NEWS & ANALYSIS — What a Tangled Web is Woven: Beyond Announces its Plan to Purchase Back the Digital Assets of "Buy Buy BABY" for $5 Million

Without a scorecard, keeping track of the nuances of baseball can be difficult at best.

Now, some can argue, a similar claim can be made about Salt Lake City, Utah-based Beyond (NYSE:BYON), formerly Overstock.com.

Here's an attempt to untangle the newest "twist" that's been woven within the web known today as Beyond.

Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock.com, Buy Buy BABY, Dream on Me, and Beyond

Let me see if I can pull together a figurative scorecard to sort out the various players and craft a timeline of sorts.

FIRST: Roughly two years ago, Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:BBBY) was a struggling yet going concern.

SECOND: That officially changed on 23 April 2023 when it filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with the intent to temporarily keep "... 360 Bed Bath & Beyond and 120 Buy Buy BABY stores and websites ..." open and operational while it looked for potential suitors to acquire its assets.

THIRD: With its shares then-listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol, OSTK, Overstock.com announced on 28 June 2023 that it had acquired certain Bed Bath & Beyond assets out of bankruptcy for $21.5 million in cash.

FOURTH: Piscataway, New Jersey-based Dream on Me then acquired the digital assets of Buy Buy BABY out of the Bed Bath & Beyond bankruptcy proceedings for $15.5 million in July 2023 with the intent (as reported by DigitalCommerce360), to

• Relaunch the Buy Buy BABY website in November 2023, and then
• Reopen as many as 100 Buy Buy BABY stores starting in the latter part of 2023.

FIFTH: All Bed Bath & Beyond stores were shuttered by 30 July 2023.

SIXTH: Additionally, all Buy Buy BABY stores were closed by the end of summer 2023.

SEVENTH: Overstock.com announced on 23 October 2023 that it was

• Rebranding itself at Beyond (effective 06 November 2023),
• Transitioning to the New York Stock Exchange from the Nasdaq Stock Market, and
• Changing its stock symbol to BYON.

But Wait, There's More

In the 12-month period since its rebranding and switching stock markets, Beyond has gone through massive change, including what can genuinely be described as a near total recasting under the direction of its now Executive Chairman, Marcus Lemonis.

{See our 25 October 2024 report — Roughly Nine Months after Being Named Executive Chairman of Beyond, it's Clear that Marcus Lemonis is the 'Man in Charge' as Beyond Unveils Five Major Announcements / Initiatives in the Past Six Weeks — for a fairly detailed overview of the transitions at Beyond since November 2023.}

Which brings us finally to the announcement Beyond made yesterday morning.

Specifically, Beyond is going back to the future, euphemistically, "... to acquire the global rights of the Buy Buy BABY brand" for $5 million.

Additionally, as outlined in its Form 8-K filed yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Beyond

" ... will also pay a 1.0% revenue share on e-commerce sales and 0.5% on brick-and-mortar store sales generated by the Company, its affiliates, and its licensees and franchisees in connection with the sale of merchandise at Buy Buy Baby branded stores and e-commerce platforms, as well as the sale of Buy Buy Baby branded merchandise at other stores or on other e-commerce platforms, beginning in 2026."

To be clear, the Form 8-K does NOT state what entity or individual will receive the prescribed percentage of Buy Buy BABY revenue starting in 2026, but it only makes sense that the recipient referred to is the former owner of Buy Buy BABY, which is Dream on Me.

Regardless, according to the Beyond news release,

"The purchase price of $5 million includes certain assets, databases, domains, intellectual property, vendor relationships, and content related to Buy Buy BABY."

To explain the anticipated benefits of Beyond's acquisition of the Buy Buy BABY assets, Lemonis is extensively quoted in the acquisition news release in a nearly 400-word-long statement where he outlines three potential opportunities for leveraging Buy Buy BABY to the benefit of Beyond, its shareholders, and its customers.

In summary, these include

1. Extending the impact of Buy Buy BABY through an omnichannel approach of both online and retail operations within the Beyond family of brands;
2. Potentially "tokenizing" some of the Buy Buy BABY digital assets via Beyond's SEC-regulated tZERO platform; and
3. Creating a cradle-to-grave "ledger" via tZERO in a secure digital wallet to " ... record all significant life events, starting from birth records, medical records, and life milestones to educational records, financial products, insurance, and purchases ... (via) ... Salesforce and its Agentforce technology."

The Politis Perspective on Lemonis' Plans to Leverage the Buy Buy BABY Assets Through Beyond

To be honest, Beyond's omnichannel prospects for Buy Buy BABY make tons of sense to me, especially at a mere purchase price of $5 million from Dream on Me.

Conversely, the possibility of tokenizing some Buy Buy BABY assets, let alone ledgerizing "significant life events" (now those are pretty "out there" concepts), although they're not so crazy to be beyond possibility (pun intended).

But they're also really intriguing prospects to someone like myself with 4+ decades in the tech industry.

So ... can Beyond pull this off? TBH, I'm not sure.

Then again, if there's anything I've learned over the past decade of watching Marcus Lemonis from afar — let alone over the past 11+ months since he was named Executive Chairman of Beyond — I would NOT bet against any firm with Lemonis at the helm, either directly or indirectly.

And in the case of Beyond, there is zero question that Lemonis is in charge.

Hence, that's what strikes me as intriguing about Beyond's decision to purchase the digital assets of Buy Buy BABY.

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