Calculated Chaos: Examining the Brilliant Strategy Behind Bed Bath & Beyond

Bed Bath & Beyond's (BB&B) merchandising concept — a massive space offering a plethora of products — is known in the retail world as "big box." It's the opposite approach of carefully curated home stores like Williams-Sonoma and Crate and Barrel, but was widely popular when BB&B first hit the market. Toys"R"Us was the first retailer to adopt this "category-killer strategy," explains retail analyst Warren Shoulberg. In the pre-e-commerce era, retailers wanted to keep shoppers in stores by offering them anything and everything.