Bed Bath & Beyond announced last year that they were looking to sell a couple of their brands – Cost Plus World Market and Christmas Tree Shops. The sale of Christmas Tree Shops went through last November and the sale of Cost Plus World Market to Kingswood Capital Management went through a couple of days ago.
That has an impact on gift cards in a couple of ways. In the past, you could use gift cards interchangeably across the family of brands. For example, a Bed Bath & Beyond gift card could be used at Cost Plus World Market.
With this sale, that’ll presumably no longer be the case going forward. I’m not sure of the implications for existing gift cards with all the brands listed above, so I’ve reached out to both Bed Bath & Beyond and Cost Plus World Market to try to get clarification. I’ll update and republish this post if and when I receive a reply from one or both of them.
Another potential impact on the gift card front relates to Happy gift cards. The Happy Lady and Happy Student brands both have Cost Plus World Market listed as an eligible retailer where the cards can be redeemed. Bed Bath & Beyond is another eligible retailer on both those brands and it was presumably Cost Plus World Market’s former parent company who negotiated their inclusion on those two Happy cards.
There’s not been any change on those two cards for now, but it wouldn’t be surprising to find Cost Plus World Market dropped on a future iteration of those Happy cards. Having said that, they might choose to set up their own agreement with Blackhawk Network to maintain their inclusion on the cards.
I have never actually been able to use either BBB gift cards or Happy gift cards at Cost Plus World Market. I have always been told that their POS system is separate from BBB and that the cards won’t work.