
GameStop employees report extreme pressure from ‘desperate’ bosses - bretpiatt
https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/19/21132128/gamestop-employees-report-extreme-pressure-desperate-bosses
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rasz
> 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"

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Accujack
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.

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edude03
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.

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Traster
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.

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Macha
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.

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t-writescode
In my area, the best board game shops are also restaurants that people go to
for dinner and to play a board game. There are 4 I can think off hand, two of
which are a chain. They seem to be doing well and some take up quite a bit of
real estate.

As far as I can tell they’re doing plenty well.

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admax88q
Company that treats customera poorly operating in a dieing industry continues
to die. News at 11

