On April 23, housewares and home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and planning to liquidate and close all of its stores (and those of its subsidiary chain, buybuy BABY).
As in the demise of Toys ‘R’ Us, cultural or demographic elements might be playing a role here: smaller families, in the case of toys; younger consumers with smaller homes and lower rates of homeownership, in this case—people with less space to fill. Culture-war narratives also form in the wake of these stories: In some corners of the right-wing internet, the “smaller families” element of Toys ‘R’ Us’s failure became something like “childless feminists killed Toys ‘R’ Us.” (The company itself fed such narratives by citing declining birth rates as a potential culprit for poor sales performance in its annual filing the year it declared bankruptcy.) With Bed Bath & Beyond, some have blamed the company’s alleged “wokeness” (diversity and inclusion initiatives, environmental and social governance, and dropping MyPillow) for its bankruptcy. “Performance was a lower priority than equity,” one typical dispatch claims.
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