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"always heard that ThinkGeek, the online retailer, was by far the most (only?) profitable part of the business for years on end" As a former employee of [VA [R
by Zelphyr 12y ago
"always heard that ThinkGeek, the online retailer, was by far the most (only?) profitable part of the business for years on end"
As a former employee of [VA [Research[ Systems]|Linux|Software] SourceForge] I also heard this. Though I believe Slashdot was also a profit center for awhile.
- zeruch 12y agoYou are correct.
- bane 12y agoThis is correct. TG basically carried the entire rest of the company for many years. Almost nothing else made enough money to support itself and the profits TG pulled in were enough to run the company for a long while. This was back when TG was still a pretty small outfit. As they've grown employee-wise, I'm sure more of the revenue has gone to sustaining this part of the business. The basic problem is that so many of the other properties were virtually impossible to monetize and/or by the time attention got turned on them audience had moved elsewhere and the result was a mess. It also didn't help that many of the senior people brought in to help turn the properties into money making operations really had never done business with this demographic.