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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...
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?
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.
I know this is meant to be a joke, but 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. It will be online only. This isn't the end of the world, but it is a little sad.
Their assets are basically their storefronts. That's a lot of retail space that is certainly not going to be transformed into something I would ever want to visit.
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
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.
They have lost their way so badly that in my recent experience they're not really even good for that any more. Plus I have a Fry's down the street, and if I didn't Amazon could have it here tomorrow, along with my new socks ...
They seem to be a store that doesn't know what they want to be, honestly. They used to be big when CB radio was popular and people were buying into that, and some were continuing on into HAM radio, but once that faded and the TRS-80 was crushed beneath the wheels of the PC industry they just sat there befuddled. They could have surfed the wave of PC homebuilders I think, but they missed that. They could have morphed into a Radio Controlled models franchise, but that ship has probably sailed now.
Maybe Amazon should buy them and convert them into Amazon fulfillment centers.
My local RS still carries a lot of that stuff... they built organizer drawers so they could take up much less space than hanging bags on pegboard, but much was still available. Shame, because sometimes you just need a pack of resistors, or a small transformer, and you don't want to deal with shipping and credit cards for something that should cost $1.50.
I will say though, that I saw the writing on the wall when they started stocking cheap consumer electronics and the employees there didn't know where to find the resistors... at that point I'd just waive them off and say I'll find what I need myself... none of them knew anything about electronics anymore.
To see them die now is more of a relief than a sadness... they were dead 5 years ago.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Sears and Kmart problems are more due Eddie Lamperts inept management. JC penney actually is returning to profitability this year.
Best buy is a dinosaur and newegg and amazon are eating its lunch.
I actually went to one the other weekend. They actually had a good selection of resistors, capacitors, and so on. As others have said, I can't think of another brick and mortar anywhere near me where I could pick up components *now* if I wanted. I think there was a phase where they got all of that out of their stores to chase yet another business strategy. I think that was a mistake because it removed radio shack from the minds of the few people who still would go there to chase a market that didn't place any value whatsoever in their company.
I really wish they had settled into some run-rate business model that could've sustained them while continuing to stock those piece parts.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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."
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.
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
carbon film?
you mean carbon. or metal film. I don't think you meant both ;)
fwiw, carbon resistors fail by opening; metal film usually fails by shorting. sometimes you want an open instead of a short, should the part fail.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
I worked there ( at a Canadian one) about 8 or 9 years ago (just before the Canadian one became "THE SOURCE BY CIRCUIT CITY" when the lease on the Radio Shack name came up for renewal in Canada) and one guy I worked with (who had been there since it was Tandy Leather) said they used to make employees memorize resistor colour codes. When I was there, we had to memorize Rogers cell phone plan particulars instead. It had basically become an over-sized cell phone kiosk. Their assets must be worth something - that have a lot of prime real estate in high-traffic retail areas.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
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.
Agreed. There really aren't brick and mortar stores any more (at least in my area) that contain a good selection of electronic components. Radio Shack has consistently reduced its stock in favor of cell phones and other junk where they don't really provide any value or differentiation.
I would love a place that has a solid selection of electronic hobbyist stuff: Arduinos and their ilk, electronics (try to find a 12.6V transformer on a shelf anywhere), a comprehensive set of switches, LED strips, prototyping stuff. Radio shack has many/most of these products, but rarely exactly what I'm looking for, so it's usually not worth the trip. I want a brick and mortar AdaFruit or SparkFun. I suspect that does not exist because it's too hard to make money at it.
It makes me sad. I used to love Radio Shack.
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.
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.)
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)
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 were trying to ride the Maker wave, they advertise pretty heavily in Make magazine, and had a sizeable booth at the last Maker Faire I went to, but their in-store selection seems too limiting to really be successful -- for $100 on eBay I can order component kits that cover 99% of what I can find in Radio Shack's inventory.
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.
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.