d Bath & Beyond’s physical store format. As part of the agreement, Kirkland’s will become the exclusive brick-and-mortar operator and licensee for smaller format ‘neighborhood’ Bed Bath & Beyond locations nationwide. In return, Beyond will invest $25 million via combined debt and equity transactions to strengthen Kirkland’s capital position and fuel its growth initiatives.  In a company release, Marcus Lemonis, Beyond’s executive chairman, stated, “We view this partnership as a meaningful step forward in our long-term vision of growing through asset-light collaboration with complementary businesses while monetizing both the intellectual property of our iconic brands as well as the suite of affinity products being developed.”  While this alliance will give Beyond the legs it needs to start rebuilding its brick-and-mortar presence, some retail experts are looking at the partnership with some skepticism.  What retail experts have to say about Beyond and Kirkland’s team-up Melissa Minkow, a director of the retail strategy at CI&T, provided a rather positive take on Kirkland’s and Beyond’s joint venture.  “At its core, I think Beyond had a strong value proposition. The fact that this partnership will focus on a smaller format brick-and-mortar channel suggests an understanding of how the retailer needs to evolve,” she told Inside Retail. The retail strategist noted that part of Bed Bath & Beyond’s downfall stemmed from the brand’s merchandising redundancy and the high costs associated with its previously opened stores’ footprint.  “Beyond will still have many of the same battles to face, such as fierce big-box competition, but I see a world where this sharper focus and operational intention pays off. These two parties have supplementary strengths with Kirkland’s brick-and-mortar profile and Bed, Bath & Beyond’s digital resources,” Minkow concluded.  Meanwhile, Steve Dennis, president and founder of SageBerry Consulting, had a less than enthusiastic perspective on the retailers’ partnership. “At face value, this partnership makes sense,” the veteran retail expert stated, listing off positives such as the workability of the smaller store concept in today’s shopping environment. However, Dennis noted that the partnership makes for a “very tiny pilot” in the grand scheme of things and that prospects for material scaling are far from certain. It doesn’t help that Kirkland’s has its own issues, Dennis mused.  Several elements would need to come into play, like a more stable business model, an improved home retail sector and a strong balance sheet for this deal to make a dent in the market in the next few years, he said.  Overall, the partnership between Beyond and Kirkland’s is “interesting, but probably much ado about nothing,” he said. Liza Amlani, the principal and co-founder of Retail Strategy Group, landed in the middle of Minkow and Dennis. Like Dennis, Amlani believes that Beyond’s operation of smaller format stores will help reduce operating costs and potential technical issues.  “Smaller format stores seem to be working well for Macy’s which, coincidentally, is opening more stores in the shuttered locations where a Bed Bath & Beyond used to reside,” Amlani observed.  However, she cautioned that Beyond needs to learn from the past. “For instance, Bed Bath & Beyond went overboard with private-label products that flooded the shop floor and competed directly with their branded counterparts,” Amlani said. “They forgot that private label is meant to complement an assortment, not compete with it. Missteps like that ate into profits and margins.” She also noted that Bed Bath & Beyond often relied too heavily on promotions to lure customers to shop, which inevitably led shoppers to only buy on discount. With Kirkland’s currently promoting a 20 per cent discount in celebration of its team-up with Beyond, Amlani observed that both retailers seem to be falling into old habits.  “If Beyond can learn from what went wrong in the past, then the revival has a chance of working,” Amlani finished.