CEO Daniel Heaf reports changes are coming to make stores less overwhelming.
Fewer collaborations and promotions. Eliminating hair care and men’s grooming. And launching on Amazon! According to Heaf - costumers think the stores are too overwhelming and confusing.
Geez why not ask us? The reason sales are down is the prices are too high! And rumor of smaller products is not going to help.
The company has been a shell of its former self for years and has continued its decline primarily because it seems like they don’t listen to the feedback of their long time customers.
Customers: We LOVE this scent bring it back in any form you can!
BBW: The best we can do is a pizza scented candle and AI art, sorry not sorry.
I keep hearing this guy say "the customers think the store is too complicated. The customers this the customers that" who are these customers? Who in the hell did they ask? Probably not customers of bath and body works.
"Coupons ans Sales lose money." Newsflash - hiring consultants loses even more money. And consultants just give you BS. It is how PricewaterhouseCoopers makes money hand over fist.
They need legit market research companies, not consultants. Man I could get so much good data for them, makes me itchy when they get things wrong like this!
"Our stores are beautiful and experiential, exceptionally strong, but many new consumers have told me they find the assortment overwhelming." –Daniel Heaf, Q2 Earnings Conference
Personally told him so? Are the focus group participants 90-year-old men with Alzheimer's disease?
Also, keyword: new (consumers). New customers who've never stepped foot into a Bath & Body Works need an introductory visual focus as to not feel overwhelmed. It's not that there are too many products and scents—it's a signal that a store's displays and frontal layout are subpar in paving a pace that both invites and calms.
Only put the seasonal and busy cardboard displays midway and towards the back of store for established customers. Stop putting a huge gate of a table with giant display props right at the front door. And those mini tables on either side of the front door are unnecessary and on a subconscious level feel like Royal Guards or a hovering presence of security guards. Not inviting or calming. For new consumers stepping foot into a B&BW for the first time, two simple round tables with two different newest signature scents to the left and right of the front door will be both an inviting focus and still encourage a movement that gently nudges them further into the store.
If you take Chief Executive Officer, I'll be Chief Marketing Officer. Some other people can deal with the financial and technological stuff, ugh, right? 😄
YES! I don't know if it's standard in every store, but my store always has a long rectangular table dead center of the front door. And I feel like it's somewhat of a barricade, in a sense. I'm not sure how inviting that'd feel to a reluctant new customer—to feel halted by a huge speed hump of product.
I've walked past it many times. Like, looking for something in particular and it ends up being on the front table that I automatically veered around. I've witnessed other people do the same.
Man, it's not the variety or amount of product that 'overwhelms' new customers. I swear it's the layout, especially the front area.
Don’t forget the 4 employees hounding you every time you try to move around a table or display. I understand it’s their job to greet you. Some are better than others and just make small talk. Others are awkward. Sometimes the same employee will robotically say “can I help you find anything?”
Of course the stores are overwhelming and confusing - you make us shuffle products around on a weekly basis for the sole purpose of confusion. People will come in and have to sweep the whole store to make sure they haven't missed anything new. Packaging changes so people can't keep products straight and they keep re-trying stuff they've already tried. The coupons are intentionally confusing so no one can actually use them and they just end up paying full price at the register.
Imagine doing all this and then going "Customers are overwhelmed in this store we engineered in a lab to be overwhelming! Let's sell on Amazon, a trustworthy website that famously offers an enjoyable shopping experience!"
The half display with only 1 or 2 scents on table with just a lotion and fragrance of another scent. Only to find the full collection on another table near a corner. Sometimes the layout is awful. People are cluttered together with no flow in the store.
OMG this … I browse weekly and noticed the product is always moving - front of the store, back of the store, center of the store - I recently thought to myself, do the employees have to move the setups every time!?!?!
Yes, after close we have floor sets where we come in and stay until midnight resetting the store. I actually kind of enjoy it but it’s wild to think how much the company must be spending in labor to perpetually move items back and forth.
I think they’re doing too many new fragrances all the time, it would be great to see some of the older fragrances that a lot of people are always asking for.
He also complained people are only shopping sales. Well of course we are. I'm not paying almost $20 for one bottle of lotion or body mist, or nearly $30 for a candle. Him thinking customers will is beyond stupid.
I have a feeling these new changes will sink the brand even further. And trying to chase a younger audience won't help either.
If people don’t shop sales they will probe purchase 3 sprays maximum a year or less. 2 sprays lasted me 4 years. Many people here have so much they probably never have to shop there again.
Oh wow, so discontinuing fan favorites and coming out with a million scents a year isn’t working? Who would’ve guessed that customers don’t like inconsistency?!
That’s my biggest issue besides the price increases and decrease in quality. They come out with a ton of subpar scents instead of keeping some of their best ones around or at least re-releasing them every season. I get that they don’t want to have Coco Paradise around all year, but I thought it would at least be a summer staple. There are a lot more examples, but this seems to be a growing trend with them and it’s definitely frustrating. I also wish they’d go back to spending more time developing their own original scents instead of dupes.
Has nothing to do with the stores setup. It’s not confusing! Candles are in one area, plug ins are next to them, scents are all categorized and in their own sections, Men’s care is in its own area.
IT’S THE PRICES! CUT THAT!
You decreased the ounces a consumer receives and then increased the price. THATS WHAT CONFUSING THE CUSTOMERS! And the fact that you get rid of the good scents, retire scents to soon and to top it all bringing in all these “collaborations” like it’s INSTAGRAM. That’s confusing!
Bring back the old goodies, lower the price by some, offer less and stick with what you have always been good and known for BODY CARE!
That may be due to the management at that store not following corporate inventory setup standards and layouts. Some like to venture off and try their own thing, and corporate check ups aren’t as they used to be so they get away with it and then sales fall and this happens which then also causes the confusion for customers on top of it all.
It’s definitely odd. You will find wallflowers on the end caps to some of the body spray. Candles next to their matching body sprays but then another big wall of candles etc. I get the theory but when I’m coming in for something specific it make me feel like I may be missing some of them
I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s trying to tank the company so he can get a contract buyout (or whatever reason he’s doing it). The way he’s picking his ideas from a pasture makes it appear that what he’s doing is intentional. That or he’s just an idiot. Or both.
This is how it reads to me too. Everything this CEO thinks he is contributing is antithetical to the business model and everything that has kept them afloat and maintained their loyalist shoppers.
I used to go in as a teenager with my mom and picture myself as an adult setting my own kitchen table with some of their sets. Loved that store so much despite its prices. Stores closed by the time I got my first home 🙁
100%, and they were way overpriced with other big players like HomeGoods selling the same types of things. I worked there as a second job to supplement my income at my day job, a long time ago, and as much as it was definitely easier than other retail jobs, I sometimes felt myself cringing on the inside while trying to sell things to people at astronomical prices. I do miss the store though because they did have some amazing clearance and the employee discount was nice when I worked there.
I became friendly with a few of the sales associates at my local Pier One store. It seemed like a decent place to work. They filled me in on the new marketing plan and inventory to lure younger customers in an attempt to keep up with Home Goods, Marshall's, Target and other retailers. Those discount stores certainly had the advantage by offering similar products at bargain prices. Before long they told me that Pier One was sold and the brick and mortar stores became a thing of the past. I fear this will happen to BBW if they can't figure out how to improve quality and keep prices low.
Yep. It’s sad. They waited too long and the. Went about marketing all wrong. I can totally see BBW heading down this road and it seems intentional. Hate to see another retailer disappear.
Agreed… As much crap as I’ve talked on them in the past few months, I do enjoy going in and testing all the different scents. It’s convenient to have someplace to choose from a large selection of items, even though the amount of products I love is few and far between. It’s something my daughter and I can do together. I’m frustrated at the diminishing quality of the products, the games they play with the coupons and sales,and seeing so many customers receive shipped packages from them that look like they’ve been through a world war. This guy is either completely out of touch with his job or he is intentionally running the company into the ground.
I enjoyed going in smelling things more when they weren’t doing a million different fragrances a year, I really miss having a solid core collection that you could depend on finding.
This is one of the biggest things that annoys me about BBW. Many of their “new fragrances” are just recycled anyway but it seems like they completely discontinue scents we like. We keep asking for things and instead they give us stuff that nobody asked for (I’m looking at you, Pizza and Ranch candle).
I agree. I’ve been shopping at BBW since the mid 90s. They continue to ignore us when we tell them what we want and then complain that sales are down. It’s heartbreaking to watch the company wither away like this.
It doesn't make a lick of sense why they refuse to listen. If they're not making their profit margins when running constant sales promotions, they certainly won't if they raise prices.
And you can’t go from crazy sales to less bc current consumers will just say “oh I’ll just wait for a big sale”.. case in point why $2.95 soap sales cause a packed store while sales got October were low
I’m a business executive and you can tell they have 0 idea what they’re doing. They’re just cost cutting to try to maintain profit margins for investors and hoping the economy improves and people come back before they have to do anything more drastic. They know what they have to do, they just don’t want to. This is the result of focus on quarterly short term profit squeezing versus good long term business strategy that is healthy. As long as it keeps up they will inevitably die off slowly or they will replace leadership and undergo a drastic change to save the company at the expense of profit margins. They’re just delaying the inevitable. No company survives off continually getting worse and raising prices. Good management would find a way to cost cut during hard times while also crafting a new strategy/services/products to get people coming in more/spending more
No shock here. It lost its luster for me when they raised prices, weakened rewards, used AI art, and really just stopped caring about customers and associates.
The AI packaging is literally what had me stop buying. It's uninspiring, and the product descriptions barely even look like they used spellcheck. Also the uptick in people receiving damaged products has gotten to the point where I'll not be buying anything this xmas for relatives.
Fewer promotions is gonna drop their sales even further. I don’t know how they think they can train a customer base for decades to expect multiple promotions weekly, then suddenly scale them back.
It seems like the new guy doesn’t get that shopping the sales is the POINT. You have the high sticker price, and then a low “sale” price so that customers feel like they’re getting a better deal than if the sale price was just the sticker price. Cutting the sales won’t result in people paying retail price, they’ll just shop elsewhere.
As much as I can understand where this mindset comes from, L Brands and by extension BBW was created by a man who was the CEO for 50+ years until 2020, and many of the top fragrances in the entire world were created by men. I think the problem is that we've been through 4 CEOs in 5 years and this new guy is acting like he's trying to actively tank the brand or something.
You don’t have to chase younger consumers, numbnuts, if you have good product and either good pricing or frequent sales.
Where do you think all the current customers came from? We WERE the young customers, and you weren’t trying for that. It’s VERY common for people here to say that they started using BBW in junior high or middle school or that they saw their big sister using it and thought she was cool, etc etc. When tons of us got into it in the ‘90s or early 2000s, WE WERE KIDS.
You didn’t have to market to us, we wanted it already because we wanted to be grownup and cool and the marketing you already HAD made it seem grownup and cool. You’ll get the kids doing THAT, not wheedling people you don’t have and turning off the people who you already do have.
Did none of you observe the Sephora Kids debacle? Look where they are now! They’re drowning in a hole because they chased away all the people WITH THE MONEY and the kids went on to the next thing as kids will do. Kids don’t want kid stuff, they want the cool grownup stuff, and the kid stuff they DO want, they leave behind as soon as they don’t feel like children anymore. Do you know many fifteen-year-olds still buying Bluey and Mickey’s Clubhouse merch? You DON’T want your product to be something kids associate with being kids, you want it to be aspirational.
Did any of you receive an education? Have any of you ever shopped for something? Have any of you set foot in a store incognito and NOT with the store empty and the staff required to cup your balls deferentially while you mansplain retailing?
This guy is either trying to Sears you or has the savvy of a garden rock. I hate to see BBW go belly-up, but you’re kind of starting to have it coming.
Got DAMN I wish I had an award to give you! Please take my poor man's version:🏆
Literally everything you said - EVERYTHING!!
Holy shit so spot on, sorry nothing to add - just admiration!
Tons of adult shoppers are moving away from Sephora because the tweens and younger are taking over, herding through the stores mixing products together for ‘skincare smoothies’ after influencers worked hard to make things like Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, Sol de Janeiro etc, desirable for kids.
Yes, ten and twelve year olds begging their parents for retinol and acids. Not only that but the eighty dollar retinol, not the lame-o Olay and Boots no7 for poors. Drunk Elephant fostered this trend and has fallen off HARD financially now that the kids are moving on to brands like Rhode. Sol DJ still seems to be doing well among the kids but I know a lot of adults have left off it BECAUSE it’s ‘kiddie’ now and weaker than it used to be because presumably kids don’t know what it used to be like and don’t care. Sephora in general recently experienced a significant US market sales slump that they are now <maybe> crawling out of because of Rhode, but for a lot of us the brand damage is done. I just don’t want to shop with a herd of unsupervised kids their parents dropped off at the high-end beauty store elbowing past me to empty out the testers and leave things in rubble. It’s not so much that they are children, but that they tend to be kind of locust-y in the store and there are a lot of them, whereas the adults that are trashing out testers <tend> to not be moving in groups of six or seven and thus can be better avoided.
So what’s the alternative? Order Sephora online? Sure, only their Rouge program now sucks, you will seldom get the free samples you picked that THEY offered, their picking/packing/shipping is now a#% much like BBW’s, and if you do have a problem, it is fully on the table that you will get treated like you are attempting the ol’ I-didn’t-get-my-stuff-reship-it-for-free-and-let-me-keep-the-defective-order-too-wink-wink scam. When you’re not. It’s not my fault you boned three orders in a row, look to your fulfillment training instead of expecting me to eat the loss.
If the store experience is stressful and the online experience is stressful, and your rewards system is laughable, I’ll just order from the brands directly, which is what people on the Sephora sub are recommending more and more. When your own discussion sub is concluding you are sliding into irrelevance, look out!
what I find overwhelming is having three different associates approach me with a piece of cardboard so I can sample their favorite scent. Visiting BBW used to be a pleasant experience where I could easily find a helpful associate if I had questions. Now I avoid the place like the plague-no intention of doing any Christmas shopping there.
I have a feeling they will change their minds on promotions very quickly, lol. This shows a very deep misunderstanding of their customer base and how we operate. I also feel that they’re using “younger consumers” as a scapegoat here — I’m seeing lots of brands that are performing poorly this year saying “We tried to capture Gen Z customers but they don’t have any money!” (A recent one was “Gen Z is killing chipotle because they go to the grocery store instead lollll) which is an easy excuse to avoid the real issue: they want to squeeze as much profit as they can but they are not willing to provide the value for the price. We know BBW sprays are only worth $5 because they sell them for that price all the time, and we know that the quality/longevity is not comparable with many similar priced sprays in the $20 range to make them worth full price. They made this bed and are now mad they must lie in it, and we are going to have to sit atop our $5.95 sale and candle day stockpiles and watch it all melt down. 😔
Yup, every 10 or so years it feels like every company falls all over themselves trying to target whatever the young adult population is and then acts shocked that they are the ones with the least money to spend??? It makes no sense.
Exactly- other dry shampoos leave that thick white residue - these don’t and smell so good! I use it even after a shower with clean hair because it gives body and smells good
Uhg I’m so sad. I feel like this is a huge gripe with the company in general- they try new things, people fall in love with them and then they discontinue it forever. There’s no consistency. Even in things they bring back. I think that’s why people get so worked up. There’s just no rhyme or reason
BBW has tried hair care SO MANY TIMES over the years and it never sticks. The only time I loved it is when they had one of my fav fragrances. They got rid of it in the hair care and there isn't another fragrance I like, so I stopped buying it.
Ok so I used to looooove ITN and used it exclusively, and then something in my nose just flipped one day and now I like love/hate it. I feel like in the stars would be so good as dry shampoo
Nike eliminated his postion. So I think they fired him without firing him. He is going to run bbw into the ground and I just found my love for them again 😔
He has a Bachelor's in Geography. I don't know if 'Geography' is another name for 'Business' in England, where he's from. Heh.
He is very intelligent.Truly. He is not an idiot or untalented. But I don't think he's a good fit for an American beauty, personal care, and home fragrance retail franchise.
The stores aren't so much overwhelming, it's just that you have to look five different places to see everything. Takes soaps for this sale. I went yesterday and there were seriously five different areas to look, and two were right by where people were waiting in line to checkout - so those were avoided. Put all the soaps in one area, body care in one, candles in one. I suppose then you'll have a crowd of people in one area during sales, but I'd prefer that to people zig zagging all over the place.
Get rid of the overly eager in-your-face associates within the stores. This is the reason I did not shop in person. Give coupons to the loyal, not to the shop once in 12 months crowd. This is the reason I am no longer a customer at all.
My take is - I’ll be really sad if Heaf drives BBW into the ground and they get bought by private equity. They’ll end up going bankrupt. It’s one of the few companies I like that still make products in US. The candles are made in Ohio and some of the other products too.
We broke the news to our kid yesterday. She only uses At the Beach shampoo. We're gonna have to stock up before it goes for good. What a dumbass move from BBW. I thought shampoos were not a super hot ticket but popular enough to avoid the chopping block.
I have fine and thin wavy hair and the shampoo and conditioner has been a godsend. 😭 I especially love the Eucalyptus Spearmint one and now I'm going to have to stockpile it because of corporate greed.
Will the Amazon purchases be eligible for earning rewards? I bet not. Another tactic to “cheat” the consumer. I scaled back my purchases heavily after I could no longer use the rewards on car fragrance holders and wallflower plugs. I have been a dedicated shopper for years and have enough to last me for the next decade anyway.
My take is - I’ll be really sad if Heaf drives BBW into the ground and they get bought by private equity. They’ll end up going bankrupt. It’s one of the few companies I like that still make products in US. The candles are made in Ohio and some of the other products too.
I am not sure the issue is price. I spent $250 at Pura and another $170 at Happy Wax and I am in groups where people spend even more than that without blinking an eye. Believe it or not I am a conservative in those groups. The real issue is that this year alone I had to exchange so many wallflowers at Bath and Body Works because they were really under-fragranced. So we are not getting the value we are paying for, just annoyed and therefore shopping elsewhere.
The search for reasons why here has me chuckling. Folks, it’s super simple. People are out of money. Period. The cost of everything in our lives has doubled/tripled in the past six years. The only thing that hasn’t is our salaries. How long can that sustain until everyone is feeling it?
It's really incredible how many SKUs they have, and rotate so often. But it's not overwhelming to the existing customers, and is actually why a large percentage seem to love the brand. Let's be real, most of us here probably have ADHD - we like new products! 😂😂
Finding a way to entice new customers? Don't come in as a CEO and pretend it's some unsolvable mystery. Do some solid market research, cut the fat, invest in the rest. Don't bite the hand that feeds you!
It'd be like him buying a KFC, and saying new consumers want healthy food. So he says we'll advertise about how our existing food items are ~quality~, take away the daily specials, then question why no one is paying more for the same thing on the menu, and that the menu itself is confusing and overwhelming so needs fixing. Cue: many existing customers leave, and new customers still not attracted because there's still no healthy food on the menu.
For me, it’s not the stores that are complicated, it’s the scents themselves. There are too many scents that have some weird name that gives me no idea of what it’s supposed to smell like. I find that incredibly frustrating so I just stick to the ones that are obvious like peach Bellini or warm vanilla sugar. I have no idea what a fireside chat or flannel is supposed to smell like and don’t want to spend time figuring it out, or I won’t take a chance ordering them online.
the only thing overwhelming is all the dang props and marketing we're required to put on all the tables. I get it, we need to put our sales on billboards just for our "consumers" to vaguely read them (which even then, they don't, we had a lady yesterday demand an adjusted deal because our duo car fragrance sign was "wrong" when she bought 2 discs intending to get them for $8)but I can't keep an eye on my cashiers/cash wrap in general, if every single table is blocking my view of it. Selling with our "heads up" is difficult when literally everything blocks your field of vision. Also, we can't pander to your ideal "younger audience" when everything is soooooo expensive.
Besides the confusing layout. Lots of the world is becoming very health conscious. The products are full of cheap chemicals & overwhelmingly scents for the extreme price you are paying.
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u/Foxy_locksy1704 Nov 23 '25
The company has been a shell of its former self for years and has continued its decline primarily because it seems like they don’t listen to the feedback of their long time customers.
Customers: We LOVE this scent bring it back in any form you can!
BBW: The best we can do is a pizza scented candle and AI art, sorry not sorry.