Founded in 1999, ThinkGeek was an e-commerce website that sold geek culture merchandise, such as toys, clothing, home décor, electronics, collectibles, and more. The company was founded by Jen Frazier, Jon Sime, Scott Smith, and Willie Vadnais, and was originally a side project headquartered in Virginia.

Originally, ThinkGeek produced merchandise catered for the open-source software community. To gain some exposure, they delivered a care package filled with their unique merchandise to Slashdot. A news website that gears its content towards geeks. After being fascinated by their merch, Slashdot decided to give them a shoutout. This is where ThinkGeek’s rise to fame began.

Just two months after being founded, ThinkGeek was purchased by Andover.net, a company that owned Slashdot. A year later, Andover was then obtained by VA Linux Systems, a company based out of California which sold computers containing the Linux operating system.

Va Linux Systems went on to change its name to Geeknet in 2009 whilst still owning ThinkGeek. In the same year, ThinkGeek achieved sales of $50m and saw its workforce rise, reaching 83 personnel in 2013.

It was not until 2015 when ThinkGeek would change hands once more. On May 16th the American retailer Hot Topic proposed an offer to purchase both ThinkGeek and Geeknet, reportedly for $17.50 per share. Yet, just 3 days later an unnamed company placed a counter-offer of $20 per share. Hot Topic was given a further 3 days to place a counter-offer of their own but no such offer was made. The deal was closed by July 17th and the unnamed company was revealed to be GameStop.

The mascot for ThinkGeek: A monkey named Timmy!