🤔 Bed Bath Beyond & Baffled

What do you like about your favorite cafe? Plants, natural light, comfortable seats, a welcoming vibe?

Neuroaesthetics studies the way our brains respond to things like art, music, and other stimuli, which can be particularly useful in architecture and design.

“Buildings make us feel things all the time, both good and bad, that we don’t recognize,” Eric Corey Freed, director of sustainability at CannonDesign, told The Hustle.

So how do you make them feel good?

CannonDesign often works in health care settings, where people are frequently scared, stressed, or sick.

Studies have found that nature can reduce stress and improve immune system function and mood, among other benefits, while natural light affects serotonin.

That’s driving increased interest in biophilic design, which connects us to nature, even when we’re indoors.

• Examples include natural light, fountains, rooftop gardens, natural materials like wood or stone, patterns like fractals or curves, and nature-themed art.
• For rooms without sunlight, a rooftop fiber-optic system can “harvest” daylight and drop full-spectrum sunlight inside.
• Certain tones of light can help regulate circadian rhythms in night-shift workers.
• Aroma and color can enhance mood and appetite.

That’s not to say that a well-designed building itself will treat patients, but rather that it may boost positive outcomes — a concept known as evidence-based design.

Besides nature…

… there are other ways to enhance good vibes. Color, curves, and “compression” — a narrow entrance leading to an open space — can make people feel welcome in a way that boxy, cold, white lobbies don’t.

Alison Leonard, a senior health care programmer at Blue Cottage of CannonDesign, notes that choice — even as simple as seating in waiting rooms or at bus stops — can give people “a sense of control over their environment, and [put] them at ease.”

More broadly…

… these elements also apply to schools, offices, and how buildings fit into their cities and communities through street-facing art, landscaping, and public events — e.g., farmers markets, health screenings, etc.

So, if you’re feeling stressed at home, maybe get a plant?

Fun fact: Google once partnered with Johns Hopkins University on a neuroaesthetic design exhibit in Milan.

Playing into people’s sense of nostalgia for something is usually a winning strategy. But it sure helps when people are, y’know, actually nostalgic for that thing.

The retailer formerly known as Overstock is staking its future on the idea that people are clamoring for the once-dead Bed Bath & Beyond. To recap, per Bloomberg:

• In April, Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt, shuttering all stores.
• In June, Overstock dropped $21.5m for the decrepit husk of the Bed Bath & Beyond brand.
• This month, Overstock rebranded to Bed Bath & Beyond.

Is this gonna work?

We’ll see, but Overstock — with its business down 20% YoY in Q2 — can’t be blamed for trying.

Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson said he thought his company “had a good operating model but a bad name” while “Bed Bath & Beyond had a great name but a bad operating model,” per The Washington Post.

• It’ll be, Johnson told Bloomberg, a “match made in retail heaven.”

But this ignores the fact that Bed Bath & Beyond spent years in decline.

In 2021, the brand scored its lone bright spot of the last decade when the home goods chain became a memestock.

That didn’t translate to a sustainable business either — that same year, Bed Bath & Beyond lost ~5m customers from its once-loyal fan base.

What happens next?

It’s early, so the jury remains out. Maybe we’ll be eating crow — served on some 20%-off dinnerware — and the rebranded retailer will bounce back.

But for now, we can assign one loser in all of this: original Bed Bath & Beyond stockholders.

• Last month, it was confirmed they’ll be “left empty-handed,” per The Street.

Some solace: Being empty-handed is bad, but nothing could feel worse than spending ~$29 to cover your hand in a “Life is better with cats” oven mitt.

~30m: cups of “spaghettieis” sold in Germany each year. Invented by Dario Fontanella, the dessert uses a spaetzle maker to turn ice cream into pasta-like strands; it’s then topped with a fruit sauce and white chocolate to resemble marinara and parmesan.

10: extra DVDs Netflix will send to its DVD-by-mail subscribers before it shutters the service after 25 years. Subscribers must opt in by Aug. 29 to receive 10 movies selected from their queue a month later. All discs must be returned by Oct. 27, though.

$11.9k: what Adil Asim, owner of a Canadian restaurant chain, paid for an incredible costume auctioned off by the Alberta government. It looks like a giant donair— a Canadian street food mashup of a Greek gyro and a Turkish doner kebab — and was originally bought for a never-aired anti-drug PSA in 2015.

36%: the share of Americans who approve of President Biden’s handling of the economy, according to the latest AP-NORC poll. The Biden team is winning on many key economic numbers — inflation down to 3.2%, unemployment at 3.5%, and per Axios, ~80% of S&P 500 companies beat forecasted earnings last quarter — yet they’re continually losing on vibes. And you think your job is annoying?