Bed Bath & Beyond's parent company closes a health and beauty store on LI

Bed Bath & Beyond’s parent company, which has closed several Long Island stores over the past few years, quietly shuttered a local health and beauty store recently.

A Harmon Face Values store closed in the Nesconset Shopping Center in Port Jefferson Station in January, said Maria Pace, a spokeswoman for Brixmor Property Group, the Manhattan-based company that owns the shopping center.

Located at 4860 Nesconset Hwy., the store opened in October 2011 and occupied 6,385 square feet.

Harmon Face Values is part of a chain owned by Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., which is based in Union, New Jersey.

"After careful consideration, Harmon has closed the Port Jefferson location. While the decision to close a store is always a difficult one, we look forward to serving customers at other Harmon locations, such as at our store in Commack," Harmon said in a statement Saturday.

The retailer did not answer Newsday's questions about why the store closed or how many employees were affected.

As of Nov. 27, the end of its fiscal third quarter, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. had a total of 995 stores, including 809 Bed Bath & Beyond stores in the United States and Canada, 133 Buy Buy Baby stores and 53 stores under the names Harmon, Harmon Face Values or Face Values.

But Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. has been closing hundreds of stores in recent years.

In July 2020, the company announced a plan to close approximately 200 stores, about 21% of its total number of Bed Bath & Beyond stores, over two years as part of a "store network optimization project" to right-size its real estate portfolio and focus on cost-cutting. It had closed 170 by Nov. 27, the company said on Jan. 6.

As part of its previously announced plan, the company last month named 37 more Bed Bath & Beyond stores that would be closing, most by the end of February, including a store in Plainview.

On Long Island, the company has closed three other Bed Bath & Beyond stores since fall 2018 in Manhasset, South Huntington and Inwood.

Also, a Buy Buy Baby store, which sells children’s clothes, furniture and other supplies, will close in Huntington by the end of March.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. has found that it has too many stores as it loses shoppers to online competitors, but it also is shuttering stores that are underperforming or that are too close to each other, said Cristina Fernandez, a senior analyst at Telsey Advisory Group, an equity research and investment banking firm based in Manhattan.

The company also has reduced inventory at its stores to present a cleaner look and added more private-label products.

"Traffic to the stores has been challenging for them. That’s probably the No. 1 factor," Fernandez said.

On Long Island, there are six remaining Harmon Face Values stores, including those in Commack, Melville and Mineola, as well as nine Bed Bath & Beyond stores, including locations in Riverhead, Westbury, Oceanside and New Hyde Park.

After the Buy Buy Baby store closes in Huntington, the only one left on Long Island will be in Garden City.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.