Case 39 — Bath & Body Works · Daniel Heaf · 2025

Your customers can already buy you on Amazon — just not from you. Do you open your own store there, and give up the idea that Bath & Body Works is only found in Bath & Body Works?

It is November 2025 and you have been chief executive for six months. The company sells $7.3 billion a year of body care, candles and hand soap, and in the US it sells it only through its own channels: about 1,900 stores, its website and its app. That exclusivity is part of the model — the seasonal calendar, the Semi-Annual Sale and Candle Day all work because the customer has to come to you. But the third quarter was down 1%, every core category declined, total customer growth has stalled and direct sales have fallen every year since 2021. Meanwhile someone is already selling your products on Amazon without you: an estimated $60–80 million a year of grey-market sales, at prices you do not control. The stock is about to fall by a quarter on the guidance cut you are announcing.

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