GameStop has big plans thanks to incoming board chairman Ryan Cohen, who made his millions creating the online pet food giant Chewy. Cohen now plans to do the same thing with GameStop, only instead of selling pet food and chew toys, he’ll sell video games and accessories.
And he plans to sell a lot of them. So many that GameStop just announced that it’s breaking ground on a brand new fulfillment center located in York, Pennsylvania.
Once completed, the new fulfillment center will be 700,000 square feet. Expected to be completed later this winter, the fulfillment center will "support e-commerce and fulfillment needs” for GameStop as well as allow the company to "grow [its] product offerings and expedite shipping across the east coast."
Cohen is pushing for GameStop to transform itself from a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer to an e-commerce giant. On top of that, he’s also started expanding GameStop’s product offerings to include PC hardware, such as mice, desks, chairs, monitors, and more.
To help with the shift, GameStop recently sold 3.5 million new shares for a total net gain of over half a billion dollars. A lot of that money is going to help with GameStop's transformation from a traditional retailer to an e-commerce fixture, but some of it also helping to pay the severance packages of most of GameStop's old executives.
Former CEO George Sherman will be out by the end of July unless GameStop can find a replacement earlier than that. Former CFO James Bell, customer officer Frank Hamlin, and merchandising executive Chris Homeister are all taking multi-million dollar severance packages, with replacements expected in the coming months.
GameStop is also looking to get into the crypto craze with a hiring blitz aimed directly at NFTs. We're not sure what this will mean for GameStop in the future, but in the meantime, you can still get this sweet Tuantuan sleeping bag in honor of May the Fourth.