Hot Topic To Buy ThinkGeek Parent Company Geeknet

jones_supa points out the news (also at Ars Technica, and -- paywalled -- at the Wall Street Journal) that clothing and music retailer Hot Topic has announced plans to buy Geeknet, parent company of ThinkGeek and ThinkGeek Solutions, for $117.3 million. ThinkGeek Solutions is a distributor of video-game themed merchandise through licensed web stores. Hot Topic Inc. will pay $17.50 per Geeknet share. Privately held Hot Topic, based in Los Angeles, has more than 650 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Geeknet will become a Hot Topic subsidiary. This news inspires some nostalgia here; ThinkGeek was for a long time one of Slashdot's sister sites under the umbrella of VA Linux, and I had some fun years back helping to set up the ThinkGeek booth at LinuxWorld in New York.

Comments

Re:What next?

[Dragonslicer]

My initial reaction was also "WTF?", but this isn't as completely insane as you might think. I don't know if they still have them, since I haven't checked in probably 10 years, but I used to go into Hot Topic once in a while because they had a few racks of video game-themed t-shirts. So ThinkGeek isn't too far off from stuff that they at least used to have in the stores.

Re:What next?

[alexander_686]

I think you are missing the point. They are not going to merge the two organizations. Hot Topic will remain Hot Topic, ThinkGeek will remain ThinkGeek. Both will carry their own lines – I expect some cross over but not much.

However, in one sense they are very much alike. They both market pop culture goods to a niche market. Their goods are partially based on fads so they have a short shelf life. Lots of custom stuff that you can't find in a more traditional retail shop like Amazon or Wal-Mart.

What they are going to combing is the back off stuff. Accounting and procurement are at the top of my list.

Re:What next?

[Samantha Wright]

Yep, you've hit it on the head: the fashion world heavily depends on hyperspecific brands. A parent company may own an immense number of outlet identities that aim to cater to a specific submarket. Hot Topic is a good parent company for ThinkGeek because their model is already built around faddish, meme-driven trends (as you said), but the two target audiences have little enough overlap that this will be a substantial diversification to their marketing reach.