Pros
If you’re coming out of college and are interested in Corporate Retail Buying or Planning at all, Bed Bath will be a great experience for a few years. You’ll learn the basics of retail math, the ins and outs of vendor negotiations, and the product life cycle in general. The training is consistent cross-functionally which makes it easier to transfer knowledge if you move departments or job positions.
Cons
The company lacks a cultural identity at headquarters, which is especially disappointing given the company’s popularity in pop culture. Given its customer base, Bed Bath should be at the forefront of workplace matters like Maternity and Paternity Leave and the dismantling of the ‘Boys Club.’ It is being crippled by office politics in lieu of any kind of framework in place for career progression. Associates get told they are x-th in line for a promotion, there is nothing but vagueness surrounding the promotion or lateral move process, with words like ‘buyers intuition’ getting tossed around a lot. The business review process is tedious and inefficient. More time and energy is spent cleaning and setting up the style-out area with extraneous labeling than actually making product decisions, procuring samples and analyzing sales data. This attempt to make it look nice for Leadership team members instead of addressing the true shortcomings and datedness of our fixtures is just hurting sales and holding the company back from a more modern look. If a display looks bad and is difficult to set up in our mock store area, chances are it is the same and even worse for the stores. We shouldn’t be hiding that layer of dust from the President, we should be transparent in order to work toward a solution together. If you’re at the Assistant Level, you will likely not be allowed to attend trade shows outside of NYC, citing costs as the issue or general ‘unfairness’ to the other Assistants who may not be on your level. If you work for a particularly traditional Buyer, they will stop you from even attending internal meetings where Senior Leadership is present. But at the same time, you’ll see field partners, for example, attending the national tradeshows in your place, when they are not responsible for product decision making. As an Assistant, you’ll often find yourself left out of important conversations that could provide the knowledge base for future advancements. In this sense, the company sets up many of its associates to fail.