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RadioShack Near Deal To Sell Half of Its Stores, Close the Rest
mrspoonsi sends a Bloomberg report about a possible endgame for RadioShack. The company will reportedly sell half its store leases to Sprint, and the remaining stores will simply close. Negotiations are still underway, and the deal could fall through — but as it stands, the stores still open will likely change to Sprint's branding.
Sprint and RadioShack also have discussed co-branding the stores, two of the people said. It’s also possible that another bidder could emerge that would buy RadioShack and keep it operating, the people said. The Chinese backers who took the Brookstone chain out of bankruptcy, Sanpower Group, also have been in discussions about bidding for RadioShack assets, one person familiar with the talks said. ... The discussions represent the endgame for a chain that traces its roots to 1921, when it began as a mail-order retailer for amateur ham-radio operators and maritime communications officers. It expanded into a wider range of electronics over the decades, and by the 1980s was seen as a destination for personal computers, gadgets and components that were hard to find elsewhere.
Remember in Short Circuit 2 when Johnny 5 was able to repair himself by grabbing parts from a Radio Shack? You go in there now looking for electronic components and you find a dusty pack of alligator clips and maybe a sun damaged 4xAA battery holder. It's sad.
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Sears might make it to see 2016, but it would surprise me tremendously if they made it to see 2017. A couple months ago a couple of us in the office were talking about the stock market and we were betting if RadioShack would see 2015 or not...I was thinking they'd made 2015 but probably not Q2 2015.
Sears I'd place probably as a Q2 2016 failure.
None of that stuff was ever on clearance when the place was closing. They stuck sale tags on everything and kept prices the same. Every store does this.
Not exactly true. I purchased some stuff in the last two weeks that was actually marked down at Circuit City, Same at CompUSA. But you have to know the going street price of something, be willing to wait for them to mark it down and be standing there when they do.
Personally, there isn't anything at Radio Shack that would make me want to hang out there to wait for the sale...
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Sears will be next.
And I won't be the least bit surprised when it happens. Last year I ordered a drill press from Sears online, to be picked up and paid for at the local store. No confirmation of the order via email, and when it was supposed to have arrived, the store said they hadn't received it but would call to make sure it was delivered the next week when they received their regular shipment from the warehouse. Called the next week, still not there. I went out and bought a press from another place, and never heard back again from Sears.
When someone orders several hundred dollars' worth of product and you can't even be bothered to follow up on that order (or even deliver it), you don't have a sunny financial future ahead of you. Sears used to be a great store, but management at all levels seems to be a pack of idiots hell-bent on driving it into the ground.
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Craftsman used to be a great brand: I have power tools from my grandfather that still run AND for which I can still get parts (from Sears!). I have bought a few mysef over the last 5-10 years the the quality is rubbish.
Indeed. Craftsman used to be American made, too. Now >90% of all the Craftsman merchandise at Sears is made in China or Taiwan. The quality went away with it. The warranty is still there but that doesn't help when there are fewer stores open shorter hours than there were back in the 80s.
If you're wondering how this happened, just look at the Sears/KMart CEO. He's a devout Randian who is turning Sears into Lord of the Flies as he tries to abolish "collectivism" from his stores. To keep his employees in constant fear he is also known to phone in to company meetings and scream at people from thoussands of miles away on a video screen.
It's possible for them to turn around, though, should they care to do so.
The only way they could possibly do that would be by shit-canning their idiot CEO. Unfortunately when he took control he also made it nearly impossible to fire him. He'll ride that ship down and then find some clever trick to cash out.
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Discrete components used to be worth the 500% markup, if you needed one capacitor and didn't want to mailorder 5000 to get it.
Unfortunately they sold their souls to the cell phone market, a market that didn't really need them.
When the Tech America stores were rebranded Radioshack.com and then closed, I bought $2000 worth of stuff for 90% off. I guess I'm preversely looking forward to doing that with the local Radioshack retail locations. Get all of the buttons, switches, LEDs, capacitors, and the like that I can conceive of a use for. Maybe even get a handmic for my ancient Realistic 10m ham radio if they've got any dusty boxes in the back.
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He also pitted the different sections of the company against each other. Rather than cooperatively working as a whole unit to make profits, he seems to think that making the online regular store compete with the brick-and-mortar store, and making the online outlet store compete with the brick-and-mortar outlet stores is a good idea. It's not. It just pisses off customers when they attempt to buy something they saw on the website by going in to get it, and find a different price on it and a store unable to match that price even though they can pull it up on their own computers.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.