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Radio Shack Reported To Be Ready for Bankruptcy Filing
hij writes A number of news reports are coming out the Radio Shack is ready to file for bankruptcy. The stock price has tanked on Wall Street. There are conflicting reports that they are seeking more credit and they may be bought for their assets. (The Wall Street Journal has the story, but paywalled.)
Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Great article on their imminent demise. http://www.sbnation.com/2014/1...
insightful, informative, interesting and funny comment about how radioshack needed to die years ago
Probably inevitable, but sad nonetheless. Some of my fondest memories of my Dad are of visiting Radio Shack with him.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
Well that depends: do people still use carbon film resistors?
How many times is this now?
This has been going on for years it seems.
I actually assumed they'd gone under by now, but apparently they've dragged out the death throes for a long time.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
With the resurgence in the maker movement, RS might have been in the right position to take advantage of it, but instead had tacked towards a mobile phone mall storefront with some overpriced toys, horrifically overpriced, low end consumer electronics, and batteries.
Sadly, there's probably not enough volume in the maker niche to keep all of the stores afloat at competitive pricing (i.e., not $35 for an Uno board that can be had from Amazon for $18 and from foreign shippers at $12), but it would be awfully cool to have racks of parts and components in at least one store in every town.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Adafruit stole the resistor right out from under you.
Radio Shack is just a cell phone store now anyway, so what assets do they actually have?
I know the fashionable thing to do is to bash Radioshack, but there really isn't a brick and mortar that still sells components for tinkerers. If I needed a capacitor for a project, I could nip out and get one from the drawers. They haven't done well with consumer electronics since the Tandy days and I'm amazed they've lasted this long. It's sad to think that this great institution well probably go through a fire sale and disappear. Malls, what's left of them, will just replace it with something like Gap for Dogs or whatever. I know many may not mourn the loss because of things like $30 cables, but I will mourn the loss for the unique items they did carry.
I bought my first computer at Radio Shack. It was a Tandy 1000, XT compatible, with an 8088 processor, 2 floppy drives, and 384K RAM (which got upgraded to 640K). I haven't been in a Shack for many years (and apparently neither has anyone else), and I'm not surprised, but it is kind of sad.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
When I was growing up. Used to be one of the few places you could go and buy electronics parts, and even leatherworking products. They had an excellent line of electronics instruction material, the Forrest Mims books were priceless. Was the place where I bought my first computer a TRS-80 Model 1
. The shame is that throughout the years they never seemed to know what they wanted to do. Later it seemed like a zombie corporation, where the people who had a passion for the products had left, and all that were left were bean counters being driven by the random lurching motion of retail fads.
With them out of the buiss-ecosystem then maybe we can get a new corp to open real "Radio Shacks" around the country/world. One that maybe centers on US made products. Yeah I know... wishful thinking.
The quote that is often misattributed to Bill Gates ("640K should be enough for anyone") was actually made by John Roach who was CEO of Tandy (RadioShack's parent company @ the time) during the 80's and 90's.
The actual quote stated that 2K was "enough" for anyone, and it was in reference to the original configuration of the TRS-80 Model I.
They had some of the most popular computers at the time, such as the Model 1, Model 100-102, Color Computer 3, and Tandy 1000.
They have small stores, and yet, they have empty shelves. Where is the products? They could still have sold PC compatibles.
[In the 1990s, they should have put 68000 processors in their popular color computer like they had planned, but they were worried that it would cut into Tandy 1000 sales.]
If they go, I will miss them because they sold inexpensive computers that I could afford : (
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
First we grew our own food. ...
Then we built our own electronic components ....
Then we soldered our own circuit boards (but bought the components).
Then we plugged together our own circuit boards (but bought the circuit boards).
Then we wrote our own software (but bought the computers).
Then we administered our own networks (but bought the software).
Then we signed up with a cloud provider.
Gradually, we as humans find ourselves able to do less and less with more and more.
Sears, K-Mart, Radio Shack, JC Penny and maybe Best Buy will be gone soon.
And what market do all of those businesses have in common?
They sold to the middle class.
We are becoming a nation of mostly Wal*Mart shoppers.
Radioshack should have been the go to place for mini-dishes, unlocked cell phones, tv cables,etc
They instead got rid of the geeks who knew stuff and replaced them with the same type of perky clueless
people you would find in an at&t or t-mobile. Why would I buy the exact same cell phone and plan that I could
buy in a tmobile and at&t store. Radioshack never offered what the consumers really wanted
a good unlocked cell phone and our choice of prepaid plans.
Radioshack could still recover but they need to reduce the number of stores, expand its online offerings and make
deals with more competitive suppliers like monoprice. They also need to refocus radioshack back on customer
service with "friendly geeks" that help you with everything and provide honest unbiased advice which is so lacking right now.
I also submitted the story but got scooped. I wrote this:
Our favorite source of resistors, odd batteries, and cell phone accessories is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to the Wall Street Journal. Millenials won't remember a time when it was a legitimately geeky place to go with lots of new at the time computers on display, tons of electronic kits and DIY gear, and a Free Battery Of The Month club card. Sadly, Radio Shack never found a clear way forward from those roots and swung between emphasizing several categories of small consumer goods.
It's really too bad. Radio Shack was a great place when I was growing up, but floundered about from one market experiment to the next and never found its footing. I really hope I'm wrong and I wish them well, but I can't imagine how they could possible make it through this.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Maybe Amazon should buy them and convert them into Amazon fulfillment centers.
Has Radio Shack made any efforts to remake themselves? I mean, I remember when they had a purpose of selling hard to find cables, electronic parts, kits, and
electronics. Now all I see mostly in a Radio Shack is phones. One of the most competitive and low margin markets you can sell. On top of that they don't even sell a lot of the niche stuff they can make money on in store. You know have to order it online and many times these items are a must have today, not a week from now. Their cable line up went from practical, to selling Gold plated china crap, I bought two patch RCA cables a while back that did not even have soldered connections! Yea, Gold plated but come on Radio Shack they had so much resistance it wasn't even funny. Oh, I could go on about old batteries, terrible China made products, and horrible help that can sell a phone and that's about it. Radio Shack needs more then a bankruptcy they simply need to close up shop.
They could have "gone back to their roots" by dumping all the common electronics that you can get anywhere and addressing the do-it-yourselfers by hopping on the robotics/Arduino bandwagons. Turn the retail floorspace that used to be occupied by crap TV's with a robot combat ring or workshop, focus on hands-on projects again, have in-store Arduino workshops and local demos of user projects and robotics competitions. Connect with the local high/middle-school to supply robotics/coding extra-curriculars, sponsor robotics workshops and have those kids drag their parents into the store after class to build their own projects. I don't even participate in most of that stuff, but I could see those would have been great paths to pursue a new market share.
They would still need to close many locations and better compete with the mail order business, but they would have created a different customer segment that would be more enthusiastic than the "I need another charger for my phone" crowd rather than reduce their own business to carrion for the vultures. This was a missed opportunity.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
Gateway electronics http://www.gatewaycatalog.com/
Electronics exchange: http://electronics-exchange.com/
Oh, microcenter might have some of that stuff too.
It was a coincidence that the stock price tanked...
Story
So I found myself needing a 2N2222 the other day. I wanted it NOW I couldn't be bothered to wait 3 days for mouser.com to mail one two me. So I remembered that my friendly neighborhood radioshack carries all the components I need! I head down there and much to my chagrin all they sold anymore were extremely common A/V connectors, cables, and mobile phones by low paid high school kids. Where were to remote controlled airplanes/cars/boats, the CB's, misc electronic parts, knowledgeable sales staff with white scraggly neck beards? I didn't go there expecting to save a buck. No, I expected to pay 3+ times the price of getting it online somewhere. But I could have it NOW! Then I remembered I hadn't been into a radioshack in 10 years. *sigh* I'll miss you electronics parts store.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
If anything proves the commoditization of hardware, the death of Radio Shacks proves it. What was once a vital lifeline is...nothing. Personally, my last straw was when they insisted that I give full contact info...while paying with cash, and that was only an emergency purchase of batteries, not anything esoteric. Eff that. They won't be missed; they've been dead for years anyway.
I think Radio Shack lots its way.
It use to be a paradise for what we now call Makers.
Except for the bulk of the stuff being cell phones. There were a lot of things that we could use to make and repair our electronics. Wires, Solder, cables. connectors, converters, even a decent set of integrated circuits. When I got my hands on a dumb terminal, Radioshack was the place to go for a null modem adapter, so I can hook it up to my PC. Or to get resisters, breadboard and a capacitor and a parallel connector to make a Parallel 8 bit D2A converter which you can hook up to your PC and have quality sound (better then the beeps of the 2 bit PC speaker)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I needed some odd audio cables last year, so that I could patch an mp3 player into a PA system. I was thinking that I'd find crimp-on 1/8" ends, and make the cable myself.
I got to the store, and was having trouble finding what I wanted (I found solder-on, but the crimp-on slot was empty), so I thought I'd look at what cables that they had that I could cut up ... and they just happened to have a cable that was 1/8" to bare wires.
The year before, I got a bunch of various cables so that I could patch into a mixing board to record audio from a conference that I was at. I've had other times when I was outfitting a chase vehicle for a solar car race, and they had the parts that I needed to get all of our various antennas on the roof of the van.
So yes, it helps for those 'I really do need it now' situations. In some cases, Guitar Center might have it, but the closest one is more than an hour away, and they wouldn't have had the components to make the specific cable that I needed, and they sure wouldn't have had N-connectors and magnetic antenna mounts.
I hope they can turn it around ... I'd be willing to pay a membership fee just to have them around for when I really need a part.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Radio Shack has been preparing for bankruptcy for years. There's nothing new in the WSJ report that haven't already been reported before. Radio Shack stock price dived to $0.26 this morning and climbing back up. I bought 80 shares @ $0.48 on Tuesday. I might buy more share later. This is a long shot bet that might triple or lose my money.
... which I remember was a post on Slashdot when Radio Shack failed to modernize to some *previous* definition of modern.
Meanwhile the past few CEOs who drove the company into bankruptcy still get paid millions every year. Must be nice to be paid more than almost everyone else in the country for utter incompetence.
I grew up in a major city where there were companies who ran parts counters where you could actually buy good quality parts, like resistors, caps, and transistors for pennies (unfortunately, they are gone now). I appreciated the ability to get stuff without needing to deal with mail-order and pay a small fortune in shipping. But Radio Shack was never a good option. The stuff they sold was crap, and it was over priced crap. RS substitution transistors often failed to match the parts they were supposedly a substitute for in some critical parameter. Even phone jacks would be mis-wired or intermittent. The staff was worse than ignorant, they gave customers wrong information. They certainly lived up to the motto "You've got Questions, We've got blank stares!" I'll honestly be glad to see them go, while they might not be replaced with anyone better, some people who might have opened decent parts houses have been discouraged from doing so because having a dozen shit shacks in their city was a barrier to drawing in customers.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Where am I supposed to go for support for my TRS-80 Color Computer now?
I couldn't believe it last fall when I saw a Radio Shack grand opening in DC. I should have taken a picture.
There's no Fry's here in the East coast, but there is Microcenter which carries SOME components and lots of microcontroller stuff.
closing Radio Shack means there is no longer any place you can just run out and grab a specific capacitor or DB9 connector or whatever
No, it means that the company selling overpriced defective floor sweepings may go away, and that could well open the door for another company that may treat their customers better. If RS is replaced by someone worse, the new company will go out of business too. But they could be replaced by someone far better, even if it is "only" a small private company serving a local market. Such companies were discouraged to exist before, since a large part of their potential market were more likely to go to one of a dozen shit shacks scattered around their city than track down the one decent seller. And even if they are not replaced, I'll not miss the chance to buy defective junk at amazingly inflated prices.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This is a perfect example of hiring a bunch of MBAs who then use terms like "Low hanging fruit" and change the company from technology company to high pressure cell outlet with junky high margin accessories.
I love when the darlings of the MBA world like Blockbuster turn out to be so riddled with cancer that they can't survive.
My next prediction is that the MBA riddled aviation world is next. The whole concept of "calculated misery" where they shrink seats not only to pack more people onto the plane but so that they can charge extra for getting what should actually be a mandated minimum leg room is classic MBA "cunning" that will blow up in their BSchool faces. The only problem is that the bastards are the sort who weasel their way into "retention" bonuses.
But to any CEOs who might read slashdot, right now go to HR and tell them to fire every MBA even if they are doing a non financial related job as their Machiavellian training is probably causing massive misery for anyone around them.
They have small stores in failing malls scattered all over the country, which are stocked mostly with cell phone accessories. We already have kiosks full of the same stuff in the same malls, which have less overhead.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
As far as I can tell, the RadioShack business model is to royally rape anyone walking through its door. A couple of years ago, I was helping a friend out in the middle of nowhere and we needed a network cable. RadioShack was close by but they wanted to charge $12 for a 6ft cable. We had to buy it since there wasn't any other store close by and couldn't wait for deliveries. Maybe, just maybe terrible customer experience had something to do with RadioShack dying.
were never primarily in business to serve hobbyists and DIYers. They were around to sell parts to TV repair shops, industrial maintenance shops, etc.
Once consumer and industrial electronics became uneconomical to troubleshoot and repair at a component level, there was no need for the places that sold the parts. The handful of remaining hobbyists and radio hams weren't enough to pay the bills, so most of the parts houses gave up and closed their doors.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Last time I went into a radio shack last year, I needed a USB A to mini A to charge my MiFi hotspot, I had left my cable at the airport. Its a pretty ubiquitous cable, but when I could not find one and asked, they were like "Oh we dontt carry those anymore" How can you not carry one of the most common USB cables in the World? No matter, their other cables were > $20 anyway. I ended up getting the cable at WALGREENS!! for $4.
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
It'll be a sad day when Radio Shack is gone. Here are a few of my favorite things:
- Drawers full of overpriced components and do-dads in small-quantity bubble packs. All except the one you need.
- Not-so-great stereo equipment that you could get cheaper nearly anywhere else
- Strange electronic toys
- Cellphones that nobody actually buys
- Not knowing quite where I should stand to get in line to pay around that counter in the center of the store
But here's what I'll miss most: being asked for my contact information each and every time I buy even just a couple of small parts, and having to either politely decline or else patiently repeat myself several times while the salesman types it all into the computer.
Although Radio Shack has many obvious disadvantages compared to various big-box and online retailers, none will ever be able to match the special experience it provides of having an enormous amount of your time wasted for just a few parts gained and a few dollars spent.
I'm gonna miss that [sniffle].
Why oh why do I have to hit load more comments to see more the 5 comments now. It is slightly annoying.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I'll also miss the buy-it-now option for small parts
Instead of disappearing, maybe they can try one more time by making RS small-part kiosks at makerspaces, staffed by makerspace members who use some of the money they get to cover the cost of monthly dues for the makerspace.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Radio Shack having grown up with it as the source for so many amazing things, but it should have evolved years ago. Microcenter is a chain that is closer to the big box format - they have cheap computer and gaming stuff (kind of like the old CompUSA) but they also have a pretty big section way in the back dedicated to hackers/makers with real, modern components such as Arduinos and nice tools.
Radio Shack didn't have the floor space to sell useful stuff and keep their geek cred section... They want to be a boutique but people don't buy boutique stuff at strip malls anymore...
Having just dissed them above, I feel obligated to acknowledge that Radio Shack sold me the best toy I ever got. It was the "100-in-1 Electronic Project Kit". Like all great toys, you could do lots of different things with it. It was endless fun. It had a set of basic electronic components attached to springs, and you wired projects up by bending a spring to the side and then poking a wire into it.
Some projects were easy (few wires) and some were hard (many wires), but all were fun. Most worked well, some worked a little, and a few didn't work at all. I don't think I ever once got the "Three Transistor AM Radio" to work. But the "Electronic Organ" was endless fun. You could turn a knob to change the pitch. And if you did that just right, you could drive the cat absolutely crazy!
I bought a couple of updated "150-in-1 Electronic Project Kits" (150? wow, even funner!) for my kids at garage sales a few years ago, but those didn't hold their interest for even an hour. I guess kids nowadays aren't interested in stuff like this - it seems pretty lame in the age of video games (we only had Pong back then) and cellphones (all phones had cords back then, and were the property of AT&T in those monopoly days). They don't know what they're missing. And unfortunately, neither does their cat.
I live in Canada, they closed down shop YEARS ago.
First Heathkit, now this!
I needed a USB A to mini A. I ended up getting the cable at WALGREENS!! for $4.
Yep, if you need batteries/SD cards/cables/mice in an emergency, walgreens is good. Especially if you have a 24hr one. Usually that stuff is near the front too, unlike wal-mart.
Well, in the original conception it was exactly a retailer, opened in Boston in 1921. It didn't sell its own product brands until 1954. (Tandy didn't purchase Radio Shack until 1962.)
Yeah, sad for me too. When I was a kid, in the late 1970s, with an interest in robotics and computers., my father and I would visit Radio Shacks to get various parts for my projects. Often he would drop me off at one specific one while he shopped around the mall, and I'd look at all the parts, and maybe type in some simple BASIC programs on a TRS-80. Usually when he came back he would pay for one or two small items of parts, like some LEDs or optoisolators or a pack of eight simple ICs (half of which often did not work well) or a relay or something like that. People in Radio Shacks on Long Island seemed to used to recognize us as a pair, perhaps in part because my dad was old enough to be my grandfather. On my website front page is a picture of of the robots I made that included Radio Shack parts (mostly for the interface between a Commodore PET and the robot motors, which included optoisolators and relays -- the RS relays sometimes stuck and smoked and I had to whack the relay box to fix it. :-). I miss those days in many ways, especially now that my father is gone. Thanks Dad!
I learned much about electronics from various cheap electronics guides there, and much about the fundamentals of programming from Dr. David A. Lien's "Users' Manual for Level 1 TRS-80 Micro Computer System" which had various exercises in it. I did not have a TRS-80 at home, but I would work out the exercises with pencil and paper. I just picked up that manual from my bookshelves as I wrote this to check the author's name. Thanks Dr. Lien!
Looking up his name just now on the WWW, I see this interesting tidbit about a free and open source connection to my learning back then I was not aware of until now:
http://www.trs-80.org/level-1-...
"Level I BASIC was based on âoePalo Alto Tiny BASICâ, a 2K version of Tiny BASIC written by Dr. Li-Chen Wang for the May 1976 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. Because Dr. Li Chen-Wang placed his BASIC in the public domain (he labeled it "@COPYLEFT; ALL WRONGS RESERVED"), Steve Leininger, the designer of the TRS-80, was able to use it as a starting point. He added floating point math, cassette, keyboard, and video routines, doubling the size of the original code to 4K."
Anyway, makes me want to run out to a Radio Shack with my kid right now to buy something! Although it's also true I later learned I could buy higher quality parts for less elsewhere. Even now I could get a better Raspberry Pi on Amazon then what Radio Shack lists for more money on their website. And one trip to a store pushed by a father out of nostalgia is not the same as many trips to a store pushed by a kid.
Going to Radio Shacks years later was such a different experience, with the focus on selling cell phones and such. That did seem to be changing back to more educational DIY recently though. You would think Radio Shack would somehow have floated high on the maker movement, but apparently not, sadly. This also reminds me a bit of the "Sears" issue. Sears, given the history of the Sears catalog, should have dominated online sales the way Amazon ultimately did. But Sears somehow could not make the transition. It's so expensive to keep up a store front of course, so the price difference is understandable. It would take something else to make them a compelling destination, like a bigger emphasis on hands-on demos or training or starting MakerSpaces next door or something like that. Or maybe unique starter its with more stuff in them, even if they cost more.
I hope even in bankruptcy that Radio Shack retiree pensions are still paid out!
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I remember when ( 1960's ) we would go to Radio Shack to test the tubes in the back of my dad's old Black & White TV. It was the one store where you could go and plug the tubes in and test them yourself, and they would have replacements in the store! Those were their best years, you could find everything for Radio equipment, old TV and such. As things went digital, fewer people fixed their own equipment and fewer kids seem to experiment with this stuff. Radio Shacks decline started way back in the mid 1970's
America is an idiocracy. We don't have time for smart stuff like that. It makes the dumb people feel ashamed and inadequate.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Last time I went in one near me, most of the components that used to be packaged and hanging on the walls in the back of the store had been replaced with tags stating "Temporarily out of stock". I joked at the time that you only needed a lot of those tags hanging on a wall and a counter in order to open a Radio Shaft store. That was 10 years ago. Haven't gone back since.
you mean carbon. or metal film. I don't think you meant both
He could have. Carbon film resistors can be made to higher precision than carbon composition types, but typically are less expensive (but have more noise) than metal film types. There is nothing wrong with them, used in the correct application.
I have a MicroCenter and a Fry's nearby.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I recall when we had to go to the store to upgrade my 64K color computer to 512K and the day we bought the model III vs the II and all those colors....
Am I recall how excited I was to have all the extra memory to code in Basic....
I remember to days of sitting down at the university and typing on a VAX/VMS system. Some of my friends were buying domain names and using Mosaic in the computer lab.
Then there was that guy Linus overseas with that Linux idea and I had all those floppies from TSX-11.mit.edu to install x-windows.. but those bastards with the diamond media didn't allow the clock speeds to be published so I had to trade cards and code my own driver...
those were the days....
They just tried too late, and made such a tepid entry, it only served to get people exposed locally, and ultimately hooked up with SparkFun and Adafruit (or eBay for knock-offs which RS could damn well produce in Fort Worth, TX.)
First, RadioShack acknowledged there was a need, so they teamed up with Make and began carrying Arduinos.
Then they made a very public appeal to the community for feedback on how to be awesome again. http://hackaday.com/2011/05/27...
Next, the stores received a Bright White remodel that did nothing but highlight how few people there were in the store, and there was that Super Bowl commercial that may serve as Tandy/Radio Shack Corp's epitaph.
You may notice the rather complete shelf of branded electronics tools and racks of organized component drawers, largely missing from most of the stores you've been in lately.
They could be *owning* the SDR and Quadcopter market with DIY and R2R set-ups, workshops. The 3-D printing and DIY screen repair stations are cool but unused and expensive.
Bottom line; RadioShack's used to *BUZZ* with activity. There were computers humming, disk drives loading, an ungodly cacophony of "Made in Taiwan" beeps and squawks, CB's that needed squelch, and customers enjoying and producing that buzz.
It's gone, and no number of Cell Phones will bring it back.
Domestic Hi-Fi for the blue collar audiophile could, so could an in-house engineering department that hires grads and rewards them with equity. Take the damned thing private for a while, narrow the focus.
Hell, I'd even advocate for a merger with MicroCenter or buyout from Adafruit or SparkFun. (10MM could have bought more than greenfield construction)
Come on, NOBODY needs that many RC cars.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All that would accomplish is to move the date of bankruptcy closer.
Seriously, Slashdot does not seem to get that there's a reason why Radio Shack started moving away from catering to the maker/robotics/hacker/tinker communities back in the 1950's, and gave up trying to support them at all back in the 1990's. There's a reason why even Fry's got away from it when they started to get big and spread away from their original location and customer base. The maker/robotics/hacker/tinker communities are small and very thinly spread - *and* they're all very comfortable shopping online. There's no money to be made in trying to run a bricks-and-mortar store catering to them.
We have Bankruptcy Protection.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Many, many, MANY years ago (early 90s), I bought *one share* of Radio Shack stock because I read that they gave shareholders coupons to get discounts in the store. So, I paid like $20 and would get coupons every Christmas worth, I don't remember, like 20% off one item. Over the years, I got more than my money back for buying the stock. The stock was horrible even back then, but I never watch it. It split 2:1 a few times over the years, and eventually they discontinued the shareholder coupons so I sold my 8 shares. Over the long haul, I actually made a decent return on the stock too! (Despite it being a horribly performing company even back then.)
Since they failed to honor one of their extended warranties, they have been anathema for me.
So, I moved away from home late in 2013 and in with some friends in a nearby college town. They both worked at two different RadioShacks down there, and managed to help me get a job at the third RadioShack down there(the one in the mall).
It was my first time working in a mall(I'm 30 years old), and I really enjoyed it for awhile. I'm pretty knowledgable about things, I went to school for Electronics(unlike everyone else I worked with), and I'm the rare type that actually wants to save the person money(radioshack hates this). The problem with RadioShack from my perspective, was the management. People say that and people don't believe it, but yes, it's 100% the people who run that place. I would stand out on the sales floor by myself, the entire shift, while the Store Manger would sit in the back room, and no exhaggeration, have his feet kicked up on his desk watching youtube videos on his cell phone. To compare how absurd this is, everyone who isn't the store manager makes minimum wage + 2% commission on everything you sell(which is also taxed). The Store Manager, from what I was told by another one, makes about 35k-40k a year. So here we are, giving the people who put forth effort minimum wage, and the ones who kick their feet up on the desks like a cartoon 40k a year. Anyone see a problem here?
The other issue was the District Manager, who would do conference calls with all the stores 3 times a week, regardless of what you needed to do or how busy you were. If you were the only person there at 10:30 am and he decided to do one at 11 am, you still had to be on it, even while trying to help customers. This guy was also the worst human being I have ever worked for or with. He would literally berate managers on the conference calls, making fun of them and yelling at them. He also happened to be at our store the day I had my interview with the store manager, and looked at my application(before I even worked there, mind you) and told me that with 'All these different jobs, it looks like you have no direction in your life' and also berated my clothing and so forth.
When you have worthless human waste running your stores and districts, its not surprising to see the outcome here.
First point: "Blind CEOs" lose sight of their companies' original vision, which in this case was pretty hard to do, given the name Radio Shack. They originally got popular targeting the guys who were into radio, particularly things like HAM, and amateur/homebuilt radio RX units, and later CB radios. They SHOULD have maintained their role as a go-to place for that category of geeks and SHOULD have had in-store training and testing for HAM licenses and meet-ups for HAM operators both to keep firmly tied to that customer base, and to groom new generations of HAM users who would naturally also be "makers" and a growing customer base. Stupid "hired-gun" CEOs (see Scully the SodaPop/AppleComputer CEO) all too often try turning their new plaything into a generic customer product showroom because it's easier in the short-run for them to do that to spike their numbers and grow their stock options than it is for them to actually EARN their million dollar paydays by LEARNING the business they've been hired to helm.
Second point: Government regulation helped trash Radio Shack. Radio Shack grabbed and held a good portion of the computer industry in the US back in the early 80's with the TRS-80 model, model II, and model III. They were good machines that ran well and were used in many schools and businesses with their excellent crisp displays, solid OS and support in every sizeable town in the US with a Radio Shack. The the FCC decided they could get more prestige by regulating computer emissions "to protect the airwaves" (and probably protect the children too...) and ruled that the original TRS-80 line (the pre-CoCo, more professional machines) could no longer be sold, thereby eliminating the TRS-80 from the Apple/RadioShack/IBM fight. Attentive readers will note that the FCC does not actually protect the airwaves... they allow all sorts of things like electric razors, light dimmers, two-cycle engines, etc to completely TRASH radio reception (there's not much prestige in Washington D.C. attached to "regulating electric razors and light dimmers"). The Leaders of Radio Shack at the time tried to keep their fingers in computers with their "Color Computer", which had some nice features for its day and had OS-9 .... but the thing looked like a toy and like most such machines of its day traded color for low text resolution making it no longer suited for the businessmen who'd lapped-up the TRS-80 model II and III units.
I shopped there, the staff were helpful and knew about tech info before it was called tech. I bought a build it yourself metal detector there and found a four barrel Sharps derringer buried in a local park. Web shopping has killed many stores, I support local business owners. http://www.nramuseum.org/guns/...
I grew up knowing RadioShack in its glory. It was one of the few places where I could run out and buy parts to build some new gadget or circuit. And, it was one of the few places where you could not only test tubes from your TV, but replace them...yeah...when YOU could repair your own TV. And, it was fun.
I also had my first, unofficial job demonstrating the TRS-80 computer. They would let me come in and write software for it. I managed my paper route on their computers. The selling point, customers would come in and see me working. They'd ask what I was doing and I would tell them. Seeing how it ran my business contributed to quite a few sales for the local RS.
Yup....first HeathKit disappeared, RadioShack lost their way. Now, they too, will soon be gone....just like me.
A decent return even after factoring in 20 years of inflation?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Its clear from reading here and elsewhere that no-one likes the way Radio Shack hits you with the hard sell on cellphone plans the minute you walk in the door so why are they still doing it? Do they sell enough cellphone plans to clueless sheeple? Do the cellphone carriers pay them too much money for them to give up selling those products? Do they have contracts with the cellphone carriers that prevent them getting rid of the products? Or are their management too clueless to see what's going on in their own company and just how much is being wasted on crap like cellphone plans that they aren't making any money from?
How about being a total 3D printing solution place?
Go there, use their computers to upload your 3D design, or rent space there to create a 3D design, print on their 3D printer, and come back in an hour for the printer output?
Is it that hard for them to find a niche?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
And, at least as near as I can tell, at the same time as they stopped carrying widgets in favor of plastic toys, cellphones, and bottom-feeder car stereo equipment.
When I could get resistors, caps, ICs, transistors, even tubes, wire, connectors and adaptors, I used to go in there all the time -- because yes, I wanted it now, my time counts for a lot in my estimation of where to go and why.
I can't say who they were trying to target with this shift in emphasis, but I can tell you who they weren't trying to target, and that would be me and people like me. Who I suspect were the ones that made their original business model work in the first place.
I have this theory about publicly owned companies. They are forced to grow by the obligations to their stockholders. Without growth, even when the profits are decent, they are considered low performance -- so the emphasis is always, always, always on growth. No matter the consequences for the presently profitable sector.
But I don't think Radio Shack had anywhere to grow to. There are only so many electronics enthusiasts in any one town, so once they had addressed that, legit growth was over. In the computer realm, they had a pretty good day with the 6809-based color computer, but really couldn't keep the z80-based stuff going, and never got the PC compatible stuff into a workable price performance region. The plastic toys and cellphone sales? There never was a significant enough market for that stuff to make a difference. And so here we are.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Beat the hell out of a savings account for the $20. And that's ignoring the money I saved on Radio Shack purchases over the years. So, yes, it was unequivocally a great deal.
They have small stores in failing malls scattered all over the country, which are stocked mostly with cell phone accessories.
Hey! I'll have you know that at least a small percentage of those stores are in perfectly viable malls.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Radio Shack already extended it's credit facilities well beyond what is normal. In addition, one of the major creditors has claimed Radio Shack management violated the terms of their contract. They operated at a severe loss during the Christmas season, which is usually their "good" time of year. There's no way anyone is going to extend Radio Shack more credit. Get ready for the fire sale, with all the creditors lining up to get back whatever they can to minimize the loss from their investment.
USB had deprecated the mini standard in favor of the micro, which may be the reason. Although I recently bought a label maker whose USB interface to a PC is via a mini, rather than a micro or type B slot
Radio Shack stores used to be really cool places to find all sorts of great stuff. Long ago before most people here were born. They had parts. But alas, this was back before the Internet. Now we can find anything easily and Radio Shack seems to mostly carry phones and toys. It's a tough market.
May 11, 1989 and Apr 4, 1993.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In Silicon valley, this is the store to visit if you miss the original spirit of Radio Shark or Fry's. I came to San Mateo when I was ready to make a new gaming rig. The last one I assembled ran Windows 95 and I had no idea about new standards or merits of different components. After many years getting my personal life and career in order I finally had a little time for hobbies once again. The lady who helped me was very knowledgeable of which components would help me stay within in a budget and what exactly will work with given games and operating systems. There was no hurry during the process that took nearly an hour, or aggressive upsell for things I didn't need. Any other big stores did not have this friendliness to hobbyists for ages, if ever.
The only thing is missing is a place that sells more basic components like capacitors and resistors and tables with soldering items and breadboards to assemble electronics. Something like "Color me mine", but for electronics rather than ceramics. At least one store would do great in Bay Area.
I remember like it was yesterday, back when Radioshack actually had lots of electronic components stocked in-store.
One day I walked in, and asked the Radioshack salesman at the counter for transistors (they were all behind the counter). He waited a moment as if expecting me to say something else, then condescendingly asked me "Well, what kind"? I told him, "I'll need both PNP and NPN type." He smirked at me as if I was an ignorant noob who thought all transistors were the same voltage rating and gate activation curve, then proceeded to tell me exactly the opposite of this.
I pulled my hand out of my jacket pocket, my fist holding a large roll of $20's then said, "Yeah, I know that, I graduated high school too. I was going to buy 3 of every kind you have available to outfit my hobby workbench, but you can go fuck yourself." I asked to talk to his manager, but he was the franchise owner. Haven't been to a Radioshack in decades, which is why I can remember the last time so well.
Radioshack, I'm glad you're finally getting melted down for scrap, your magic smoke escaped long ago.
Back in 2000 I visited Washington, found a radio shack. The store look was shady at best, and empty. They would not allow me to buy a cable without my contact details. I did not buy it actually, do not remember the specific details, it was so long ago, I think I had the passport in my hotel room.
They could have "gone back to their roots" by dumping all the common electronics that you can get anywhere and addressing the do-it-yourselfers by hopping on the robotics/Arduino bandwagons.
They could, but that would seriously downsize the scale of their operations. For example, in San Antonio, a city of +1 million, they have near a couple of dozen stores. There is not enough enough demand for DIY or hands on projects to keep all those stores open. They could afford to run at most one or two at best.
The last time I was in the store was a big disappointment. I recall good experiences when I was younger. About two years ago, the CD player in my car died. It was old enough that it didn't even have an aux out port, so it was basically a radio after that, and then a speaker stopped working.
I bought a new deck from Future Shop and tried to install it myself, which turned out to be more difficult than I thought. As it turns out my car (2002 Nissan Sentra, Spec V SER) comes with a "premium" stereo package which includes 7 speakers and a SW with amp in the trunk which makes things vastly more complicated. If I have had a normal stereo, the process would have been painless likely. Anyway not even the Nissan dealer wanted to touch it with a 10ft pole (jerks).
Eventually have a lot of research online, it seemed the cause of my troubles (Alternator whine, speakers popping, etc...) was because of multiple grounds, and no matter which way I tried to ground the thing, nothing would work. Talking to places, they would want to rewire the whole car system (at large cost). Finally I found a possible solution, in a electronic device called a "Ground Loop Isolator". Obviously not something you find everywhere, and because I wanted it NOW (I was really sick of this project not working), one of only places that had such a thing was Radio Shack. So I went to Radio Shack for the first time in a long time.
Not only did none of the staff know what the hell I was talking about or even if they carried it, it took all the staff to even find one on their shelf. It was only 2 channel, so I would probably have to buy 2, and they cost 50$. As it was I decided to buy one and try it out. I did it in the parking lot as I brought my tools. As it turns out, it wasn't even the correct one, as it had only male connectors, not both male and female. I immediately returned it, and got my 50$ back.
Then I went online and got this:
http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...
It cost me 8$, was 4 channel, and had the correct connectors. I installed it, and it works fine. It messes with your levels, so you have to adjust them in your stereo setup at the start. Which can be annoying as every time I take my car in for service they seem to love disconnecting my battery, which resets my stereo to the defaults, which makes me have to set it up again. However it does what it is supposed to do.
So it is not surprising that they are going out of business. If you are going to sell overpriced electronics, you actually need staff that know what they are selling or talking about. Otherwise I might as well just go online and take my chances...
I can't buy such a simple electrical component as an inductor. No wonder.
No they don't. Masochists who like trying to figure out how to clip in the heat sink into some crapped board so that they don't blow out their ICs, solder. Or people who have lots of extra time to figure out what they burned out, desolder it, then go back to the store to get a new one solder.
Real geeks wire wrap.
Crimping meant that I could do it without digging out my soldering iron, waiting for it to heat up, etc. It also reduced the risk of a bad solder joint, or a burn. (quite possible, as I had gotten very little sleep over the past few days ... so much so that on the day of the event, I was looking so haggard that I passed out, and then was sent home).
And besides ... you can often solder *after* crimping, if you do a clean job (and use a heat sink). You can't crimp onto a solder-only connection.
I guess what it comes down to is that real geeks know when to solder, and when not to.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Even if RS would emerge from bankruptcy, what would they do after that? Keep having stores open that are only good for taking your broken rechargeable batteries for free recycling? Once in a while I go there to buy something, but then they either do not have something simple like standard transistors, diodes, or 120mm fans, or they charge so much for it that I could buy a dozen of them online with overnight shipping. They used to have stuff for the electronics and computer hobbyist and they used to have knowledgeable staff. Now they only have an array of dorks that can do nothing unless you tell them the catalog number just to have them fail to operate a cash register.