's the role Costco has been filling for a lot of Americans recently. Most of the time you are going to find something at a decent price, that may not be best in class but at least it's going to be near the top of the price/utility curve.

re: price/utility curve

That's so correct. Every other retailer it feels like wants to focus on competing on price by ever lower quality. I strongly prefer paying more for higher quality of things are not junk. Low quality is a waste of resources and of my time.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#226

Post by bombcar »

somehnguy wrote: post #219
gamblor956 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alibaba is super cheap because you're buying the literal bargain basement version of the product, and what you're getting almost always violates local product safety laws that domestic manufacturers and/or sellers must contend with. Yes, the mattress at Costco is 5x the price. But it's probably 20x the value.

My experience is the opposite - I've bought the exact same products from Alibaba that I could have gotten on Amazon for 4x the cost. The only difference being random brand printed on the plastic.

It depends on the product. All those random USB C docks and hubs? Sure, you can find identical ones on baba. But there are products that aren’t really available. I’m sure you can get stuff identical to Harbor Freight, but actually identical to Milwaukee or Dewalt? A bit harder.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#227

Post by larkost »

menage wrote: post #83
cratermoon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite of the moment is 'gluten free'. Seen on things that physically cannot have gluten in them, unless it's contaminated somehow.

But cross-contamination in a shared production facility can happen fairly easily (and is important for folks who are sensitive to a few parts-per-million of gluten), hence why lots of packets have that warning in the small print. An obvious "gluten-free" label means that the producer is asserting that this cross-contamination hasn't occurred and you don't have to search the small print.

From what I understand gluten intolerance (including Celiac disease) is not at all like allergies where even a small amount of cross contamination can be harmful (or even deadly). Gluten intolerance really needs a solid amount (which many foods provide) to trigger problems, and the worry is really the long-term damage that can be done.

So I think that the "gluten-free" labels on things that obviously would not have gluten in them (e.g.: bottled water) is absolutely about advertisement to people who have been trained to think that "gluten-free" is always a good thing.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#228

Post by bombcar »

noncoml wrote: post #70
Animats wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to buy a mattress. Mattress review sites are all phony. Amazon is all phony reviews. Mattress FIRM is hugely overpriced. Bed, Bath, and Beyond's brands were just names they'd acquired. That entire industry has managed to shoot itself in the foot. Probably better to order from an actual manufacturer on Alibaba.

Arizona Premium Mattress. It’s basically, build your own mattress. Only down side, they are slooooooooow

Ah but they don’t offer the Alaskan King! Because a mattress nine feet on a side is what everyone needs.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#229

Post by nemothekid »

rcme wrote: post #128
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has been fundamentally detached from reality, from stocks to housing. Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up. Companies can be unprofitable for literal decades but they’ll keep finding funding and buyers. Commercial properties can bleed tenant but the prices will only be up. In a world of shrinking growth , stalling productivity, and dying demographics, the market behaves lik…

Is the market acting like infinite growth is baked in, or is inflation simply out of control? And I’m not talking about CPI over the last three years. Stocks have been insane over the last decade. Real estate has been insane over the last decade. Neither of which is measured by CPI. So yea… the market is pricing things like the Fed will keep printing money to prop up assets it explicitly ignores in its inflation calc…

>Is the market acting like infinite growth is baked in,

It's this. America has decided that:

1. The most important retirement/wealth vehicle is your home.

2. Home prices must only go up or your wealth will be destroyed.

3. The government should use it's power to uphold (1) and (2), which results in NIMBYism, all the tax breaks you see around mortgages, and of course the 2008 bailouts.

w.r.t stocks I largely think that was a ZIRP phenomenon, but stocks are allowed to correct somewhat.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#230

Post by bombcar »

MandieD wrote: post #181
pavon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I greatly preferred JC Penny Home Store as it had better prices than BBB but better selection than general stores like Target/Walmart (and I often liked the bedding/curtain patterns they carried better). Unfortunately their financial troubles caused them to consolidate the Home Store into their main stores, and the selection is now no better than those later options, and I've thus been going to BBB more often. I hope…

"The gap between Target and Williams Sonoma" is a decent summary of my frustration with an awful lot of product selection in both the US and in Germany.

Williams Sonoma always feels like the sky mall catalog; overpriced and basically as crappy. It’s quite annoying to find actually good products- it’s usually still possible but takes some serious digging.
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