Michael G. Rubin
| Michael G. Rubin | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1972 (age 44–45) |
| Residence | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Occupation | Founder of GSI Commerce and Kynetic |
| Known for | Founding GSI Commerce (1998) and Kynetic (2012) |
| Net worth | US$ 2.7 billion |
| Spouse(s) | Meegan Rubin (divorced) |
| Partner(s) | Nicole Lapin |
| Children | 1 |
Michael G. Rubin (born 1972) is an American businessman. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Kynetic, a direct-to-consumer e-commerce company he founded in 2011. He is also Executive Chairman at each of Kynetic’s three businesses: Fanatics, the world’s leading online seller of licensed sports merchandise;Rue La La, a flash sales site; and ShopRunner, a members-only service for online shoppers. He previously founded GSI Commerce in 1998, selling it to eBay in 2011 for $2.4 billion.
Rubin also is a co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team and the New Jersey Devils hockey team.
Rubin has been included in the Forbes 400: The Richest People in America and the Forbes: The World’s Billionaires list. His personal wealth, as of June 2015, was valued at $2.7 billion.
Rubin was born to a Jewish family, the son of Paulette and Ken Rubin. His mother is a psychiatrist and his father a veterinarian. He grew up in Lafayette Hill, PA where he started a ski-tuning shop in his parents’ basement when he was 12 and two years later - using $2,500 in bar mitzvah gifts as seed capital and a lease signed by his father - he opened a formal ski shop in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.
By the age of 16, he was some $200,000 in debt and was able to settle with his creditors using a $37,000 loan from his father under the condition he attend college. Rubin agreed, continuing to operate the business, which grew to five ski shops before he entered college. He attended Villanova University for a semester before dropping out after realizing a large gain on an opportunistic transaction (buying $200,000 in overstock equipment at a deep discount with $17,000 borrowed from a friend and re-selling it for $75,000).
Using the proceeds from his serendipitous overstock transaction and after selling his ski shops, he went on to found the athletic equipment closeout company KPR sports - named after his parents initials - which bought and sold over-stock name brand merchandise. In 1993, the year Rubin turned 21, KPR reached $1 million in annual sales; by 1995, KPR reached $50 million in sales. In 1995, Rubin purchased 40% of the women's athletic shoe manufacturer Ryka.
In 1998, Rubin created Global Sports, which would later turn into GSI Commerce, a multibillion-dollar e-commerce company. At 38, Rubin sold his company GSI Commerce to eBay for $2.4 billion reaping a $150 million windfall. As eBay just wanted the order fulfillment business for large retailers so it could better compete with Amazon.com, Rubin was able to buy back the consumer businesses of GSI at a fire sale price. He repurchased: Fanatics, Inc., a licensed sports merchandiser; Rue La La, a flash seller, and Shop Runner, a retail benefits program, merging the three companies into a new entity named Kynetic. Rubin serves as executive chairman on each of his three companies’ boards.
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