Ben Gilbert/Business Insider
- GameStop is the largest video game retailer in the world, with over 7,000 stores.
- The company had been in steady decline for years, but the bottom has dropped out of its stock price in 2019 — from $16 a share in January to just $4 by late July.
- The company is "a melting ice cube," Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told Business Insider earlier this year. "For sure it’s going to go away eventually."
- We visited a handful of GameStop stores in New York City, and it was evident why the company is failing.
- GameStop representatives did not respond to a request for comment as of publishing.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
When I was growing up in the late ’90s, entertainment retail titans like Tower Records, Sam Goody, Waldenbooks, and Blockbuster Video were all, already, on the way out.
Their decline was clear to everyone: First, they’d start selling stuff that wasn’t quite in their wheelhouse. Then the stores would start shuttering. Then the remaining stores would get messier and messier as staff saw the writing on the wall. Then, eventually, they would shutter forever.
Two decades later, and the world’s largest video game retailer — GameStop — is going through the same process that record stores, movie stores, and book stores have already endured.
On a muggy summer Wednesday in New York City, we went on a tour of several GameStop stores for a look into a retailer in decline.
In a city like New York, where real estate comes at such a high premium, GameStop has over a dozen outlets spread across the five boroughs.
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There are, simply put, too many GameStop locations in New York City. Some are clustered so close together that you can easily walk from one to the next.
None of the four stores I visited, across Manhattan and Brooklyn, had more than a few people in them at any given time.
All of this would be problematic in a less expensive place than New York City, but it’s especially problematic given that. Notably, GameStop does not operate on a franchisee model — the company is leasing each outlet itself.
Moreover, GameStop stores are shockingly huge — needlessly so considering they’re in the business of selling small circular discs in small rectangular boxes.
Ben Gilbert/Business Insider
The vast majority of the stores are made up of empty space, as the primary item on sale — games — line the walls. There are various sales islands set up, but much of the GameStop retail experience is vast open spaces.
Ben Gilbert/Business Insider
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Ben Gilbert)