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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.)
Great article on their imminent demise. http://www.sbnation.com/2014/1...
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
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?
Maybe Amazon should buy them and convert them into Amazon fulfillment centers.
Last time I went there I needed a 1/8" audio jack and some solder. It was great, I don't know where else I could have gotten those things in 20 minutes, but $8/year doesn't keep a store open, and the times I need those connectors are few and far between.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I don't mean to one-up (ok, actually, I am), but my first computer was from Radio Shack as well. A TRS-80 (later, it would be called a Model I, but at the time it was the only model so didn't need a steenkin' model badge). 4 whole kilobytes of RAM. A tiny BASIC interpreter in-ROM which probably started life as someone's punched-tape baby. 300 baud I/O for highly unreliable audio cassette storage. A video monitor that started out life as a gutted-down RCA black-and-white TV. It's the reason I'm a SW/Systems Engineer instead of an Electrical Engineer.
I was in a local Radio Shack late last year. There was virtually nothing there for me. I guess some of the Arduino toys were cool, but for my degree of urgency I'd be far better off shopping online. And their consumer electronics stopped being interesting sometime shortly after the 1980s.
A little sad, a little nostalgic, but the same way as discovering the ol' neighborhood has changed so much and all the landmarks you remember are gone. If they bulldozed the whole thing, it wouldn't be much different.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
not my experience, the couple stores I frequent in Chicago and Wheeling over the past decade have good people and various cables/connectors/components I've needed. Seems the business model was people would come in for one simple thing on emergency basis and see often also buy whatever cool thing was on sale (for example good headphone)
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.
How long as it been since you went into one?
For the last couple of years I've been able to buy switches and relays and lamps at the one near me, and they haven't harrassed me when I've gone in either.
Tandy Corporation (remember when they were called that?) got screwed up a long time ago. They tried that Incredible Universe chain as a competitor to Fry's, but screwed that up so badly that Frys ended up taking over those store locations after Tandy spent all that money building them. They tried "Tech America" as a way to go austere and provide us with an outlet for all of the discrete stuff that we needed in a local warehouse, but somehow that folded too after they renamed the store "Radioshack.com".
By the time they started putting components and heathkits and stuff into their regular stores again the damage was already done.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.)
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.
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.