Games Tech

Too much of a good thing: Mourning the slow death of the retail game store

$34.99 for Centipede on the Atari 2600 might sound cheap, but that 1983 price is the equivalent of roughly $90 today. [credit: Retro Waste ] When I was a kid, buying video games was an incredibly stressful process. In the late ’80s, I was too young to buy magazines to find out what games deserved […]

Tech

After helping decimate department stores, Amazon plans to open its own

Enlarge / Amazon has experimented with physical retail for years, including this pop-up store inside a Whole Foods in Chicago, Illinois. (credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg ) Amazon is looking for its next conquest. After years of growth, most recently fueled in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic that also has decimated physical retailers across the […]

Tech

Why some investors are excited about Ryan Cohen as GameStop’s next chairman

Ryan Cohen in 2019, probably contemplating ways to turn around struggling brick-and-mortar retailers… Struggling video game retailer GameStop announced Thursday that it intends to name Chewy.com co-founder Ryan Cohen as chairman of its board of directors following its next stockholder meeting on June 9. The move seems likely to further encourage some investors who continue to […]

Tech

GameStop (the stock) and GameStop (the retailer) continue to be worlds apart

Enlarge / It may take more than one bad earnings report to pop this bubble… The last time GameStop announced its quarterly earnings, in early December, the stock market valued the video game retailer at about $1 billion. Following a worse-than-expected earnings report released Tuesday night, the company now has a market cap of just […]

COVID 19 Tech

All US Apple stores are open for the first time in almost a year

Enlarge / NEW YORK, June 17, 2020 – Staff workers serve customers outside an Apple store on Fifth Avenue. (credit: Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images) For the first time in just a few days shy of a year, all Apple Store retail locations in the United States are open this week, reports 9to5Mac. Apple […]

Business

Carrefour shares pop as merger talks intensify

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., the Canadian owner of Circle K convenience stores, is exploring a takeover of French grocer Carrefour SA in a roughly $20 billion deal that would create a trans-Atlantic retail giant. Couche-Tard’s initial proposal values the French company at about 20 euros per share, people with knowledge of the matter said. That would […]

Business COVID 19

New Year’s Eve will be a dud for restaurants

In a fitting end to what has been a nightmare 2020 for the dining industry, restaurants and bars will largely miss out on what should be one of the most lucrative nights of the year. New Year’s Eve—famous for overpriced meals and plenty of alcoholic beverages—will be a quiet affair as restaurants grapple with occupancy limits, early […]

Business

The pandemic cramped Rent the Runway’s style—but here’s how the company is fashioning a comeback in 2021

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the fashion industry, and clothing rental service Rent the Runway has certainly felt the squeeze. Earlier in 2020, the New York City-based company significantly cut costs by instituting layoffs and shuttering its handful of brick-and-mortar stores, among other measures. That said, co-founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman has big hopes […]