GameStop has been on a steady decline over the past few years, but there’s been plenty of movement going on behind the scenes to breathe new life into the gaming giant. In fact, GameStop today announced that it added three new people to its Board of Directors, each of them bringing considerable experience to the underperforming company.
Oddly enough, most of that experience comes from the pet food industry.
To be fair, they all have an extensive background in e-commerce and online marketing – skillsets that are desperately needed to modernize GameStop. And the pet food company they all hail from is Chewy, an online retailer of pet food that was recently purchased for over $3 billion. It’ll be interesting to see if their success in digital pet food sales will translate to digital video game sales, but they’ll no doubt inject new life into GameStop’s business strategy. Here are the three new Directors:
- Alan Attal: An e-commerce executive and entrepreneur with over two decades of experience. Attal worked as the Chief Marketing Officer of Chewy between 2017 and 2018 – before that he was the company’s COO.
- Ryan Cohen: The manager of RC Ventures and stockholder of GameStop. Cohen is the founder and former CEO of Chewy, growing the company to into a billion-dollar digital pet store. He has “extensive experience in retail, technology, and e-commerce.”
- Jim Grube: A finance executive who was most recently the CFO of Vacasa – a vacation rental management company. Before that, he also worked at Chewy as the CFO.
“We are pleased to welcome Ryan, Alan, and Jim to the Board and look forward to working with them to pursue long-term value creation,” said Ms. Vrabeck, Chair of the Board. “Their substantial e-commerce and technology expertise will help us accelerate our transformation plans and fully capture the significant growth opportunities ahead for GameStop.”
The latest sales figures from GameStop were bleak, as it couldn’t capitalize on the lucrative holiday season due to COVID-19 and increased digital sales – leading to numbers that were 3.1% below those of 2019. Here’s hoping the team can turn the ship around in 2021.
NEXT: Star Wars Video Games Now Fall Under The New Lucasfilm Games Branding
- Game News
- GameStop
Jon Bitner is an Associate Editor for TheGamer. His passion for gaming started with his first console (Sega Genesis) and he hasn’t stopped playing since. His favorite titles include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Team Fortress 2, Rainbow Six Siege, Pokémon Sword & Shield, Old School Runescape, Skyrim, and Breath of the Wild. He can usually be found playing the latest RPG, FPS, or some obscure mobile game. Before working as Associate News Editor, Jon earned a Biology degree and worked in the Biotechnology sector — experiences that taught him how to put words together and make sentences. When not playing or writing about the gaming industry, he enjoys sleeping, eating, and staring at birds.
Source: Read Full Article