Pier 1 Imports Inc. the funky furniture retailer that started out selling bean bag chairs and love beads to hippies and later grew into a home-furnishings giant with more than 1,000 stores, filed for bankruptcy Monday, a victim of changing consumer tastes and an unforgiving retail environment.

The home furnishings chain filed for chapter 11 protection Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Va., with plans to sell the company, less than two months after saying it planned to close up to 450 stores and cut costs to slow down its cash burn.

Unlike many other retailers that have sought bankruptcy in recent years, the publicly traded Pier 1—with assets of $426.6 million and listed total debt of $258.3 million—isn’t weighed down with debt from an ill-timed leveraged buyout. Rather the company’s struggles can be traced to increasing competition from online players, mass merchants and off-price retailers, such as Wayfair Inc., TJX Cos .’s HomeGoods, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. s' Cost Plus World Market and Amazon.com Inc.

Those rivals have increasingly moved into selling home furnishings and merchandise that were once virtually the exclusive domain of Pier 1, according to Hart Posen, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin.

“You’d see something in someone’s house—a wicker-rattan chair or an elephant-themed umbrella holder—and know it came from Pier 1,” Mr. Posen said. “You could buy it at Pier 1 or nowhere, but that’s just not the case anymore.”