Hope you didn’t toss all your old Bed Bath & Beyond coupons when the company went bust a few years ago. New owners have since resuscitated the retailer, reopened stores and revived the coupon – and now one of those coupons could help you get a lot more than just 20% off your purchase.
Bed Bath & Beyond has announced the launch of a 21-day “Legendary Coupon Hunt” event, with the goal of finding “the oldest surviving Bed Bath & Beyond coupon in America.” An accompanying sweepstakes will offer 150 shoppers a chance to win their share of $55,000 in gift cards, with one lucky winner scoring a $100,000 “home transformation” to remodel their house and furnish it with items from, naturally, Bed Bath & Beyond.
From now through July 13, shoppers are invited to dig through their junk drawers and glove compartments to find the most vintage Bed Bath & Beyond coupon they can and bring it to a Bed Bath & Beyond or Kirkland’s Home store. “Expired? Faded? Decades old? It doesn’t matter,” the retailer explained. “Every coupon will be honored and every coupon becomes an entry into one of the biggest customer events in company history.”
The original Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt and shuttered all of its stores back in 2023, finally assigning an unequivocal expiration date to its famously ubiquitous coupons that “never expired.” But true fans “tucked them into purses, filing cabinets, cookbooks and memory boxes because they believed they would be valuable someday,” Bed Bath & Beyond president Amy Sullivan said. “We think they were right.”
The retailer unexpectedly came back to life months after its last store closed. Overstock.com bought the Bed Bath & Beyond brand name at its bankruptcy auction and revived it, first as an online-only site, and later as a physical retailer after the company also acquired The Container Store and Kirkland’s.
When the first four Bed Bath & Beyond stores opened under its new management in the Nashville area last summer, the company announced it was “bringing back one of its most iconic traditions,” inviting shoppers to “bring in their legacy Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, which we will gladly honor.”
The company is now combining two of its assets to open “Bed Bath & Beyond + The Container Store” locations, “bringing together home essentials, storage and organization, custom spaces and home services under one roof.” 22 of the combined stores are now open across the country, with more to come. And each will be issuing new coupons, and accepting old ones that have somehow survived.
“The Legendary Coupon Hunt is designed to spark a nationwide treasure hunt,” the retailer announced, saying it now “expects millions of Americans to begin searching for the iconic blue coupon they simply could not throw away.”
While the search for the oldest existing Bed Bath & Beyond coupon may be fun, it’s not technically necessary. The official sweepstakes rules state that “entrants may, but are not required to, present an old coupon at the time of entry.” All you need to do is complete an entry form in a Bed Bath & Beyond or Kirkland’s store for your chance to win.
“For the avoidance of doubt, you are NOT required to make a purchase at the participating location in order to enter the sweepstakes and doing so will NOT increase your chances of winning a prize,” the official rules emphasize. “A coupon is NOT required to enter.”
But what fun is that, when a “legendary coupon hunt” can be hyped to celebrate the revival of a storied retailer best known for its iconic marketing tool?
“The big, blue coupon was our brand,” a former Bed Bath & Beyond executive told the New York Times in its 2020 “Oral History of the World’s Biggest Coupon.” “A coupon straight up drives traffic to get people to buy things,” another said.
The Legendary Coupon Hunt could help determine whether getting shoppers excited about the Bed Bath & Beyond coupon will get them excited about Bed Bath & Beyond itself again. As the company invests in opening dozens of new stores – it’s about to find out.
Image source: eBay/grandmothersgifts
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