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.

Comments

Memories

[Chess_the_cat]

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.

Re:shame

[TWX]

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.