GameStop named an ex-Amazon fulfillment director as its new COO as the company continues its 'transformation' under Chewy cofounder Ryan Cohen
- Jenna Owens, Amazon's former fulfillment director, will be GameStop's new COO.
- The move marks yet another Amazon alum to join the gaming company.
- Owens' appointment comes as Chewy cofounder Ryan Cohen continues to usher in changes at the company.
GameStop announced on Tuesday that it has hired a tech industry veteran to join its executive team.
Jenna Owens will be the company's new COO after spending four years at Amazon, according to her LinkedIn profile, and most recently serving as the director for Amazon's fulfillment operations. She also spent four years at Google and five months at the online clothing service Rent the Runway.
The news comes the day GameStop reported its fourth-quarter earnings, the first since the company's stunning stock frenzy in January, and reported a $215 million loss for fiscal 2020. GameStop's stock has had a tumultuous few months after an online forum drove the company's stock price to sky-high levels, but Wedbush said the stock's value is, "completely disconnected from the fundamentals of the business."
GameStop's appointment of Owens to the c-suite role marks yet another recruitment from Amazon's talent pool. In February, GameStop named Matt Francis as CTO after he spent time as an engineering leader at Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud arm.
Read more: GameStop's CFO didn't resign - he was pushed out after the board 'lost faith' in him, sources say
GameStop also announced on Tuesday that it hired Neda Pacifico as its new senior vice president of e-commerce. Pacifico spent over four years at Amazon, per the press release, but most recently comes from the pet supply delivery company Chewy, where she served as vice president of e-commerce.
Pacifico isn't the only Chewy alum involved in GameStop: Ryan Cohen cofounded the company and served as its CEO until 2018. Cohen is now the largest individual shareholder in GameStop, has joined the company's board of directors, and is determined to steer the company into a new era of digital gaming, one in which it could rival Amazon. Two other former Chewy execs - Alan Attal and Jim Grube - also sit on GameStop's board.
Before the pandemic, GameStop had become a dying relic of the video game world as players turned to digital games instead of physical copies. But the COVID-19 pandemic gave the company a slight boost as people, cut off from traditional means of entertainment, sought ways to keep busy at home.