A Brief History of GameStop

[sumonasumonakha.t]

GameStop is considered the largest video game merchandise retailer in the world, and is the spun off from a company founded in 1984 in Dallas, Texas, with Leonard Riggio, Daniel DeMatteo, and Richard Fontaine as its current owners. The company began as Babbage's, a software merchandise retailer founded in 1984 by James McCurry and Gary M. Kusin. Babbage's, named after Charles Babbage, started out selling video games and went public in an initial public offering in 1988.

In 1994, however, Software Etc. merged with Babbage's to become NeoStar Retail Group. James stockholder data McCurry became NeoStar's chairman, while Gary Kusin stepped down in 1995 to start a cosmetics company. However, sales began to decline and NeoStar was unable to meet its financial responsibilities. In 1996, Leonard Riggio, a major shareholder at Barnes & Noble, bought NeoStar for $58.5 million.

Riggio renamed the company Babbage's Etc. and appointed Richard Fontaine as CEO, while Daniel DeMatteo, the former president of NeoStar and Software Etc., became the president of Babbage's Etc. In 1999, Babbage's Etc. launched gamestop.com, a website for selling video games. That same year, the company was acquired by Barnes & Noble for $215 million. In 2000, Barnes & Noble acquired Funco, a video game retailer, for $160 million. Finally, Funco was rebranded as GameStop in December 2000 and went public again in February 2002. Today, the company has over 5,000 stores in several countries.