Clothing retailer Hot Topic, Inc. has acquired Geeknet, Inc., the company behind online retailer ThinkGeek for $122 million.

ThinkGeek, for those not familiar with the store, is an online retailer that caters to, as the name may suggest, geeks. The company sells a range of products including clothing, electronic and scientific gadgets, unusual computer peripherals, office toys, pet toys, child toys, and caffeinated drinks and candy.

Occasionally the site brings out a product that goes viral in popularity, making it a long-popular online store for those working in the tech industry.

“We are pleased to have entered into this agreement and look forward to adding Geeknet’s innovative products and services to our portfolio,” Chief Executive Officer of Hot Topic Lisa Harper said in a statement. “Geeknet’s unique concept and approach to the online retail community is a strong fit with our business strategy, which is focused on delivering great products for avid fans of various licensed properties, and we are excited about the opportunity to help drive profitable growth and further enhance value for Geeknet’s customers.”

“We remain focused on increasing our visibility, providing a platform to stimulate ideas and creativity, and expanding our product offerings to keep up with industry and customer demands. As a subsidiary of Hot Topic, Geeknet will be well-positioned to achieve these goals ” Kathryn McCarthy, Chief Executive Officer of Geeknet added.

Down memory lane

Although the ThinkGeek site was founded in 1999, the company has some other more interesting roots in the first dot-com bubble.

Parent company Geeknet wasn’t always known by the same, previously being known as SourceForge, Inc., and before that VA Linux Systems, Inc.

The name won’t ring a bell to anyone who would describe themselves as a millennial, but as Bloomberg points out, if you’re older you might remember it as having had one of the most successful tech initial public offerings (IPO’s) of all time.

The company, founded in 1993, sold computers in the consumer market that had Linux installed as their operating systems; it may sound funny to many in 2015 that anyone thought they could use Linux to compete with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows in the consumer market, but the 90’s were a different time. Windows had really only come to dominate the market by the mid 90s (Windows 95 being the killer release as it natively supported internet access, unlike Windows 3.11 before it) and many couldn’t conceive that there shouldn’t be multiple popular operating systems on the market, as there once had before.

The IPO at the height of the boom:

VA Linux was given an official IPO price of $30 per share on December 9, 1999. The first actual trade went off at $299. It reached $320 that first day, before closing at $239.25, a 698-percent gain over the opening offer. To this day, it remains the largest first-day gain in Nasdaq’s history.

18 months later the company was out of the hardware business altogether, and what remained eventually evolved to Geeknet today.

Image credit: 48419962@N07/Flickr/CC by 2.0