Bed, Bath and Beyond 2015 Annual Report Download - page 4

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Dear Fellow Shareholders and Beyond:
We are pleased to have completed another successful year at Bed Bath & Beyond. During fiscal 2015 we made steady
progress on our strategic initiatives which included significant investments in our business to further strengthen our foundation
for future growth.
At the same time, we remained vigilant in our mission to:
• To do more for and with our customers wherever, whenever and however they wish to interact with us;
• To provide our customers a seamless experience whether they interact with us in a store, through one of our contact
centers, on a desktop, tablet, smartphone or through social media; and
• To be viewed as the expert for the home, including the accompanying life stages that make a house a home—such as
getting married, having a baby, transitioning to college, and moving to a new residence, and to become the destination
for our customer’s needs and wants as they express their life interests and travel through their life stages; all through the
expanding and differentiated products, services and solutions we offer.
As the retail environment continues to change dramatically and advancing technologies transform the way consumers shop for
merchandise both online and in-store, we continue to challenge ourselves to better understand and satisfy our customers and
in turn, build a better company. While these investments currently place pressure on our operating profit, we believe that our
strong balance sheet and cash flows give us the capacity to make significant investments in our future. We are confident that
this is an opportune time for us to drive change throughout our organization to capitalize on these new technologies and to
strengthen our position as a world-class omnichannel retailer.
Our transformation over the past several years has been incredible. The steps we’ve taken to transform our business have
been supported by key initiatives in areas such as information technology, analytics, pricing, merchandising, marketing,
customer service, fulfillment and real estate.
In recalling the old cliché, you can’t know where you are going until you know where you have been, below is an update on our
progress.
Over the past few years, we have:
• Upgraded or replaced the majority of our customer-facing and back-end systems and introduced new systems to enable
us to utilize new technology while also enhancing the security and redundancy of our systems.
• Enhanced the functionality, general search and navigation features across our customer-facing digital channels so that
customers can find what they are looking for more quickly and efficiently, as well as enabled the sale of personalized
product, Vendor Direct to Consumer items, and product that utilizes Less-Than-Truckload shipping, such as furniture.
• Created new services and experiences for our customers such as online appointment scheduling for registry, and a new
virtual coupon wallet called My Offers, which organizes and stores print and digital coupons so customers can access
and redeem them conveniently online or in-store.
• Deployed new systems, equipment and increased the bandwidth in our stores to enable our associates to be more
productive and to provide a more personalized customer experience.
• Continued development of a new Point-of-Sale system, which will begin piloting in fiscal 2016.
• Built a structured analytics department with robust quantitative capabilities to help drive enhanced performance and gain
deep insights into how our customers interact with us across all our concepts, channels and countries in which we
operate.
• Created a pricing team and put new systems in place to better track competitor pricing to maintain our competitive
position within the market.
• Rolled out additional health & beauty care, baby, food and beverage specialty departments within our stores.
• Introduced new product categories, such as mattresses, jewelry and furniture, and significantly expanded our assortment
in these and other categories.
• Begun to implement a new marketing campaign management system to better target our customers and drive
personalization, and began to utilize sophisticated predictive modeling to drive a more customer-centric marketing
strategy.
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