Bed Bath & Beyond is back, this time as an online retailer

NEW YORK (AP) — Overstock has officially relaunched the Bed Bath & Beyond domain online Tuesday in the U.S., after acquiring the bankrupt retail chain’s intellectual property assets for $21.5 million last month.

The online retailer Overstock.com said in late June that it was dumping its name online and it will become Bed & Bath & Beyond, which declared bankruptcy earlier this year. The name change was made in Canada on June 29, but at the time the Midvale, Utah-based company didn’t specify a date for the U.S. relaunch.

Overstock.com’s CEO Jonathan Johnson told The Associated Press in a phone interview last week that the relaunch in Canada has “run without a hitch.” The company has added roughly 600,000 bed and bath items since its bid for the retailer became public last month, Johnson said.

The company has still not made any decisions on a corporate name, he said.

Johnson had said that the name change was necessary because Overstock still confuses some customers and suppliers who thought it was a liquidator. That’s how it got its start in 1999. It transformed in 2004 into a general merchandise retailer, selling a wide variety of items. In 2021, Overstock fine-tuned its strategy to focus on furniture and home decor, getting rid of items like clothing.