GameStop informed more employees of layoffs this week, in part related to the closing of its Shepherdsville, Kentucky, distribution center, according to several LinkedIn posts and reporting from local publication WDRB, which obtained a copy of a letter sent to employees. It is unclear how many employees will be impacted. GameStop did not respond to Retail Dive’s requests for comment.
LinkedIn posts from a variety of employees — such as a technical support engineer, a facilities manager and an operations project manager — say they were notified that the Kentucky distribution center will be permanently shut down in June, with their last day at the company being in March. The company opened the 630,000-square-foot Kentucky location in 2016, and a real estate listing updated on Tuesday says it will be available starting July 1 and currently serves as the retailer’s “North American Distribution Hub.” A Reddit post on the r/GameStop forum this week also said the center employees were told during an all-hands meeting that the closure was happening “to save money and hopefully promote growth in the company.”
Another LinkedIn post from a senior operations manager indicates some employees located in York, Pennsylvania, also received notice of layoffs this week. GameStop has a 700,000-square-foot York, Pennsylvania, distribution center listed on its latest 10-K report, which it opened in May 2021.
GameStop’s latest job cuts come as the retailer is hyper-focused on profitability. During its Q3 earnings report in December, CEO Matt Furlong re-emphasized the company’s core goals.
“Looking ahead, we have two overarching priorities: achieving profitability in the near term and driving pragmatic growth over the long term,” Furlong said on a call at the time. “[W]e are going to be very judicious with respect to how we allocate capital to the core business.”
The company had enacted a round of layoffs earlier that week, with multiple engineering employees announcing their departure on LinkedIn. GameStop did not respond to Retail Dive’s requests for comment about the layoffs in December, but Furlong noted during the earnings call that “a large portion of our cost cuts will stem from reductions in corporate headcount that have been made during the back half of this calendar year.”
The most recent quarterly report showed sales decreased from $1.3 billion to $1.2 billion year over year, with the retailer’s cash position declining about 43% from $1.4 billion to $804 million.
Last May, GameStop hired Belk CEO Nir Patel as its new chief operating officer, replacing Jenna Owens who left the role after seven months on the job.
