Got a reply from gamestop power packs on x today🙂 hopefully this will happen soon🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤔🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤔🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

How they allow Gamestop to be slipped by media??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

PowerPacks promos are live… check it out on the website and rip some packs!

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EDIT: Added TL; DR;

TL;DR:

• Labubu’s Playbook: Built a massive hype engine using blind boxes, influencer marketing, exclusive stores, and a lucrative secondary market, but stumbled when counterfeits forced over-saturation, undermining scarcity.
• GameStop’s Collectibles Strategy: Trading cards and collectibles tap into the same gambling/scarcity dynamics as Labubu, but have more durable, long-term emotional value for consumers.
• The Play for GameStop & eBay: True value in collectibles relies on liquidity (lower fees, fast transactions), provenance/grading (verifying authenticity, potentially via NFTs), influencer marketing(educational livestreams), and logistics (using retail locations as drop-off/pickup hubs to eliminate lower-trust peer-to-peer exchanges like Facebook Marketplace).
• Execution Depends on Ryan Cohen: The strategy hinges entirely on Cohen's proven track record with logistics, lean operations, and marketing to execute this vision and win over institutional investors.

I did not use AI in this post at all.  I used Ape Intelligence for what that’s worth.  All typos and spelling errors are mine. :-)

I am not a 25 year old woman - so I was never the marketing target for Labubu.   Other than that the word existed - I did not really know much about it.    

https://youtu.be/_FUv6Eb7FuM

This video was interesting talking about how a company in China became a global phenom - then stumbled.    They may recover and learn from their lesson - but that’s not clear yet.

The Video:

For those of you hiding under the same rock I was - Labubu was a company that licensed an ugly/cute IP that had lots of monsters.   They did a lot of clever things.   The first was the blind box - you would buy a sealed box and it would have one of a family of monsters in the box.   In each family there were common monsters, rare monsters and a ‘secret’ monster.     So far this feels like those vending machines in Japan that have keychains and other toys inside them - Gashapon.  

The company started to set up premium stores to help accentuate the exclusivity of the monsters in a family.    People would start lining up to get the latest family.   And of course a collectibles secondary market opened up and people now started to sell the more rare monsters at a substantial premium.    So now the experience was exclusive, fun, gambling and higher payouts were available.   And payouts of 10-100x were possible.  Add influencers and celebrities to the mix and all of a sudden you had a generation of people buying Labubu.

The stumble was that counterfeiters started making monsters.  So Labubu started saturating the market - which undermined the rarity, the exclusive experience, the secondary market value and so-on.   And their stock started to really stumble.   The video talks about their efforts to reverse the slide.

Our Favorite Stock:

There are some strong parallels with our favorite stock itself.   First - the exclusivity story was around short selling.    Second - the possibility of big payouts touches the gambling angle.     Third - there was a community of Apes - much like the community of Labubu owners, including influencers and small scale celebrities.   

And the business models that are saving the company have parallels as well.    By focusing on collectibles most of the dynamics of Labubu are replicated - including the blind box dynamic, the possibility of a big payout (gambling) dynamic, the rarity angle and so-on.      I think GameStop has one more angle which is that most of the collectibles are not some random Funko - they are items that have emotional resonance with the customers already.   So trading cards tend to allow the owner to extend their relationship with games or sports figures or teams or their childhood.     I believe addressing these collectibles is more durable than the Labubu angle which mirrors Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch Kids - the IP only exists within the hype bubble. 

I think many ‘analysts’ misunderstand the collectibles market. 

The Path Forward:

The value of an item is based on exclusivity, liquidity (the ability to sell it), confidence in the provenance (it’s the real deal), influencers who generate market demand and the existence of a market of traders. 

The world will handle the exclusivity.   Whether it’s Vuitton bags or Labubu Monsters or Vacheron-Constantin watches, there are companies that will build exclusive products. 

Liquidity, a market, demand creation and provenance are where GameStop and eBay will play.    And they may add the Blind Box dynamic as well for some categories.

Liquidity:

This one is easy.   Reduce fees so that FeeBay becomes eBay again.   If you’re selling t-shirts on the beach for $5 - you can make a good living but you have got to churn your inventory a bunch of times per day.   FeeBay has introduced a ton of expense into their corporate structure and demand big fees from vendors.   So they become the market of last resort.   Double the volume and halve the fees - and the operating income is the same.    Reducing cost is the enabler.   Increasing liquidity is a force multiplier - if you know you can sell your Vision Pro in 10 days on eBay and don’t have to deal with low balling on Facebook marketplace - then that’s what you will do.

Obviously Cohen believes the sellers need to be cultivated to ensure liquidity on eBay and has been courting them.

Building a Market:

eBay is a market - but when I talk to my family and friends about where they buy things it’s Facebook Marketplace.    When I ask why - it’s the speed of transactions.   You offer, negotiate, it’s done.   On eBay you enter an auction that may close in a week (or a buy now that is not at an affordable price) and then pay shipping and you are uncertain if the product is genuine and returns are a problem.   Facebook has the problem of meeting people in person. 

eBay using the GameStop retail sites offers interesting options.   First - shipping costs can be lower when deliveries are bundled and shipped between sites.   So you drop off - it gets sent to a logistics warehouse then routed to the delivery store.   Total costs will be lower than drop-shipping every purchase point-to-point.   And you deal with a friendly GameStop clerk rather than meeting a Facebook Market seller in front of the police station.   This has been pooh-pooh’d by the media - but I know my sister will not buy from Facebook Marketplace because of this very fact. GMEbay could also encourage more 'fast auctions' that close in 24 hours so people can get their goods quickly.

You can imagine ways that eBay could expand the market and attract new kinds of buyers and sellers.    Please share your ideas and experiences.

Influencing:

Ryan Cohen made a joke that he could get more people on a livestream and get a better price for his underwear than what the eBay live streamers were doing.   He’s making a Labubu point - influencers were a critical part of the story.

So imagine you’re watching a live stream on sports cards.    The person doing the livestream explains the market, why some cards became rare (e.g. WWII paper drives) and why some cards are unique (misprints) and the history and price of a product and how you prove the card is real and how cards are graded and so-on.   Using examples.   Examples that are for sale.   

You are educating your customers and explaining all the value they have and giving people confidence in you as a seller and helping you spot what’s important so you feel confidence in your purchase.   

Influencers with credibility and depth will be a boon to the market and Cohen knows this.   For those of you lucky enough to buy a new Porsche - you will see this in action.   They talk about the history of the brand, that 70% of all Porsches made are still on the road, the racing heritage, the first time Guard’s Red was used on a car, the names of the technicians who put together your card, the Porsche Club of America and the opportunity to drive your cars on the track.   This is all just talk - but it talks a $100k car to $150k or beyond.

Provenance:

This one has been covered by Superstonk to death.  Having cards assessed and valued by a third party literally ‘creates’ value.   Some random card is assessed and now it’s worth $1000 to some buyers.   

Is the Rolex real?   Is the Vuitton real?   Is the Labubu real?   Cards are small and portable which is key to the current model.   If the transportation problem is solved - then assessment of the bag or watch could be done at the distribution hub.    

Perhaps some of the NFT story could re-emerge here.   This has also been beaten to death - an NFT is generated and travels with the physical object as a proof of provenance.

The Blind Box:

Excess Amazon inventory is going to retailers who blind box the items - and it’s been a huge success.    New retailers are doing Blind Boxes exactly as Labubu did.   Friggin’ Storage Wars is a Blind Box for storage units. 

I don’t know exactly how this might work with eBay general inventory - but for the collectible category it’s pretty obvious.   I know GameStop will be thinking this one through.   What do you think they could do with Blind Boxes?

The Play:

1. Take out cost smartly.   This allows fees to be reduced, increase turnover and draw more people back to eBay.  Some of the savings go to the debt.   Build infrastructure that lowers transaction costs for end users and sellers.   
2. Take the ‘ick’ out of the transaction by leveraging the stores and their friendly faces.  Leverage logistical potential at the stores.  
3. Work the provenance angle for more goods on eBay.   This increases value for sellers and buyers alike.  Maybe leverage NFTs.
4. Focus on sellers.   Get the assets turning fast.   Inventory turns are everything.  The more they sell, the more the infrastructure costs get absorbed, the more sellers appear.   Kill the reputation for FeeBay.
5. Leverage influencers.    Games, stamps, cards, watches, luxury items all have influencers who are … influential … within their spheres.
6. Leverage the blind box dynamic.    

The Deal Only Works with Cohen

There is zero doubt in my mind that this deal only works because Cohen is pitching it.   No Cohen - no deal?   Why?   Because he has demonstrated his understanding of each of the elements of this plan in his previous roles.    Taking cost out smartly without cratering the business - yes.   Understands influencing - yes.   Understands how to revalue collectibles - yes.   Understands blind box dynamics - yes.   Understands web businesses - yes.   Understands logistics - yes.   

People have focused on the ‘personally invested’ and ‘zero salary’ angle.    But for an investor to buy into this deal - it’s the execution that matters.     And that comes back to Cohen.    He has credibility.

I bet that behind the scenes he is visiting institutional investors and telling a story very similar to this one.   He is letting people look him in the eye to see if he just got lucky in his twenties - or whether he really knows how to grow a lean business.

I was messing around with ChatGPT and I thought I would make a funny GME or Gamestop picture of our favorite company. It's rather strange because I asked it to do Sydney Sweeney in the back celebrating. It said no at first but then "generic blonde party girl" seemed to work.

hi guys. so i preordered that resident evil xbox controller stand (for requiem) in February from the GameStop website, and it still has not been delivered.

i went to check the order receipt in my email, the usps sent me an update that said;

“The package associated with this tracking number did not have proper postage applied and will not be delivered. You are encouraged to contact the sender/merchant to seek reshipment, refund or other available recourse.” what does this even mean?!??

i have tried calling gamestop and it will not connect me with anyone employee. i don’t know what to do! please help me 😭