GameStop is Shutting Down 320 Locations in 2020
During a recent financial earnings call, GameStop executive vice president and chief financial officer Jim Bell claimed that the company would be closing hundreds of stores this year. In the fiscal year of 2019, GamStop shut down 321 outlets and the company will likely lose another 320 in fiscal year 2020. This is apparently part of a de-densification plan with the company closing down stores that are located close to others. With the next-gen of consoles releasing later this year, it’ll be interesting to see whether this helps or hinders sales of the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
“In fiscal 2020, we will continue in our efforts to de-densify our store base, focused on maximising product productivity of the entire fleet,” said Jim Bell. “[We] anticipate store closures to be equal to or more than 320 net closures we saw in fiscal 2019 on a global basis. “Importantly, we want to emphasize that these store closures are a very specific and proactive part of our de-densification plan and they are not related to recent business trends.” With the company continuing to downsize and its dedication to remaining open through the current pandemic, we’re interested to see if they can financially recover.
Apparently there are currently 5,500 GameStop retail locations across 14 countries, though this figure may include region unique names such as Canada’s EB Games. If that’s the case, we’ll be keeping an eye on how many EB Games locations start closing this fiscal year. The former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has also joined GameStop’s board of directors but won’t begin his role until April 20th 2020. We hope to see Reggie recover GameStop and continue to play various roles in the gaming industry for the foreseeable future.
Do you live in an area where you can drive to two different GameStop or EB Games locations? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: VGC