Chewy Founder Tapped To Lead GameStop’s eCommerce Transformation

Video game provider GameStop Corp. said on Monday (March 8) in a press release that Chewy Founder Ryan Cohen leads a committee that aims to “accelerate the company’s transformation” and lead its eCommerce overhaul. Shares of GameStop jumped more than 35 percent after the announcement, CNBC reported.

GameStop also said it has appointed a chief technology officer and hired two executives to lead its customer care and eCommerce fulfillment functions. The company added that the new committee would “focus on identifying actions that can transform GameStop into a technology business.”

Also on the transformation committee are Alan Attal, who will lead GameStop’s corporate governance committee, and Kurt Wolf, who will lead its compensation committee. Chewy is an online retailer of pet food and pet-related products that was acquired by PetSmart for $3.35 billion in 2017. GameStop had added Cohen and Attal to its board in January.

GameStop CEO George Sherman said at the time that his company would use its “omnichannel capabilities” to grow online sales. He added that the company is targeting efficiency and cost-cutting. As of early last year, the Grapevine, Texas-based company had more than 5,500 stores in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

GameStop loomed large in the recent stock battles triggered by the sub-Reddit WallStreetBets group. GameStop had been on a downward slide for five years, hitting $3 about a year ago. At that point, GameStop turned into a tale of two companies — one of them the dying retail business, and the other a “meme stock,” seemingly trading in a world separate from its actual fundamentals. Despite the retail-pummeling pandemic, GameStop’s stock turned around. Shares hit their highest closing price of $347.51 on Jan. 27.

Looking ahead, GameStop does have some valuable assets. For one, a lot of video game consumers still prefer to go into a store and purchase a physical disc copy of a game, even though they could get the same thing digitally at home. In addition, GameStop remains the largest player in the secondhand video game market.