Does GameStop have what to takes to compete with the world’s biggest online retailer? That’s what its executives seem to think after selling a significant stake to Ryan Cohen, an entrepreneur who’s responsible for successes such as Chewy.com.
Shares jumped as much as 28 percent following a report from Bloomberg this week, which revealed that Cohen had some kind of epic plan for taking on Amazon. While many of those details are still under wraps, GameStop has leveled up in the stock market and is definitely in the best place it’s been since 2018.
“Cohen’s vision, which isn’t yet public, is to broaden GameStop’s online selection and compete head-to-head with some of the biggest e-commerce companies,” Bloomberg reported. “Rather than just offering video games and a smattering of toys, clothing and accessories, GameStop’s website would sell a wide range of merchandise and ship it to customers more quickly — a key strength of Amazon.”
That sounds a lot like ThinkGeek – the “geek culture” shop that GameStop owned but shut down in 2019 (technically, it was assimilated and turned into a section of GameStop.com). We’re not sure how that dance would go a second time around, but the retailer better figure out something quick in light of the industry’s increasing support for digital.
“I have a hard time foreseeing how GameStop can morph into a credible competitor to Amazon,” said Anthony Chukumba, an analyst at Loop Capital. “There are a lot of companies with much deeper pockets than GameStop that have had a very difficult time competing against Amazon, and some are barely competing with Amazon — Walmart, for example.”