Gamestop's turn around plan

[eastmen]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gamestop-turnaround-artist-ryan-cohen-110014940.html

Gamestop has detailed their plans to turn around the company

I think them trying to make a better customer service experience is important. However at the same time I feel like its what all these companies say and then the reality hits and they cut back hours and have only one or two people in. Of course if the online portion is doing well enough the few hundred stores that might be able to sustain something like that . Right now for anyone who goes into a gamestop you know its typically one or two people working and they are already tasked with doing other things.

One interesting thing is a subscription box. Perhaps doing something like a xbox or playstation subscription box where each month you get to choose a game for the platform and then get some tshirts or other swag related to it could work for some people.

But I dunno I think the concept stores we saw before have a good chance of working .

 

[Riddlewire]

Gamestop employees are a magical fantasy race of beings who, even when outnumbered 10 to 1, can still follow and harass every customer in the store.
This was my experience with my three nearest Gamestop locations for a period of nearly twenty years.

I want video game stores to continue to exist in the physical world, but Gamestop...

 

[eastmen]

Gamestop employees are a magical fantasy race of beings who, even when outnumbered 10 to 1, can still follow and harass every customer in the store.
This was my experience with my three nearest Gamestop locations for a period of nearly twenty years.

I want video game stores to continue to exist in the physical world, but Gamestop...

I worked for gamestop during a magical moment in time before and during them purchasing funcoland but a few years before the EB purchase/ merger. It was actually a fun place to work at and helped me pay for college. We didn't have any bs quotas on subscriptions or warranties. They asked that we get reserves which at the time (2000-2003) made sense since they would order copies of the game based on the amount of preorders they got and you'd be out of stock until a new order can be placed and shipped providing the publisher printed enough copies of the game.
But then they bought funcoland and we started to get a subscription card. Then from friends that still worked tehre once they bought EB a lot of bad habits from there spilled over and mixed with the gamestop bad habits.

I think if the majority of money came from online and the stores were treated as a quicker way for a customer to get what they want ( oh the item is available for 2 day shipping but i can go and get it during my lunch from this store type thing) or for an easier way to do returns (like amazon uses kohls / amazon books / amazon go) then the employees could actually forget about subscriptions and useless warranties and focus on actually helping a customer. I think they could also then expand their pc side a bit and offer keyboards and headsets and things like that. Right now its just walls of funco pops or empty cases for games

 

[Riddlewire]

My nearest store started out as a Baggage's. Then I think it became an EB Games for one year. Then rebranded as Gamestop. That was around 2004. At that time, an "old man" (probably same age as I am now ) started working there. He made it such an unpleasant experience to be inside the store, that I had no choice but to go elsewhere (and elsewhere was in a different town). I have no doubts that he cost that location far more sales than whatever he brought in with subscriptions.

I read that article. I have no confidence in Cohen's plans.

 

[eastmen]

My nearest store started out as a Baggage's. Then I think it became an EB Games for one year. Then rebranded as Gamestop. That was around 2004. At that time, an "old man" (probably same age as I am now ) started working there. He made it such an unpleasant experience to be inside the store, that I had no choice but to go elsewhere (and elsewhere was in a different town). I have no doubts that he cost that location far more sales than whatever he brought in with subscriptions.

I read that article. I have no confidence in Cohen's plans.

it sounds like you would have kept going if they had better staff. Hopefully with proper training and management they can get rid of the bad staff.

I worked in retail for a long time at all different levels. I can tell you that you can get a really good staff if your willing to pay more for it. But if your only willing to pay $7.50 an hour and then force bad practices on them its not going to end well. If they bump up the hourly wage and actually dedicated some time to product knowledge and remove the need for subscriptions and other things they should be ood on that . But who knows what will actually come of it.

 

[see colon]

Then from friends that still worked tehre once they bought EB a lot of bad habits from there spilled over and mixed with the gamestop bad habits.

I worked at EB before the Gamestop buyout. I only worked winters, I had a job working at a seasonal resort in the summer, so I had big gaps between my employment there. At EB, we had the discount card, sold warranties and did preorders. If we had preorder quotas they were really low, but we were "expected" to get 1 warranty or discount card per 4 hour shift I think, but we got 20% of those sales. This was back when PS2/Xbox/Gamecube were out, and I think a year warranty was $20-30, so you'd get an extra $4-6 per sale. They paid those out once a month, there were months where I would make more from warranties than I did from wages.

I think it was one week after the merger was finalized that those incentives went away. They were much more ruthless with their requirements, also. I saw people get "coachings", or even written up for not hitting the quotas. I remember my last winter there, I bought an Xbox 360, and took the next winter off and lived off the wages from my other job. Post merger Gamestop was the worst of both worlds, IMHO. That said, I still shop there. I'd rather they not disappear.