A convenience store, convenience shop, or corner shop is a small retail business that stocks a range of everyday items such as coffee, groceries, snack foods, confectionery, soft drinks, tobacco products, over-the-counter drugs, toiletries, newspapers and magazines. In some jurisdictions, convenience stores are licensed to sell alcohol, although many such jurisdictions limit such beverages to those with relatively low alcoholic content such as beer and wine. Such stores may also offer money order and wire transfer services, along with the use of a fax machine or photocopier for a small per-copy cost. Some also offer to sell tickets or recharge a smart card, like the OPUS card in Montreal. They differ from general stores and village shops in that they are not in a rural location and are used as a convenient supplement to larger stores.
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually referred to as black goods due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators, although nowadays, these would be considered black goods, some of these being connected to the Internet. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell both entertainment, communication, and home office devices and kitchen appliances such as refrigerators. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver. Later products included telephones, televisions, and calculators, then audio and video recorders and players, game consoles, personal computers and MP3 players. In the 2010s, consumer electronics stores often sell GPS, automotive electronics, video game consoles, electronic musical instruments, karaoke machines, digital cameras, and video players. Stores also sell smart appliances, digital cameras, camcorders, cell phones, and smartphones. Some of the newer products sold include virtual reality head-mounted display goggles, smart home devices that connect home devices to the Internet and wearable technology.
Blockbuster, officially Blockbuster LLC and also known as Blockbuster Video, was an American-based provider of home movie and video game rental services. Services were offered primarily at video rental shops, but later alternatives included DVD-by-mail, streaming, video on demand, and cinema theater. Previously operated by Blockbuster Entertainment, Inc., the company expanded internationally throughout the 1990s. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster consisted of 9,094 stores and employed approximately 84,300 people: 58,500 in the United States and 25,800 in other countries.
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebranded under its current name with an emphasis on consumer electronics in 1983.
The video game industry is the industry involved development, marketing, and monetization of video games. It encompasses dozens of job disciplines and its component parts employ thousands of people worldwide.
In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation of game consoles began on October 30, 1987 with the Japanese release of NEC Home Electronics' PC Engine. Although NEC released the first console of this era, sales were mostly dominated by the rivalry between Nintendo's and Sega's consoles in North America: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis. Handheld systems released during this time include the Nintendo Game Boy, released in 1989, and the Sega Game Gear, first released in 1990.
Pokémon Snap is a 1999 first-person photography game with rail shooter style gameplay mechanics developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was first released in Japan in March 1999, and was later released in June 1999 in North America and in September 2000 for PAL regions. It is a spin-off game in the Pokémon series, being one of the first console-based games for it, and featuring many Pokémon rendered for the first time in real-time 3D. The game was re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in December 2007 and Wii U's Virtual Console in 2016.
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas, and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. As of January 30, 2021, the company operated 4,816 stores including 3,192 in the United States, 253 in Canada, 417 in Australia and 954 in Europe under the GameStop, EB Games, ThinkGeek, and Micromania-Zing brands. The company was founded in Dallas in 1984 as Babbage's, and took on its current name in 1999. The company's performance declined during the mid-late 2010s due to the shift of video game sales to online shopping and downloads and failed investments by GameStop in smartphone retail.
PLBY Group, Inc. is an American global media and lifestyle company founded by Hugh Hefner to oversee the Playboy magazine and related assets. It is currently headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
The Aaron's Company is an American lease-to-own retailer. The company focuses on leases and retail sales of furniture, electronics, appliances, and computers. The company sells through the company-operated and franchised stores, e-commerce platform (Aarons.com) and national retail partners using virtual lease-to-own technology Progressive Leasing.
EB Games is an American computer and video games retailer. First established as an American company in 1977 by James Kim with a single electronics-focused location in the King of Prussia mall near Philadelphia, the company has grown into an international corporation. EB Games's parent corporation, GameStop, has its headquarters in Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. When Electronics Boutique was an independent company, its headquarters was in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania, near West Chester.
The history of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) spans the 1982 development of the Family Computer, to the 1985 launch of the NES, to Nintendo's rise to global dominance based upon this platform throughout the late 1980s. The Family Computer or Famicom was developed in 1982 and launched in 1983 in Japan. Following the North American video game crash of 1983, the Famicom was adapted into the NES which was brazenly launched in North America in 1985. Transitioning the company from its arcade game history into this combined global 8-bit home video game console platform, the Famicom and NES continued to aggressively compete with the next-generation 16-bit consoles including the 1988 Sega Genesis. The platform was succeeded by the Super Famicom in 1990 and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991, but its support and production continued until 1995. Interest in the NES has been renewed by collectors and emulators, including Nintendo's own Virtual Console platform.
The NPD Group, Inc. is an American market research company founded on September 28, 1966, and based in Port Washington, New York. In 2017, NPD ranked as the 8th largest market research company in the world, according to the independent AMA Gold Report Top 50 report. The NPD Group operates in 20 countries, across more than 20 industries.
EzyDVD is an Australian specialist home video retailer offering DVD, Blu-ray, and Ultra HD Blu-ray discs for purchase. At its peak in the mid-2000s the company had over 70 retail stores around Australia, but is now exclusively an online retailer.
Hastings Entertainment was an American retail chain that sold books, movies, music, and video games and functioned as a video rental shop. As of 2016 it had 126 superstores, which were mainly located in the South Central United States, Rocky Mountain States, and in parts of the Great Plains and Midwestern states. Hastings Entertainment stores were also located in many college towns in the U.S. Hastings Entertainment was headquartered in Amarillo, Texas.
Micro Center is an American computer retail store, which has its headquarters in Hilliard, Ohio.
GameCrazy was a video game retailer based in Wilsonville, Oregon. It was a subsidiary of Movie Gallery. The stores were often, but not always, located adjacent to Hollywood Video rental stores.
Yogen Früz is a Canadian chain of frozen yogurt and smoothie stores that also serves healthy alternative food products. The chain is run through company-owned, franchised, and non-traditional partnerships. The chain operates worldwide and has been rated one of the top 500 franchises for over 20 years. The global headquarters is in Markham, Ontario in the Greater Toronto Area of Canada.
FuncoLand was an American video game retailer based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, that specialized in selling new and used video game software. It is considered the first video game retailer to allow consumers to sell and trade used video games. The brand's parent company Funco Inc. was established in the home of David R. Pomije in 1988, initially as a leaser of video games to Minneapolis–Saint Paul video rental shops, and then as a mail-order business specializing in used video games. Upon the success of this venture, Pomije moved the business to a Minneapolis warehouse, and began opening retail outlets nationwide. In May 2000, Funco was acquired by Barnes & Noble for $161.5 million, and was merged with its subsidiary Babbage's to form GameStop in December 2000.
$25 million USD (2012)