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GameStop employees report extreme pressure from ‘desperate’ bosses

28 points by bretpiatt 7y ago

admax88q 7y ago
Company that treats customera poorly operating in a dieing industry continues to die. News at 11
edude03 7y ago
It's essentially a meme at this point that GameStop is failing, but I'm curious, other than essentially starting a new company, what should a large company do once they find themselves in a dying industry? I feel like GameStop and other retailers don't have much a "moat" or specialty that they could pivot around.
- leonroy 7y ago
  > what should a large company do once they find themselves in a dying industry? This will sound snide but if a large company finds themselves in a dying industry it’s already too late. Much like how an ocean liner takes time to change direction. If they failed to see an iceberg ahead and try changing course at the last minute they can reduce the damage but it’s already too late. IMO what Gamestop should have done was get into gaming conferences, tournaments or maybe even digital distribution of games. Now this is way easier said than done since both Steam and Epic’s service launched off the back of a must have once in a decade viral title (Half Life 2 and Fortnite respectively). But Gamestop could have certainly tried. They could have partnered with EA’s limping Origin service or Ubisoft’s much maligned UPlay - a sort of strength in numbers approach which could have been the Switzerland of game distribution. It’s rare though for industry stalwarts to pivot outside their core competency and this kind of thing will happen again and again. It will even happen to Valve Software and Epic once some new unforseen change happens in the gaming market.
  - Macha 7y ago
    GameStop bought stardocks digital distribution site, Impulse, years ago, before Origin or Uplay. People didn't buy from it as it didn't have the variety or sales when it was owned by Stardock, and started to embrace many of GameStop's worst aspects when owned by GameStop. Also the prices still weren't great, they were probably worried about impacting their store sales, but steam did that for them
- Traster 7y ago
  Isn't it obvious? Maybe it didn't used to be obvious how to tackle these issues in the past. But I think businesses have a fairly well understood game plan now (that Gamestop isn't following). The threat to this business is online retail, so the strategy is to pivot to things that you can't do online. So you focus on creating spaces for people to meet other enthusiasts, you bring people to the store with events, and you turn your sales people into trusted advisors. Take a look at Waterstones as a good example - if you walk into Waterstones every single employee will be well read, they'll be informed about a large number of the books that are currently popular, and what other books the author writes etc. There'll be book signings, Q&As with local authors, book clubs etc. etc. If I go to my local Waterstones website and search for my local branch I don't just get the location, I get a list of events that are happening at the branch - There's a 9-12 book club on Saturday, there's a Costume & story telling event on Monday (for kids), and an adult book club in the evening on Friday, and an evening with a famous author in collaboration with the local university celebrating International Womens day. Now take a look at Gamestop - rather than bringing people in to the store, they're driving people away with aggressive upsell tactics. I mean, it's honestly crazy - gamers are an incredibly vibrant community that would love somewhere they could go in real life to meet other fans of the games they love. It's an open goal. Yet gamestop is so committed to a strategy of squeezing the people that do come in to the store that they can't create that environment.
  - Macha 7y ago
    If you pivot from video games to pen and paper or board games, this is essentially the FLGS model ("Friendly local game store"). These stores are constantly going belly up and the ones that don't are essentially kept on life support by magic the gathering or other card game sales. My city of 1 million has 2, compared to 10 or so GameStop's. We don't have a Waterstones as far as I know, but we have a locally owned book store with a similar model. But again, just 1 such book store. The other 2 big book stores are the typical chains selling local interest, biographies and cards, rather. It doesn't seem like the model that'd fit a big company with shareholders and would require serious downsizing to be sustainable.
    - t-writescode 7y ago
- im3w1l 7y ago
  If we look at their assets it was commercial real estate, trained salespeople, game industry relationships and a gamer customer base. They should have tried to use these assets as productively as possible. A small change in direction could be say gaming themed bars, cafes and toy stores depending on what the location is more suitable for. Or they could have done an even larger pivot and sold general electronics and even hardware store.
- Accujack 7y ago
  The real answer is that any industry can die, and the best way to avoid that is to look carefully at your business model before you commit to building a company. No one can see the future well enough to tell exactly what will happen in an industry, but you can make a guess. In the case of Gamestop, their business opportunity began with the rise of home gaming consoles and PCs, and when you build a business around the side effect of a disruptive or rapidly changing technology, you have to have an exit strategy or be ready to change dramatically with the tech. Gamestop seems to have assumed that their business model would work forever without significant changes (I don't mean process or sales changes, I mean changing from something other than selling physical game media in physical stores). The writing has been on the wall for them for years as the Internet has grown, the size of software programs has grown, the ability of disposable media to hold the software has fallen. To give you an example of a similarly volatile business to be in, how about tax preparation? If you build a business based on that, you'll be ok as long as tax forms in the US are hard to fill out and the government doesn't change that fact. You might even make a whole career and life out of doing people's taxes. But, you can't lose sight of the fact that the whole thing may evaporate overnight if the bribes you're paying no longer stop the government from fixing the tax code, and if you don't have a plan for when that happens, you go hungry.
rasz 7y ago
> reselling cellphones worked great for RadioShack! > employees are required to collect contact information from 10 customers per day, info that is later used to pitch various services "RadioShack was criticized for including customers' personally identifying information as part of its assets for sale during bankruptcy proceedings"
- Accujack 7y ago
  Yep. They're not just collecting info for marketing their own stuff, they're collecting "free" assets to sell, because there's not yet a law against them doing that.
- fred_is_fred 7y ago
  This is eerily similar to RadioShack who was so hellbent on collecting personal info that I stopped going - mainly just I just didn't want to be annoyed.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

28 points by bretpiatt 7y ago

Company that treats customera poorly operating in a dieing industry continues to die. News at 11

It's essentially a meme at this point that GameStop is failing, but I'm curious, other than essentially starting a new company, what should a large company do once they find themselves in a dying industry? I feel like GameStop and other retailers don't have much a "moat" or specialty that they could pivot around.

leonroy 7y ago
> what should a large company do once they find themselves in a dying industry? This will sound snide but if a large company finds themselves in a dying industry it’s already too late. Much like how an ocean liner takes time to change direction. If they failed to see an iceberg ahead and try changing course at the last minute they can reduce the damage but it’s already too late. IMO what Gamestop should have done was get into gaming conferences, tournaments or maybe even digital distribution of games. Now this is way easier said than done since both Steam and Epic’s service launched off the back of a must have once in a decade viral title (Half Life 2 and Fortnite respectively). But Gamestop could have certainly tried. They could have partnered with EA’s limping Origin service or Ubisoft’s much maligned UPlay - a sort of strength in numbers approach which could have been the Switzerland of game distribution. It’s rare though for industry stalwarts to pivot outside their core competency and this kind of thing will happen again and again. It will even happen to Valve Software and Epic once some new unforseen change happens in the gaming market.
- Macha 7y ago
  GameStop bought stardocks digital distribution site, Impulse, years ago, before Origin or Uplay. People didn't buy from it as it didn't have the variety or sales when it was owned by Stardock, and started to embrace many of GameStop's worst aspects when owned by GameStop. Also the prices still weren't great, they were probably worried about impacting their store sales, but steam did that for them
Traster 7y ago
Isn't it obvious? Maybe it didn't used to be obvious how to tackle these issues in the past. But I think businesses have a fairly well understood game plan now (that Gamestop isn't following). The threat to this business is online retail, so the strategy is to pivot to things that you can't do online. So you focus on creating spaces for people to meet other enthusiasts, you bring people to the store with events, and you turn your sales people into trusted advisors. Take a look at Waterstones as a good example - if you walk into Waterstones every single employee will be well read, they'll be informed about a large number of the books that are currently popular, and what other books the author writes etc. There'll be book signings, Q&As with local authors, book clubs etc. etc. If I go to my local Waterstones website and search for my local branch I don't just get the location, I get a list of events that are happening at the branch - There's a 9-12 book club on Saturday, there's a Costume & story telling event on Monday (for kids), and an adult book club in the evening on Friday, and an evening with a famous author in collaboration with the local university celebrating International Womens day. Now take a look at Gamestop - rather than bringing people in to the store, they're driving people away with aggressive upsell tactics. I mean, it's honestly crazy - gamers are an incredibly vibrant community that would love somewhere they could go in real life to meet other fans of the games they love. It's an open goal. Yet gamestop is so committed to a strategy of squeezing the people that do come in to the store that they can't create that environment.
- Macha 7y ago
  If you pivot from video games to pen and paper or board games, this is essentially the FLGS model ("Friendly local game store"). These stores are constantly going belly up and the ones that don't are essentially kept on life support by magic the gathering or other card game sales. My city of 1 million has 2, compared to 10 or so GameStop's. We don't have a Waterstones as far as I know, but we have a locally owned book store with a similar model. But again, just 1 such book store. The other 2 big book stores are the typical chains selling local interest, biographies and cards, rather. It doesn't seem like the model that'd fit a big company with shareholders and would require serious downsizing to be sustainable.
  - t-writescode 7y ago
im3w1l 7y ago
If we look at their assets it was commercial real estate, trained salespeople, game industry relationships and a gamer customer base. They should have tried to use these assets as productively as possible. A small change in direction could be say gaming themed bars, cafes and toy stores depending on what the location is more suitable for. Or they could have done an even larger pivot and sold general electronics and even hardware store.
Accujack 7y ago
The real answer is that any industry can die, and the best way to avoid that is to look carefully at your business model before you commit to building a company. No one can see the future well enough to tell exactly what will happen in an industry, but you can make a guess. In the case of Gamestop, their business opportunity began with the rise of home gaming consoles and PCs, and when you build a business around the side effect of a disruptive or rapidly changing technology, you have to have an exit strategy or be ready to change dramatically with the tech. Gamestop seems to have assumed that their business model would work forever without significant changes (I don't mean process or sales changes, I mean changing from something other than selling physical game media in physical stores). The writing has been on the wall for them for years as the Internet has grown, the size of software programs has grown, the ability of disposable media to hold the software has fallen. To give you an example of a similarly volatile business to be in, how about tax preparation? If you build a business based on that, you'll be ok as long as tax forms in the US are hard to fill out and the government doesn't change that fact. You might even make a whole career and life out of doing people's taxes. But, you can't lose sight of the fact that the whole thing may evaporate overnight if the bribes you're paying no longer stop the government from fixing the tax code, and if you don't have a plan for when that happens, you go hungry.

rasz 7y ago

> reselling cellphones worked great for RadioShack! > employees are required to collect contact information from 10 customers per day, info that is later used to pitch various services "RadioShack was criticized for including customers' personally identifying information as part of its assets for sale during bankruptcy proceedings"

Accujack 7y ago
Yep. They're not just collecting info for marketing their own stuff, they're collecting "free" assets to sell, because there's not yet a law against them doing that.
fred_is_fred 7y ago
This is eerily similar to RadioShack who was so hellbent on collecting personal info that I stopped going - mainly just I just didn't want to be annoyed.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]