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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.)
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 don't think you need to follow their share price to figure out that a store that sells random crap and never seems to have anyone working there might not be doing so well.
But why now? Even back in the 1980s they were selling random overpriced crap, and there were rarely any customers in the stores. They were openly hostile to the few that ventured in, demanding name, address, and phone number for the privilege of buying a battery. Why is it only now, three decades later, that they are finally going under?
You just nailed the fundamental problem with RS: the total lack of vision of what they wanted to be.
They followed the crest of every consumer wave for years, but missed the PC market by offering their not-100%-compatible boxes (software had to be written specifically for a RS PC because they did things like keyboards so differently). When it became obvious that the next wave was going to be build-it-yourself PC's, they were caught flat-footed and never caught up.
In Australia, they quickly dropped components, the "battery of the month" club and virtually everything else that might have set them apart and became nothing more than an expensive place to by mid range consumer electronics. History shows just how wrong that bet was, even in a small market like Australia.
It's a shame to see the brand go, but I said goodbye to Radio Shack sometime in the late 80's and never set foot in another store.