Bed Bath & Beyond is the latest but not the last brick-and-mortar victim of what experts are calling a ‘retail apocalypse’ that will lead to more than 50,000 stores closing over the next four years.

Bed Bath & Beyond filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday after warning for months that it would face ruin.

Its 360 remaining stores and 120 Buybuy Baby stores around the US will remain open for now while the company liquidates and attempts to auction off assets, but its future is desolate. …

But its closure signals a wider trend sweeping the US – the long-anticipated dissipation of brick-and-mortar stores, as online giants like Amazon go from strength to strength.

[If so, then the pandemic likely just accelerated a trend that had been evolving over the last twenty years. I’m a little skeptical, however. Amazon makes retail more risky, but people largely still prefer shopping in person. BB&B may have failed for reasons that other retailers have failed in the pre-Amazon past: poor management, over-expansion, excessive profit-taking, and so on. We’ll know more when the bankruptcy processes, and when the inevitable rounds of finger-pointing open up the books on BB&B, so to speak. — Ed]