Top brass leads exodus at Gamestation

Gamestation will lose its product director, head of pre-owned and buying boss in August, as its York office is integrated into GAME’s Basingstoke HQ.

MCV understands that around 60 central office staff have taken redundancy at the specialist – after almost all employees were offered the chance to re-locate to the south.

Approximately 20 employees – just a quarter of those offered relocation – agreed to move to Basingstoke, including sales director Steve Cunningham, IT director Andy Grainger, finance director Phil Ellis, senior product manager Anna Downing, online product manager Jorden Jones and head of operations Kevin Murray.

However, MCV understands that product director Andrew Thompson has declined the opportunity to join GAME’s HQ, and has been snapped up by Asda. Meanwhile, head of Gamestation Direct and buying Frazer Locke and head of pre-owned Greg Walton are also set to leave the specialist.

GAME Group COO for the UK and Ireland Terry Scicluna said: In January we announced plans to create one Group support function in the UK, to help GAME and Gamestation stores deliver passionate service and great value for money to customers.

The integration plans are progressing well, and we are delighted that so many of the Gamestation team made the move to the Group office in Basingstoke last month.

It included a great cross-section of people from all functions – IT, human resources, commercial, marketing, operations and finance. Their passion and skills are a huge asset to the Group, and we now have specialists from both brands working together generating new ideas and initiatives.

As expected, some of the team have not moved to the GAME Group office, and we’re grateful for their continued support through the transition and wish them all the best for the future.

At the same time, teams from both brands have been successfully testing and integrating the IT systems between both chains, including installing new tills in all Gamestation stores, and we are on track to complete the full project by September of this year, as planned.”

Gamestation’s York office will remain operational after the restructure, housing a call centre and repair centre.