By Mark Seavy

Retail brands are being revived by new IP owners and licensees.

The return of these retail IPs is a nostalgia play aimed at retaining loyal customers as well as an effort to attract new consumers with a business strategy that’s a mix of brick-and-mortar and eCommerce.

The trend of reviving retail brands took a firm hold during the pandemic when IP assets became available amid a flurry of bankruptcies and liquidations. Retail Ecommerce Ventures, for example, acquired the retail brands RadioShack, Steinmart, Pier 1, Dress Barn, Modell’s Sporting Goods, and Linens ‘n Things with a goal of launching them as ecCommerce businesses. But REV itself filed for bankruptcy, touching off yet another feeding frenzy with much of the available IPs once again getting new owners.

More recently, however, new IP owners appear to have firmer business plans. Beyond Inc. acquired the bankrupt Bed Bath & Beyond IP and has since taken the retailer’s name as its own. But it has licensed the Bed Bath IP to Kirkland’s Inc., which is revamping and reopening its Kirkland Home stores under the former retailer’s banner starting in August in Nashville, TN.

In fact, Kirkland’s has renamed itself The Brand Collective and on Monday sold the Kirkland’s Home brand to the owners of the corporate Bed Bath & Beyond name. The new Bed Bath & Beyond stores will focus on a smaller assortment of products with brands like Nicole Miller and Cuisinart but also rely more heavily on eCommerce. The Brand Collective also has a license for the Buy Buy Baby brand (Buy Buy Baby will also reopen in Nashville).

Bed Bath, meanwhile, retains the Overstock name and plans to expand the former closeout brand into higher priced categories like jewelry, watches, rugs, and furniture, said Marcus Lemonis, Executive Chairman of Bed Bath.

“I’ve really tried to reengage the Kirkland’s customer,” The Brand Collective CEO Amy Sullivan told HFN Digital. “It was a little off track. The brand was struggling. I want to make sure the legacy Kirkland customer sees the legacy in seasonal and decor. The fact that we’re keeping 40-50% of the best of the best Kirkland’s product in the store is the story we must tell.”

These companies aren’t alone in their quest to restart defunct retail brands and, in many cases, it is eCommerce business that are ultimately reviving brick-and-mortar names.

In the UK, for example, MFI Furniture (formerly Mullard Furniture Industries), which was a cultural institution in the 1990s before closing in 2008, was purchased by eCommerce company Victorian Plumbing.  Victorian plans to relaunch it online in 2026 as a purveyor of homegoods for bed, living, and dining rooms.

Home and Garden retailer Wilko shuttered nearly all of its locations in 2023 but was purchased for $6.8 million by rival The Range with plans for expanding to 300 locations within five years. Additionally, gift and stationary brand Paperchase collapsed in 2023 but was purchased by Tesco, which has reintroduced its products in 261 locations.

And Comet, which was one of the UK’s top electronics retailers before closing its 236 stores in 2011, had its assets purchased by online retailer OnBuy, which said it plans to resurrect the brand “as a marketplace at the apex of eCommerce.”

“The revival of defunct brands isn’t about nostalgia, it’s about pure commercial logic,” a retail industry consultant said. “Investors see brand recognition as an easy shortcut to customer acquisition, hoping that familiar names will give them an edge in an overcrowded market. But what makes sense on a P&L sheet doesn’t always translate to consumer behavior. The problem is these brands aren’t coming back in the way people remember them. That disconnect is where revivals often fail—do they honor what made the brand valuable, or are they slapping a logo on a new business model and hoping for the best?”