For Bed Bath & Beyond Co-founder and Co-chairman Warren Eisenberg, the company’s Sept. 23 conference call regarding its second-quarter fiscal 2014 results served as a key platform to put forth his thoughts on the customer.
“Since Len Feinstein and I founded our company over 43 years ago, the mission has remained the same: Just take care of the customer,” Eisenberg said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “Today more than ever, taking care of the customer means being available wherever and whenever our customer wants to interact with us. We built our company to be flexible and ready to change to meet the evolving needs of our customers and to face the challenges of a competitive and dynamic retail environment. And while much has changed in the past 43 years, change itself has been a constant as well as our ability to respond successfully to it, and we are prudent to be ahead of it.”
Eisenberg added: “How we have met this challenge is to hold true to our philosophy of providing great service and great selection at the right value. Through the growing breadth of our assortment of merchandise as well as our rapidly expanding omni-channel presence, we are able to interact with our customers throughout their various life stages, some of which might include summer camp, college, first apartment, wedding registry, first home, baby registry, next home, and to begin part of all the cycles again. This ability creates a powerful customer value proposition and a loyal consumer base which forges an enduring seamless relationship with our customers. Building and maintaining this type of relationship in an evolving retail landscape requires a significant investment in technology to engage our customers where and how they prefer in-store, online, through a mobile device, or in any combination of these methods, and it also requires the smart use of the data that our technology enables us to assemble.”
What’s more, Eisenberg said to never rest on laurels.
“At the same time, beneath all of this are our original core principles, take care of the customer and never be satisfied that you’re doing it well enough, because you can always do it better,” he added.
Net sales for the second quarter rose 4.3%, to $2.9 billion. Second-quarter comparable sales increased by approximately 3.4%.
“We believe an integrated experience must exist among these channels to provide a seamless customer experience,” CEO Steven Temares said.