GSI Commerce – How to Catch a Falling Knife With PR

GSI Commerce announced larger than expected losses on July 31. The headline at that time in the WSJ online edition was:
GSI Commerce Posts Wider-Than-Expected 2Q Loss; Shares Slide. The following sentences give an idea on the what was published:

"... the stock had risen 65% in the past year. ...GSI Commerce reported a loss of $25.7 million, or 41 cents a share, from a year-earlier loss of $13.1 million, or 27 cents a share. There were 30% more shares outstanding in the most recent quarter. Revenue rose 41% to $264.2 million. Total costs and expenses jumped 44%."

Things like that are usually fended by firing some employees and the stock price tends to rebound.
The Boss - Founder of GSI Commerce, Trusting His Instincts - how NYTimes.com calls him has a differnt approach.

Withe "The Boss" is meant here Michael Rubin, the Founder and C.E.O. of GSI Commerce Inc. Hi solution is to get the NY Times to publish an article about him. The message of that article is basically "Rubin is a nice guy after all". The NY Times writes that article, "As told to Amy Zipkin" and publishes it on the web site on August 7 and to give the whole story a little more umps, it also gets printed in the real world: A version of this article appeared in print on August 8, 2010, on page BU8 of the New York edition.

Rubin is quoted in the NYTimes article: "I trust my instincts, and I’m not afraid to fail."

That is not a bad attitude. I am very curious whether his approach to handle the stock price works out. It's a PR world.

GSI Commerce, Inc. provides e-commerce and interactive marketing services to large businesses that sell products directly to consumers in the United States and internationally.