Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail. Today we’re taking a look at the Bed Bath & Beyond at 10515 Katy Fwy. Specifically, we’ll compare photos of the store between 2019 and 2023. To give some background, the 2019 photos were from a planned post which was never completed, and focused on one portion of the store. My desire to return to BB&B was spurred by their recent warnings of the pending bankruptcy. However, before we talk about the present, let’s start off with the past. Bed Bath & Beyond was initially founded as Bed & Bath, a store on the scale of Linen’s n Things and a direct competitor. In the 1980s, BB&B began building super stores, which added “Beyond” to their name. These superstores would prove fruitful for the company, starting a cross-country expansion. The first Bed Bath & Beyond in Houston opened in Willowbrook Commons in 1992. A second location would arrive in 1993 in the former Webster Deauville Mall. This would be followed by nearly unchecked growth. With an unbroken succession of stores being built from 1994-2014, totaling around 90 concurrent locations. Things looked great for the chain so they began to diversify.
The pause in stores was to focus on co-locating chains which Bed Bath & Beyond had purchased to diversify itself. This included Cost Plus World Market, Buy Buy Baby, and even for a short period in Dallas, a Christmas Tree Shops location! While BB&B was focused on building a multibrand image, they were failing to focus on their core brand. In 2015 over 20 years after entering the state, Bed Bath & Beyond had done little to update or relocate any of its original stores. While a few locations had closed, many of the remaining stores were beginning to look dated. In 2016, Bed Bath & Beyond would build its final new location in Texas as of 2023. The store located in Katy replaced an “Outlet” location at Katy Mills and was flanked by a Buy Buy Baby and World Market. It seems that financial struggles were already showing up during this time, as construction of the other stores slowed down too.
In the late 2010s, BB&B would try to update its image as a cheaper, more mainline store, with the help of the Face Values chain of stores they owned supplying generic merchandise and, in the case of the photos I took, even setting up a whole “Face Values” department. Over the next few years, the company would also start to update its stores with some basic remodeling. However, their attempts seem to be too little too late. While the exact future of Bed Bath & Beyond is unknown, the company is likely still too valuable to go under completely. World Market was sold off in 2021, but the company still possesses Buy Buy Baby, so we’ll have to keep an eye out for what happens before the company goes “Bye-Bath & Gone!”
I remember the Bed, Bath, & Beyond that was at The Commons at Willowbrook before they moved to their current location on 249. I can only guess that they moved because they wanted to have a location with Cost Plus and buy, buy Baby next door because the current BB&B itself isn’t really any bigger or nicer than the original Willowbrook one. The original BB&B The Commons location was formerly a Sportstown USA. I remember that store well. Sportstown USA was a pretty good sporting goods store. They were worthy competition for Oshman’s and Academy, but they did have a rather warehouse looking store at a time that those were not common. BB&B certainly put a nicer interior in that spot.
Anyway, I did shop at the Willowbrook BB&B last year. I normally don’t say this about modern renovations, but I thought the BB&B renovation was pretty good. The store looked good, but they did noticeably have less items than they used to just a few years ago. On top of that, they were selling a lot of own-brand stuff and it looked like rather junky Target grade stuff. The BB&B executive who seemed to lead this BB&B transition, who was recently fired, came from Target so maybe that explains the Targetification. Anyway, it probably goes without saying that the Targetification of BB&B worked about as well for BB&B as it did for JCPenney when Ron Johnson led them.
I’m not sure if BB&B can recover. The Copperfield location already closed a few years ago. We could use some more mid-tier housewares stores though especially given some of the woes facing Macy’s, JCPenney, and Kohl’s in recent years. Then again, maybe mid-tier just doesn’t sell anymore unless it’s being sold at Amazon, Costco, or Sam’s Club. That would be a real shame if that is the case.
Just to revise my comment a little bit, it seems the original Willowbrook The Commons Bed, Bath, & Beyond was in the old Children’s Palace/current Ross Dress for Less and then they moved to the old Sports Town USA spot that is now Conn’s. Yep, they’ve had three locations in the Willowbrook Mall area!