When Cohen was granted his new position at the Annual Shareholders Meeting, he updated his bio to feature a chair emoji and GameStop’s username. In the last few weeks, Cohen slightly changed his Twitter bio, properly capitalizing both @Chewy and @GameStop and removing the comma in-between both companies. Sorry, we’re a bit crazy.
Now, Cohen has updated his cover photo as well, ditching the Florida palm trees in favor of the famous slogan.
Power to the Players
This same slogan and graphic design is now featured as a cover photo for @GameStop on Twitter.
Jordan Holberg is an eccentric geek, gamer, decentralist, funny-guy, and now GameStop’s Principal Engineer, confirmed via Twitter and LinkedIn today.
GameStop has revealed very little about what their Blockchain and NFT projects consist of. Upon finding Jordan Holberg, GameStop’s latest hire on LinkedIn, GMEdd was compelled to dig deeper.
You’re Hired
In Jordan’s hiring announcement, he reveals personal nostalgia for Babbage’s, the company that GameStop used to be. The gamer describes his childhood visits to the brick-and-mortar retailer, alongside his decentralized ideals.
As Principal Engineer for GameStop, and … with my analog childhood and digital adolescence, I am the bridge between the old and the new — traditional “legacy” ecommerce and the next generation of blockchain.
Holberg states that he believes working for the new GameStop is a truly unique opportunity, with a company at the center of the zeitgeist, well-positioned to make a significant and positive impact.
If I’m going back to full-time and potentially having to wear pants again, you know I’m excited.
The update makes it clear: Jordan is a nostalgic gamer with an impressive ecommerce and blockchain background.
The Principal Engineer shares his excited outlook for the future of GameStop, bridging “traditional ecommerce”, which he refers to as a legacy business, and blockchain, all wrapped up in what may be the most fun LinkedIn profile we’ve come across yet.
past experience
Jordan Holberg’s past indicates why he would be such a critical hire for the transforming gaming retailer. Jordan was Barneys.com’s first employee, granting him valuable experience working as a trailblazer in retail brick and mortar pivots to ecommerce.
Holberg states some of his major accomplishments while growing Barneys New York:
$0 to $180 million+ revenue
Responsible for barneys.com front-end and technical back-end, including management of 30k+ active SKUs
Achieved highest EBITDA across all Barneys’ doors
After Barneys, he later moved on to contract work as a self-proclaimed Digital Fixer working for various high profile clients. Holberg states that his clients included: Ogilvy, TBWA/Chiat/Day, TOWN Real Estate, Extell, Vince Camuto, Jessica Simpson, BorderFree, Amway, IBM, and many others.
Jordan quipped in March, around the same time GameStop’s NFT project commenced, that his “head is full of use-cases and functionality NFT can unlock across finance, social media and gaming”.
He describes a project he had been building, named Hodlberg, that works to demonstrate his extensive knowledge of blockchain and NFTs.
Hodlberg Financial’s Official FAQ page states it lets one “attest” their cryptocurrency holdings and mint a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) on the Ethereum blockchain. The minted Hodlberg NFT aggregates all attested wallet balances into one convenient token, without compromising privacy. The balance and token data aggregated into your Hodlberg NFT is always up-to-date.
This allows for some interesting possibilities, including among other things, most notably for GameStop, “a unique, evolving, in-game asset”.
Eccentric As Hell
According to his LinkedIn, Holberg attended NYU from 1999-2002, where he was actually a cat donning a red headband.
Seriously. If you ever needed proof we live in a simulation, here it is.
His love for feline friends dates back at least 7 years, to this photo in an office space.
Jordan even has a personal website, jordanholberg.com, which features lolcatz language sprawled from top-to-bottom and a giant CLICK ME button in the famous impact font often used in meme culture.
When we saw this, we pondered what clicking the button will do. Could it reveal GameStop’s purpose for venturing into blockchain?
Well, we clicked it, and it just plays Holberg’s favorite music.
Here are the songs you will hear if you sit on his website for long enough:
Phil Collins – Against All Odds (Take a Look at me now)
Rick Springfield – Jessie’s Girl
Eddie Money – Take Me Home Tonight
Heart – Alone
Mike + the Mechanics – All I Need Is a Miracle
The Outfields – I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love Tonight
Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares To You
Asia – Heat of the Moment
Human League – Human
The Pretenders – I’ll Stand By You
Not only does Holberg’s site bring a sense of nostalgia to his work, his choice in music cannot be beat.
There is more to his homepage than you can see on the surface. Knowing his site will be crawling with speculative investors seeking clues and puzzle pieces, a quick search of the website’s code shows his humorous personality.
ooo look at you! so clever!
The headband-wearing, classic rock-playing, cat-loving blockchain dev should be a good fit for the GameStop NFTeam, who seem to have welcomed him with open arms, indicated by Finestone’s tweet.
Jordan also has his own YouTube channel with quirky, meme-worthy videos. Referring to himself as EvilJordan, he breaks societal norms for a business professional, posting a plethora of videos that range from him dancing shirtless to him playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and even his cats.
The article was titled, Is There Money In The NFT Fad For Sports Media Brands?, published on April 19, 2021.
Demetri states that in order to figure out the answer to the question, he asked his friend Jordan Holberg for help. Jordan and Demetri went school together from third grade until the end of high school. Demetri also claims that Jordan once made him laugh so hard he peed his pants.
When Demetri asked Jordan what NFTs offer a sports fan, the crypto-fanatic responded that the first thing that pops into his head is community.
It’s dead-simple, at least in relative terms, to create a gated social community experience for NFT holders. It’s like a virtual ticket that isn’t forgeable, could be non-transferable, and has the potential to constantly make money for its issuer.
Jordan stated that he doesn’t have predictions on what will happen, but knows that NFTs have shown social media networks, company websites, and mobiles games are due for disruption.
GameStop’s latest Principal Engineer believes that cryptocurrency and NFTs have opened up a whole new world of what it means to be a consumer of entertainment and culture, and, for the moment, the sky’s the limit.
We can see that Jordan’s accomplishments in e-commerce and blockchain are stacked, and he already looks to be fitting right in with the existing blockchain division. He also loves cats, is nostalgic for GameStop, and lives to meme.
Despite being self-employed for almost a decade, Holberg is excited to return to full-time work. The decentralization geek believes that GameStop is a truly unique opportunity, with a company well-positioned to make a significant and positive impact.
Let’s see what he makes of it.
Jenna, vestro, and Jack0 contributed. Toast edited and contributed.
GameStop Corp. today announced that it has completed its previously announced “at-the-market” equity offering program.
GameStop disclosed on June 9, 2021 that it filed a prospectus supplement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to offer and sell up to a maximum of 5,000,000 shares of its common stock from time to time through the ATM Offering.
GameStop ultimately sold 5,000,000 shares of common stock and generated aggregate gross proceeds before commissions and offering expenses of approximately $1,126,000,000.
GameStop states that the company will use net proceeds from the ATM Offering for general corporate purposes as well as for investing in growth initiatives and maintaining a strong balance sheet.
George Sherman, who was set to officially step down from his CEO role next month, has served as the Grapevine-based video game retailer’s chief executive since 2019.
GameStop Corp. today announced the appointment of Matt Furlong to the Company’s Board of Directors, effective immediately. The appointment date aligns with Mr. Furlong’s start date as GameStop’s new Chief Executive Officer.
Coinciding with Mr. Furlong’s appointment, George Sherman has retired from the Board. Five of the six members of the Board remain independent.
Furlong was named GameStop’s incoming CEO earlier this month at Q1 2021 Earnings. Furlong, a former Amazon executive, was hired as part of new chairman Ryan Cohen’s plan to expand e-commerce initiatives.
Sherman’s resignation from the board is effective immediately.
While other innovative companies opt for inviting colors, GameStop has gone bold – a sleek Black and White.
The company appears to believe their name says it all.
The gaming retailer’s consumer-facing branding has not changed at all; the signature bright red is still present on GameStop’s Twitter and Facebook profiles.
GameStop’s LinkedIn prior to today, displaying the slogan under George Sherman
These brash differences between GameStop Corp. and GameStop the retailer seem to imply that GameStop intends on being much more than a gaming store, with possible divisions existing under the corporate hold.
Some speculate that the corporate branding change may solely be in recognition of Juneteenth, a United States federal holiday made famous by President Trump that commemorates the end of slavery.
Larry Cheng believes that some businesses have the potential to break the traditional paradigm – they can play chess while everyone else plays checkers.
Larry’s investment through Volition was key to the growth and expansion of Chewy, and as a result, Larry and Ryan remain “fast friends.” While GameStop is a different story than Chewy, Larry’s involvement in the turnaround has become clear through his nomination and proceeding placement on GameStop’s Board at the 2021 annual meeting.
At one minute after market close on Friday, Larry Cheng shares some of his thoughts on Twitter about companies breaking traditional paradigms.
Every company is a company. However, on rare occasion, some companies become movements. The company ends up standing for something much larger and more significant than itself. These companies break the traditional paradigm – they can play chess when everyone else plays checkers.
While it is not clear if GameStop’s latest board member is talking here about his philosophy towards the future of the gaming retailer, we can at least appreciate that he understands the greater impact a business can have on the world.
GameStop’s hiring frenzy amid “one of the biggest online transformations in history,” continues, as LinkedIn unveils the latest VP of Merchandising from Amazon.
The “hiring frenzy” first coined by the now former VP, Marketing Evan Smith in a February 2021 post highlighted by GMEdd.com has reigned true, revealing GameStop’s success in acquiring new talent at a rate that can be compared to the likes of the hottest new startup.
One of GameStop’s favorites to poach from? Amazon.
Revealed on LinkedIn, GameStop has now recruited six-year Amazon veteran Rob Mayer to serve as GameStop’s Vice President of Merchandising, alongside the several other VPs of Merchandising with tech backgrounds.
At Amazon, Rob Mayer most recently served as Amazon’s Head of Vendor Management, Consumer Electronics.
Upon the recruitment of Matt Francis as Chief Technology Officer in February 2021, GMEdd.combegan keeping track of GameStop’s latest hires using data from LinkedIn. While our last story highlighting GameStop’s recruiting released in May, the company has since doubled their new talent.
Jenna Owens, Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President
Neda Pacifico, Senior Vice President, Ecommerce
Elliott Wilke, Chief Growth Officer
Phil Landis, Director Ops Integration
Sean McHugh, Director of Environmental Health and Safety
Skyler Ramirez, Vice President, Instock
Joshua Flores, Inventory Specialist
Aaron Curtis, General Manager
Kristy Roach, Director IC/QA and Learning
John Crampton, Senior EHS Manager
Matt Furlong, Incoming Chief Executive Officer
Mike Recupero, Incoming Chief Financial Officer
This indicates, from just what’s available to us publicly on LinkedIn, GameStop has poached double-digit Amazon employees, making an e-commerce centric pivot the clear trajectory.
