GameStop: Fewer stores, 'industry-wide decline', supply woes led to holiday sales slide

The end of 2020 was an important period for GameStop, with the company long looking toward both the arrival of a new console generation and the holiday shopping period to reinvigorate sales.

For that holiday period, the nine weeks ending January 2, 2021, GameStop reported its sales at $1.77 billion, down 3.1 percent from holiday 2019.

The company attributes that decline heavily to COVID-19 complications and a smaller store fleet (due to its downsizing efforts), as well as an "industry-wide traffic decline during the holiday period" and a short supply of next-generation hardware that couldn't remotely keep up with demand.

In a statement, GameStop CEO George Sherman notes that its ecommerce sales did see a significant increase during the holidays, up over 300 percent from the year prior to $1.35 billion, and that comparable store sales are overall up 4.8 percent year-over-year.

“GameStop maintained its status as the omni-channel destination for gaming and entertainment with unprecedented demand for the new gaming consoles and a significant increase in E-Commerce sales," says Sherman. "Demand for the new generation of consoles remains very strong, and as a result, we anticipate the consumer’s excitement for the new console technology will benefit us going forward well through 2021."

Today's GameStop news also includes word that the company has brought on Chewy.com founder Ryan Cohen's RC Ventures as an investor, bringing both Cohen and two others to its board as it continues to focus in on ecommerce.