GameStop

GameStop Corporation (simply known as GameStop) is an American video game and entertainment software retailer whose headquartered in Grapevine, Texas. GameStop operates 6,500 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Austria, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Portugal, and in Sweden.
GameStop operates under the names GameStop, EB Games, Babbage's, Micromania, MovieStop, and Funcoland. It also operates three e-commerce websites (GameStop.com, EBGames.com, and ImpulseDriven.com), Flash game site Kongregate, Jolt Online Gaming, and Game Informer magazine. GameStop sells new and used games, unlike most retailers nowadays. n the fiscal year ending May 2010, 48.1% of GameStop's profits came from the sale of used video game products.
== History ==
GameStop originally started out as a small software retailer known as Babbage's. In 1994, Babbage's merged with Software, Etc. which resulted in NeoStar Retail. However, the two halves still operated as if separate entities. Ultimately, NeoStar went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the fall of 1996. 
The head of Barnes & Noble, Leonard Riggio, offered to finance the company in order to keep it afloat. His offer was accepted the day before Thanksgiving.
On November 12, 2004, GameStop spun off of Barnes & Noble, but the discounts that their employees received at each others' store was still intact. This agreement was terminated on September 1, 2010. 
On April 18, 2005, GameStop and EB Games announced that they had entered into a "definitive agreement and plan of merger". After shareholders and US regulatory agencies approved the merger, it closed on October 10 of that year with the agreement that the companies would be run separately, but not as they had been in the past. To ease the transition process of the two companies being run as one, it was agreed upon that the two separate entities would not merge operating activities until the new fiscal year which starts February 1; this also included maintaining two separate distribution centers. At the beginning of the following year, operating activities of the two companies was integrated, starting with the realignment of districts and the closure of EB's West Chester, PA corporate office.
Category:Companies