Bed Bath & Beyond President and CEO Mark Tritton, reflecting on a year of pandemic-accelerated change, said the key to the retailer’s successful transformation lies in recommitment to its purpose as a home products destination.

Tritton offered a progress report on Bed Bath & Beyond during a fireside chat with Marshal Cohen, chief retail industry advisor at the NPD Group, during the IHA Connect SPRING virtual event.

Tritton, crediting the retailer’s enduring status among consumers in the home space, detailed the importance of restoring vendor relations; the value of data-driven curated assortments balancing well-cultivated “owned” brands and leading national brands; and the progress of the retailer’s “omni” integration.

Tritton took the helm at Bed Bath & Beyond in late 2019 with a record of directing makeovers at Target and Nordstrom, among other brand-refining accomplishments, said the opportunity at a Bed Bath & Beyond business that “had lost its way” was rooted in strong customer expectations in the retailer as a home products leader.

“We began to fashion our strategy around getting back to understanding our customer, our business, our market, our competition: Really going back to those fundamentals,” Tritton said. “The customer loves us. We’re just not realizing the full potential of the business. I was thoroughly convinced in what we were doing. We were cash-rich. I knew were stable. I felt tested, but I never felt we were defeated by the pandemic.”

Tritton said the transformative game plan by Bed Bath & Beyond was validated during the pandemic.

“I felt we were very transactional, very item-focused,” he said. “Listening to our customers, and understanding what they need, and how they were behaving. I think that got us incredibly ready for the COVID moment.”

Tritton, having rebuilt much of the Bed Bath & Beyond merchandising team since his arrival, readily acknowledged the need to restore more collaborative relationships with vendors to move forward with a consistent strategy.

“We’re just more transparent, much more inclusive and much more partner-oriented than we’ve ever been,” he said.

“I felt we were really difficult partners… (We’re) sitting down to the table and talking more regularly about who we want to be as a company, how we want to evolve and how they could help us forge that purpose, not just so we could achieve or goals, but so they could achieve theirs.”

The reaffirmation of Bed Bath & Beyond as a category headquarters in key home classifications, according to Tritton, will be built from a devotion to data that can add clarity and precision to merchandising change without compromising creativity and uniqueness.

“Brand strategy and curation of the rooms: It’s a very deliberate, data-driven thing that leads the pagination of change,” he said.

The pandemic, meanwhile, tested Bed Bath & Beyond’s plan to step up e-commerce capabilities that had lagged much of its primary competition.

“(Our digital business) wasn’t fully integrated. The storytelling, the value, the communication, the category thrust —everything was completely separate,” he said.

“When we talk digital, I change the conversation to omni. Omni always,” he continued, noting that 95% of the retailer’s digital orders came from within 25 miles of a Bed Bath & Beyond store? “If you buy online and pick up in stores, is that a digital order or a store sale. It’s a great order; it’s a customer experience. And the whole enterprise enables that experience.”

Tritton said the company’s customer-first omni objective came into focus during the pandemic while freeing up trapped inventory to meet the customers’ needs. “We were able to gain a huge amount of trust and engagement,” he said. “It is an instance where COVID was the accelerator against an existing strategy that turned out incredibly well for us.”

Tritton, who began to sharpen his branding skills earlier in his career at Nike and Timberland, came to Bed Bath & Beyond with a track record of successful controlled-brand development at Target and Nordstrom. He is quick to distinguish between private labels and “owned” brands when discussing the plan by Bed Bath & Beyond to reinforce its exclusivity.

“I use the word owned brand very definitively, not private label,” he said. “I’m not just slapping a label on the product so we can make a bit of extra margin. I’m actually building an idea, not an item: Ideas punctuated by great items.

“We had 9% of our sales generated from private labels, but we didn’t have brands,” he noted.

Tritton stressed the need to balance owned brands with top national brands in categories for which the data and historical market leadership supports such brands. He specified, for example, small appliances.

Among the new owned brands set to launch later this year by Bed Bath & Beyond is Simply Essential, positioned to differentiate the retailer at an opening-pricepoint segment in which the retailer has not typically competed, Tritton said.

“I’m really excited about the work were doing with brands that are really built with an ethos and an idea. They’re not labels. They’re brands, and we will be treating them as such. Social. Marketing. Digital. Physical. A total 360-degree experience.

“It’s a big pivot, inspired by customers. It gives us our purpose, and it is really driving our authority.”

The global pandemic has opened the opportunity for the home and housewares business to elevate the creation of trustworthy and trend-leading shopping experiences that inspire consumer emotions.

Michelle Lamb, founder and editorial director of The Trend Curve, and Leigh Ann Schwarzkopf, principal of the Project Partners Network, laid out a road map for refocusing on the creative elements of shopper engagement — including assortments, displays and messaging — during the IHA’s Connect SPRING session “Retail Renaissance: Driving Sales Through Experience.” The session highlighted where to find the right inspiration, how to utilize trend in the process and innovative ways to communicate through visual merchandising.

Schwarzkopf, addressing the science of emotions, cited a recent Springboard Futures/Unity Marketing study reporting 90% of consumers say the total shopping experience — encompassing aspiration, entertainment, discovery and social factors—  is important. She advised retailers and suppliers to pay close attention to a constantly changing consumer dynamic.

“It’s about being in the moment,” Schwarzkopf said, noting research that 4 in 10 shoppers spend more when they feel they’re getting an exceptional experience. “It’s not about what you make them want. It’s what the consumer wants.”

Schwarzkopf cited three primary shopping experience qualities sought by consumers:  Safety, a top priority that values control, balance and nostalgia; Belonging, which taps the importance of human connection and community; and Transcendence, which factors such attributes as responsibility and sustainability.

“It’s no longer good enough to give. You now must do,” Schwarzkopf said.

Trust, she said was chosen as an important purchase influence by 99% of consumers, ahead of price, in a recent survey. “If you are transparent and authentic, you will be important,” she added.

Schwarzkopf emphasized the trust-building value of consistency in brand messaging across physical and digital platforms.

Lamb turned the presentation to the vitality of trend in creating an emotionally fulfilling retail experience. She distinguished between “trend” and “core.” “Trend,” she said progresses along a bell curve with distinct stages of relevance; while “core” is rooted in day-in/day-out stability.

“Core is safe; it is foundational, while trend carries more risk. It is topical and exciting,” Lamb said. “(Trend) has a halo effect that impacts the core items. It is key to establishing a company’s identity. And it differentiates one retailer from the next.”

Lamb advised session attendees to treat trend and core as two pieces of the same pie, noting that retailers should aim to build trend into as much as 35% of their assortments.

Color, Lamb continued, has made a big comeback in home products as an emotional trend factor during the pandemic.  “Consumers will compromise on pattern. They will rarely, if ever, compromise on color,” Lamb said, noting the surge of nature-inspired browns, greens and mineral tones.

Lamb detailed three new design and style trends shaped by lifestyle and behavioral influences.

“Japandi” was described by Lamb as an architecturally inspired minimalism merging pure and calming Japanese and Scandinavian design qualities.

The more mainstream “Cottagecore” is “the heir to “farmhouse,” Lamb said, evoking romantic, pastoral and nostalgic themes that mark an escape from technology and the modern world.

“Contemporary Contrast” balances rounded, bulbous shapes with thin, often “skinny” design elements, Lamb said. “It’s not harsh,” she said, adding the trend embodies simplicity, offering few embellishments while favoring tactile texture over pattern.

Schwarzkopf and Lamb, showcasing retailers in the U.S. and across the globe, identified key visual display objectives aligned to a more emotional shopping experience: create and build around a focal point; optimize underutilized space; incorporate multiple display levels to engage the eyes; tell a story; integrate POP; and create an immersive experience.

“Be where and when it matters,” Schwarzkopf said. “It’s not just about satisfying the consumer. That’s mediocrity. You want to make them happy.”

After a year of unprecedented circumstances that drove unprecedented retail sales gains in home and housewares, Joe Derochowski, vice president and home industry advisor for The NPD Group, encourages the industry to measure success in 2021 by embracing more favorable comparisons against pre-pandemic sales levels of 2019.

Such a view, Derochowski said in his keynote to open the IHA Connect SPRING virtual event, can help keep suppliers and retailers focused on innovations needed to serve high consumer demand that is expected to continue beyond 2021.

Year-over-year retail growth in home products for the first quarter of 2021 is strong compared to sales a year ago before COVID-19 struck, Derochowski said. The second quarter is on track for slight year-over-year growth, possibly to be aided further by federal stimulus payments, he added.

Although NPD expects third- and fourth-quarter home goods sales to come up short of sales during the same periods in 2020, Derochowski said back-half 2021 sales should come in well ahead of comparable 2019 results.

“Always include 2019 if possible when speaking about forecasts,” Derochowski advised. “We’re benchmarking a lot against 2019. If you don’t, you’ll lose the insight.

“There are supply chain issues and pricing and promotion challenges, but if you look at the demand side, we will be up versus 2019,” he continued. “It’s very tricky, but this is the time to innovate— in marketing, branding, operations and new product.”

Derochowski said the home industry, as measured by NPD, grew by some $12 billion to $70 billion during the past 12 months, with an estimated 21% of that growth driven by the shifting circumstances and needs of homebound consumers.

He said every general home industry classification tracked by NPD showed dollar growth in 2020: Home environment (led by air purifiers and vacuum cleaners), +31%; kitchen electrics, +28% in dollars; housewares (led by cookware and cutlery), + 22%; and personal care (led by massagers, hair trimmers and hair clippers), + 9%.

Derochowski also spotlighted across-the-board home textiles growth driven by the rise in home improvement projects and moves to bigger homes (led window treatments, + 30%; bath, +18% and bed, +18%). Growth of kitchen/dining textiles, which advanced by 1%, likely was stunted by the home entertaining decline, he noted.

Derochowski identified several examples of the lifestyle factors that emerged or were amplified during the pandemic to propel home and housewares sales, with working and learning from home at the root of much of the consumer behavioral change. He cited boredom and stress relief; germ prevention; comfort; rising pet ownership; migration of salon services to at-home DIY; the move to bigger homes and rise in home improvement activity; and casualization.

Derochowski spotlighted expanding outdoor and garage living as examples of safety-influenced space transformation that opened new sales opportunities for the home and housewares business.

Regarding at-home cooking and dining preferences elevated by the pandemic, Derochowski highlighted the surge in leftover-friendly, one-dish meals, often made in advance, that help remove stress from day-to-day meal planning and preparation. He noted family bonding inspired by the increase in baking.

Home and housewares growth was shared across retail channels and platforms, notably including brick-and-mortar sales advances by many store operators, Derochowski said.

“When solving consumer needs, there is enough demand that everyone can grow,” he said. “It’s about finding the best way to serve the consumer.”