Hi, everybody.
Welcome to Women in Retail Talks, the podcast where C-suite executive women in the retail space share their stories of professional growth leadership development, personal journeys and more.
I'm Melissa Campanelli, the co-founder of the Women in Retail Leadership Circle, a membership-based community of executive women at leading retailers and brands.
In today's episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Amy Sullivan, the CEO of the Brandhouse Collective.
In her role, Amy has led the company's transformation into a multi-brand retail operator and oversaw the reinvention of legacy brands like Bed Bath & Beyond and Bye Bye Baby.
Amy also spearheaded the opening of the first Bed Bath & Beyond home store in Nashville, which was a key step in the company's plans to expand its brick and mortar presence.
Previously, Amy served as CEO of Kirkland's, where she revitalized merchandising and marketing strategies.
She's also a great friend of the Women in Retail Leadership Circle.
So welcome, Amy.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Yes, it's been a while since we connected, so I'm so excited to catch up and to learn all about what you've been working on, which is a lot.
So let's just jump right in.
I know that, as I mentioned, the Brandhaus Collective recently became the exclusive operator for Bed Bath & Beyond's brick and mortar stores.
Can you just tell us a little bit about the partnership, how that all kind of came together?
Sure.
Yeah, so we have been a key partner to Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., which is the IP owner of Bed Bath & Beyond, Bye Bye Baby, and Overstock.
Just a little over a year ago, I think, is when we first started conversations with that organization.
And honestly, you know they have a really strong e-commerce business and I think, as you hear many retailers talking today, omnichannel or unified commerce is really the best way to win with the consumer.
And so they reached out to us last fall and we began conversations about just the strengths of both the infrastructure of the Kirkland's business.
The team here at Kirkland's
And we really found that we were a good kind of yin and yang of one another, if you think about the two companies.
And so Kirkland's had been around.
Next year is 60 years for the Kirkland's brand and a really strong product and merchant focus, customer focus and a brick and mortar strength that the Beyond team did not have, being an e-commerce only business.
And so we started the partnership both with becoming the exclusive licensee for them, for any of their brands, to be able to bring to life the brick and mortar experience, operate those stores and really benefit from the revenue growth that those brands could bring to our business.
While, at the same time, you know, we have access to their licenses, we have access to their customer database and things that could help us really get the ball moving faster.
That makes a lot of sense.
I mean it's great that you were able to come up with the sort of the plan and that it all worked together.
I mean, that's really exciting.
Yeah, I think there's interesting partnerships out there where you know companies coming together as an IP company and an operating company and really putting two different skill sets together really creates kind of the magic of omni-channel retail.
And so that's really the vision that we had for why to partner.
Makes sense.
The Nashville store I mentioned, I think you're based out there in Nashville, correct?
We are, yes.
That was a huge success.
I saw it all over social media.
Why do you think that it connected so strongly with customers and prospects, everybody?
Yeah, I would say, you know, for us, it was such an exciting moment.
And we chose Nashville largely because, as you said, we're based here in Nashville.
And when you're in the middle of any transformational project, and certainly one as big as revitalizing Bed Bath & Beyond, which is a brand that every consumer out there knows, We wanted it to be in our backyard.
And I'm a merchant through and through and I wanted it to be right here with me so that we could touch and feel every product, interact with the customer and really use it as sort of the incubator for how we want to scale the brand as we move forward.
And so location was honestly solely picked because of where we are.
What I would tell you about those initial reads and the initial success is honestly, it was such a great gut validation of the brand.
The affinity for the brand, the love for the brand came out loud and clear.
We had a ton of national media press, none of which I can actually even take credit for.
It was all earned media for the power of the brand.
And so we had the Today Show here with us on our grand opening day, live from the store.
And those things were people reaching out and wanting to know the story of Bed Bath & Beyond.
And so that in itself, I think, was really what has given us the confidence to say OK, there's something here and we need to ride this momentum to really bring this brand back, because consumers are missing it.
And the grand opening day.
We had a line out the door that was started building two hours before the store opened.
Wow.
Yeah, we gave out the blue coupon that we all know and love and remember taking selfies with it when they came into the store.
We did a couple of social media contests and we're honoring old coupons.
So, as you will remember from Bed Bath, even though they had an expiration date on it and the little tribal knowledge was they didn't really expire
And so the oldest one I've received so far is from 2008.
Oh my goodness.
It's just a fun, nostalgic sort of rebirth of a brand that we're just at the beginning of the story.
But for me the, The love that people showed for the brand from day one and those results have really continued to perform as we've gotten further and further away from that grand opening really signifies that there's a love for the brand and a miss in the marketplace, I think, for someone to really have a new, fun retail story.
We need good news in retail right now.
Exactly.
Exactly.
That's why I was so excited to talk to you.
And I should have asked this, but when did the store launch in Nashville?
It opened on August 8th, I believe was the date.
And so we're almost two months in and learning something new every day.
For those of us that have been in retail for a long time, buying for one store is so much harder than buying for 300 stores, because I'm buying from available inventory versus really being able to get ahead of the buys.
And so you know we have gaps in our assortment every day because things surprise us.
But it's been open about two months and we are moving quickly towards accelerating the store count.
We'll actually have six open by mid-November.
Oh, wow.
Great.
And just to be clear, the store is called Bed Bath & Beyond or is it Bed Bath & Beyond Home?
Or I just want to make sure it's clear for the audience.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it is Bed Bath & Beyond Home.
And the reason for that descriptor around the brand is really if you think about the Kirkland's business from the past and Kirkland's is really a home decor and home furnishings retailer as well as the legacy categories that everyone knows bed bath for which is predominantly bedroom bathroom and kitchen we felt like there was a potential marriage of the two to say how can we mostly go into what people remember of bed bath and beyond but how can we preserve Honestly, some of the DNA that the Kirkland's customer loves and at the same time satisfy the customer coming to Bed Bath & Beyond for every corner of her home.
When Bed Bath was open before, they dabbled in decor, but it wasn't a huge part of their business.
And so if you walk in the store today, it's about a 50-50 split.
I would say as we grow the business, you'll find more.
The bed, bath and kitchen categories will continue to grow and that'll take over about 75 of the store.
But the Kirkland's decor piece of it which is seasonally relevant decor chairs furniture pillow, things like that has gotten a huge lift.
And so I think the curation and having that one-stop shop is resonating with her.
So we'll continue to lean into that descriptor of home for these smaller format stores.
As we grow, the store count.
Yep.
That's so cool.
It's like we were saying, you know, sort of finding a marriage between two brands and help lift each other up.
Yeah.
I did want to ask you a little bit about the curation and assortment.
I mean, how how do you decide what makes it onto the shelves?
Do you use data, or is it mostly?
I'm sure you use data, but you know what are.
Can you just kind of give us some insights into that?
Yeah, for sure.
I think you know we we started on this journey recognizing that the legacy Bed, Bath and Beyond stores were 25 to 40000 square feet.
The stores that we're talking about now are seven or 8,000 square feet.
And so A lot of data from the past, data from the Kirkland's past, as well as just continuing to use this Nashville market as a test and learn to understand how we grow or even reduce some of those categories over time.
I'll tell you, we did a employee soft opening about a week before the actual grand opening.
And we learned so much from that one day of engaging with our employees and their family that we wrote 80 new items the very next day and had them in stock for the actual grand opening.
And so we are using data, but I would say we're moving at the speed of lightning right now to really get in there and talk to the customer on a regular basis and ask her why she came in.
Why did the sign on the door make you come in?
And what were you looking for today?
To make sure that we're evolving the assortment so that when we go from one store to six stores, to 200 stores, that we've better plotted what that assortment mix should be.
So it's that perfect, you know, art and science.
I was just going to say.
But there's data driven too.
Yep, yep, yep.
And one more question before we move on to some leadership questions.
We were talking about how the Bed Bath Beyond customer is so dedicated and it obviously has a lega, cy.
But how do you kind of honor that while still innovating for new shoppers or new folks?
You know, maybe Gen X or, I'm sorry, Gen Z, that might not be that aware.
Yeah, no, I think that's a good problem to solve too.
And honestly, what we've seen so far the customers coming in it is that tried and true.
You know bed, bath and beyond lover.
That's really returned to the business.
And if you think about what made Bed Bath & Beyond and honestly even Bye Bye Baby successful in its best years is it's about all the moments in life.
And so we are sitting in a moment where the brand has been gone from brick and mortar for a few years.
And so we probably missed three four, five years of that.
Back to college experience with new college grads or college students.
And I think that's the moment where we wanna really chase getting a new customer in.
And so-
My goal is to think through we've got, you know, the mothers and the grandmothers and the parents that are coming into the business now, but I think we've got a really interesting moment, as we cross into 2026, to really try to dominate that back to campus business.
And that becomes a new entry point for the brand.
The other things that we're re-imagining right now is the registry program, and what should that look like?
A lot of new players have come into the mix in that and a lot of brands are outsourcing that to my registry, the knot, other places like that.
And while we want to play in those, we do think there's something unique that we should build internally into the brand to make that gift giving slash, gift list experience something that comes to life in brick and mortar.
And so I think that's another moment to start to introduce a little bit of a younger customer into the brand through, you know, baby registry, gift registry, wedding registry, those sorts of things.
So we've got a few things in the pipeline that I would say are the introductions to the brand for that next generation.
And that'll be important.
I mean, this is a brand that over time, whenever you got introduced to the brand, they did a really good job for many, many years of keeping the customers sticky and inside the brand.
And that's what we want to continue to solve too.
Amazing.
I love that.
I love that idea of registry.
That's such a great idea.
So I just want to lean in a little bit to leadership, since that's such a big part of women in retail.
You're the CEO.
You've had leadership positions in the past.
Can you talk about some core values that maybe guide the way you lead your teams or how you motivate and lead your teams?
It's such an important topic nowadays, as we were saying, with retail having so many challenges.
Yeah.
I would say honestly for me and This sounds like an easy statement to say but I can't be the smartest person in the room or the smartest person at a table.
And so I think it's my job, for both myself and for each of my key leaders at the table, to make sure we're constantly hiring people that fill gaps.
And so I really operate under the premise that any idea should be considered.
And honestly, that's what's kept me at this organization.
I joined Kirkland's gosh 12 or 13 years ago after predominantly being in fast fashion and kind of moving around a lot in my career, chasing growth.
And when I got to a company this size, I really, for the first time ever, felt like okay, I have a voice.
I can actually go to the CEO at the time and share an idea and it will get heard.
And so that part of the culture, even as we go from a smaller company like Kirkland's to likely, where we're headed as a multi-brand organization, I don't want to lose that, because I think the best ideas come from.
Most of the time you'll hear me say all the answers are found in the stores, which I truly believe.
Our store leaders are the ones that are hearing the feedback in the moment, all the time.
But I also think that everyone that's engaged with how we're running the business might think of a new idea from an experience they had at a different retailer or experience they had in our stores.
And so I really want to continue to cultivate a culture of that everyone has a voice that can be heard, and that everyone is okay saying here's the three things I'm good at, but here's the three things I'm not an expert at.
And so we need to find one, two or three people to fill those gaps that we have on the team and just bring smart people to the table.
We want to be part of the solution.
Yeah, I hear that so many times from leaders.
It's really about the team and finding people that maybe can complement your skills with different skills.
They might be better out than you are.
Totally.
I mean I tell sort of you know, having been a merchant my whole career and I'm a big believer in merchants path to the CEO seat, because I think it helps to keep product and the customer sort of at the center of a retail brand.
And I tell my merchants all the time I would love nothing more than a line outside my door of five people that want this job, because someone needs to take it after me, because I need to be able to go do the next thing, you know.
And so I really want to build a culture where people have an energy for growth, because I think that's the way the company thrives.
Yep, totally.
Love that.
Wanted to talk a little bit about transformations in retail and your leadership around that.
I feel like every retailer is going through a transformation right now of some sort.
So what can you share with our audience about taking on the challenge of reinventing a brand or leadership?
Lessons that stood out to you for folks that are trying to go through transformations right now?
Yeah gosh, I think it takes.
Just I was talking to my CFO in the hall before I walked in here to get on this podcast with you.
And I was like, maybe we're a little bit crazy.
Maybe that's why we like doing those, those of us that have been in retail our whole lives.
But I think if you crave the constant sort of change and evolution of something, you're sort of a natural fit, I think, for transformation.
You know, those of us that get bored easy and want to see like, what if we did it this way?
Or what if we did it that way?
You have to be really curious.
And what I tell my team all the time is if we're not failing at 50 of what we're doing, we're not trying enough new things.
And so I think there's that balance of risk reward.
That is a really true statement that you've got to try all the hard things and you've got to screw up 10 times before we figure out the solution.
And it's why you have to take a metered approach to find a store or a group of stores where you use those as your lab or your incubator and really try all the ideas and decide what worked and what didn't work.
And I think being honest about what isn't working in the business and not shying away from that.
And so I'm a big believer that healthy debates and good arguments solve a lot of problems in business.
And so I want people, like I said before that you know feel like they have a voice at the table, but also feel like they can challenge me, they can challenge their peers.
And I think that's really the only way that you actually break through in transformation is to really challenge every day the way you guys are looking at the business, so that something new comes from that.
And not be afraid of it.
You know, you said like not be fearful, don't be afraid to make mistakes, not be afraid to try things.
That's the only way you're going to get anything solved, it sounds like.
I'm going to wrap it up now with just one question, which is what are you most looking forward to?
We're heading into the end of the year, the end of the quarter.
What are you looking at for holiday?
What are you looking forward to in general?
Yeah.
In your position?
Yeah.
I would say as I think about, I mean, we're on a really exciting path.
And the energy in our building right now is full of optimism and sort of curiosity about what this could become for our organization and for retail and for team members here.
And speaking specifically to the DNA of our business history at Kirkland's, we've always been a highly seasonal holiday-driven vendor and retailer.
And so I would say that the learning opportunity that we have this holiday season to try to balance how do you bring Bed Bath & Beyond to life in a very seasonally led historic business at Kirkland's.
There's just so much for us to learn this holiday season of how much can you pull back on Christmas and how much can you rely on bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.
So I think I'm most excited about what we have to learn.
I would say the other thing that I am just through the moon excited about is to bring back Bye, Bye Baby.
And so we haven't announced anything officially yet.
We are still in the building phases of that, but expect one to open in 2026.
And I think that opportunity to me speaks to such a white space out there in the market.
There's plenty of people you know Target does a good job Walmart Amazon Baby's, RS is coming back and Kohl's, but there's not a destination for it.
And as a mom and I know many of the listeners here are working moms I remember fondly going into that store and feeling like oh, I can accomplish everything I need to accomplish in the one hour gap I have between meetings today.
And so I really want to solve to that for the modern parents.
And think about how we really bring another brand to life next year.
And so both the learnings we're going to get out of our initial pilots for Bed Bath, as well as the building of the design and the strategy of Bye Bye Baby is top of my list for what we'll be focused on for the rest of the year.
Wow, that's so exciting.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about Bye Bye Baby because I know that's another one of the brands.
But I remember, as a parent, you know, being really impressed with Bye, Bye Baby and definitely utilizing it.
I used to go to the one in new york city, so that's going to be really exciting.
Well amy, it's been so great chatting with you and learning.
I'm so.
I feel like i learned so much.
I wasn't sure what was going on, but i feel like i have a great understanding now and and it's so great to hear from you and it's so inspiring to hear what you guys are doing and your leadership journey.
It's been so exciting.
So, thank you so much, thanks for taking the time, for being a part of our community, for everything.
Thank you so much.
I've loved it.
Have a great holiday season.
Thanks for listening.
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