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Radioshack Declares Bankruptcy
gemtech writes RadioShack has declared bankruptcy today. As reported Monday, the company has struck a deal to sell up to 2,400 of its approximately 4,000 stores to Sprint. From the article: "RadioShack said the remaining stores are expected to close. The company's franchise locations, as well as stores in Mexico and Asia, are not included in the deal. The bankruptcy announcement is no surprise. The New York Stock Exchange suspended trading of its shares on Monday. And RadioShack workers have told CNNMoney that some locations have already been converted to clearance stores."
So you have a bunch of stores for sale in tech-sector-friendly locations, just when Amazon is starting to establish a physical presence... Hmm.
That's what happens when nobody builds or repairs anything anymore ever. Throw it away, buy a new one. Luckily the corporate consumerists haven't adopted the same strategy yet, or we'd be seeing massive layoffs and turnover.
they probably still want your name, address, and phone number in the clearance store
Goodbye old friend.
Although, I thought you had died years ago.
Several years ago they were bought by Bell and re-branded as The Source. They still operate in Canada.
I wonder why they were able to survive in Canada and not in the US?
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
I was just in a clearance store today. Got a couple LED ornaments, and some t-shirts for $1.50 each.
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Given their crappy brands, such as "Archer" with terrible quality and that unmistakable Philco feel and design to them (not to mention their insanely high prices) I wonder how this did not happen years ago...
I worked there for about 3 years, up until about a decade ago. It was right at the turning point of going from a parts store to CellphoneShack. The first color screen phones and then first camera phones were just coming out, and everything was SELL SELL CELL PHONES!
Every 12-18 months or so I have had dreams that I had taken a second job working there again.. I always woke up considering them nightmares. Maybe those will stop now.
I stopped shopping there long ago because they stopped stocking anything useful. I don't need a cellphone from them, I needed parts, which they no longer carry.
Different management team.
I wonder if they have a Model 4p hiding in back. . . . .
I imagine because it costs more for Amazon to ship across borders, thus not stealing so much of the market share.
I do not know what The Source (They really called it that?) actually sells, but if it's the same as RS, then I bet they are looking at this with caution.
...except perhaps some kids' part time retail jobs.
Seriously, Radio Shack died a long time ago. Thankfully we now have alternatives for small-order electronic components, like Farnell/element14 and RS components.
They were bought by Bell? That's probably the only reason they're still alive. I have no idea why, either, because any time I've ever gone into a Source store, all of the stuff they were selling was more expensive than a Best Buy about a five minute walk away.
I am so happy this happened! The radio shack here is a waste of space. The employees are stupid and the items are marked way too high. I can get wires online for a fraction. 50cents online = 25$ in radio shack. FUCK EM. THEY DESERVED THIS SHIT
That deal with Lance Armstrong was probably not the smartest idea.
Several years ago they were bought by Bell and re-branded as The Source. They still operate in Canada.
I wonder why they were able to survive in Canada and not in the US?
The Source is hardly the Radio Shack we remember from the good years.
A management team capable of eating a salad without stabbing themselves in the eye?
Indeed. Often, the failure of companies is simply due to bad management or sometimes cooking the books.
I saw this day coming after I worked there for a period. Treating their employees poorly was part of their business plan. I am surprised that it took so long though. Kornfield isn't around to see this, but he must have seen it on the horizon as well.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
They stopped carrying what their original customer base wanted. Tandy disappeared, Dick Smiths has got even worse and I don't know how they are still going.
But then JayCar came along. Picked up all of their old customer base and have been making a killing ever since. Jaycar's buzz line is "Better. More Technical" you can go in there an they have bins of components - Love that shop - http://www.jaycar.com.au/
And I suppose monoprice.com are greedy for selling me a 2 dollars cable when the same one only cost 50 cents on eBay shipping included?
Monoprice, however, sent me six replacement cables for free (including shipping) when I emailed them that the five I bought had failed in the last three years.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I wonder what would've happened if they'd stuck with their original purpose of being an electronics hobbyist store? With the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino (etc), it seems like the number of electronics hobbyists has gone up quite a bit over the past few years. The problem is that by the time it's started catching on again, Radioshack had already largely abandoned that demographic.
They managed to make themselves irrelevant even while they should've been becoming relevant again. It's a shame.
If you're lucky enough to live in a town big enough to have a Best Buy or similar stores in the first place. The Source, however, is everywhere.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Before cell phones, before the internet, before computers... heck before REMOTE CONTROLS FOR YOUR TEEVEE!
Radio Shack was THE place for geeks to hang out. Kinda like a micro-Fry's in every mall. My dad swore by the Realistic stereos (I never did but when the only other alternatives at the time were Sears or JCPenney's for stereo receivers... They held up pretty well.) I cut my teeth on a TRS-80 Model 1 (Of course I promptly pooh-poohed it for the TRS-80 Model II because it's still true that geeks don't handle obsolescence well! Christmas was asking for the 150 electronics project kits or other gadgets.
Sure, it sucks now and we don't seem to live in a time where people play with electronics or chemistry sets anymore but a time where people are content to watch what the kardashians are up to and re-tweeting it on their phones because, gosh darn it, math is hard.
And now I watch as Radio Shack sells off to the Undying Lands. It's better this way anyway, it was a lousy cell phone store and the last time I went in there to buy a pair of speaker stands, to match the set I had purchased in that store 5 years earlier, I was told by the new kid manager that they don't have *and never sold* speaker stands.
yah... Fare thee well...
NOW GET OFFA MY LAWN!!!!
the rest will be unleased or sold to others
I think I've seen a few around. Especially if some of them get into Raspberries or the equivalent.
Different management team.
Nail on the head... Whish I had mod points today..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Hey, A one eyed manager in a kingdom of blind managers is CEO.
The long slide started when they stopped passing out those "Get A Free Battery Every Month" cards. To add insult to injury, you couldn't even buy batteries one-at-a-time anymore!
Whose going to honor my extended warranties?
.
Although the prices are way OTT to buy from on a regular basis they can be useful when you need something fast. I went into my local one (a mere 9 miles away in a nearby city) just before christmas and had to leave after a few minutes because the half a dozen AC fans in the high ceiling severely affected my tinnitus :(
We used to have Tandy stores that carried Radioshack stock but they were all bought by Carphone Warehouse in 1999 and now they only exist as an online store.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I worked there while I was in College in Buffalo in the Early '90's. I was going to school for my degree in Electrical Engineering, so I always used to get stuck talking to the folks looking for parts. I also used to piss the full timers off by selling the most computers in the store though.
They used to try to get us to attend Saturday Morning Sales Meetings and occasional District Sales Meetings without paying us. They also shafted the Store Managers on pay for overtime (they got sued for this).
The thing they did that really ticked me off was cut our commission rate at Christmas "because they advertise more during the 'Golden Quarter' ". More like a golden shower......
Who the fuck cares about monoprice. We are here to bash the losers who just went bankrupt. Nobody cares about your hand job service from monoprice.
Guess you better hope your paycheck is paid by one of the few vendors who can afford to pimp the cheapest prices on the 'net with that attitude, because otherwise nobody is gonna care about you fucking high-priced losers in the unemployment line.
And thus another Onion article turns from exaggeration, to plausibility, to truth:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how-radioshack-still-in-b,2190/
A shame. I was just starting to think it was making a modest return to its roots.
When I visited one a few months ago, they had quite a decent little display of Makershed Arduino kits and books about the Arduino, and they had a kind of dense metal cabinet with shallow drawers filled with individual parts, a much larger selection than they used to have hanging on pegs in blister packs.
I needed a new soldering iron and I bought one there.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
He's also the only one left. We managers eat each other, you know. The fittest survive, the rest are Soylent Green.
Frys or Microcenter, or even NewEgg.
Prime thing, though, they need to offer a small selection of electronics.
RadioShack dabbled in Enthusiast PC hardware, but gave up on it. I found them to be fairly priced for getting stuff I needed "now"
The business model needs to change, but RS was unwilling to be more than just another wireless retailer with a few toys and electronics added in the mix. If you have a B&M footprint, you have to give consumers a reason to come in. Providing goods that people usually can't wait for 3 days to get, or offering some sort of technical training for all the new tech, as well as easier returns (or pickup) for mail order goods is a start.
Maybe a "tech of the month" display to show people what they won't see at Best Buy or Walmart, but can order through a kiosk on site after checking it out. Many consumers still like the personal treatment when buying big ticket items, but they don't like paying a premium, or dealing with clueless stockers when they have a question.
Many years ago (like late 70's, early 80's) Radio shack was a place you could walk into, browse electronic components, and talk to and meet knowledgeable people to help with home brew projects. Then they expanded like hell, employed stupid corporate business policies like charging people to pay for store catalogs, ridiculous "i need all your personal info" so I can sell you a resistor, etc.
Haven't been in one of their stores in probably 20 years, surprised that it took that long for them to fail. In retrospect, they were so poorly managed, they weren't even good at failure.
Good riddance (and yes, I'm still pissed about the time you assholes tried to charge me money to send me a catalog of your stuff!!)
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Gotta say it. ... ...
Looks like the 80's got their store back.
Radio Shack has historically aggressively sued anyone who uses "Shack" in their name, incl. AutoZone, which used to be Auto Shack. Most companies don't want to spend the money to fight them and just change their name.
I am not part of your "younglings" target audience, but I never recall Rat Shack being a place to hang out. In fact, the only people who "hung out" at the stores where I grew up, worked there, and got pretty darn annoyed by kids browsing and not buying anything within the first five minutes. I might go there to pick up the latest copy of Police Call, look at the radios, and maybe get a Mims notebook or two. No, what you describe sounds like an independent electronics shop where "Can I help you find something?" was not code for "Buy something now or leave, so I can go back to talking dirty about the perfume kiosk girl around the corner."
Remember when Radio Shack was place to go for electronics hobby stuff and electronics components? Now (or guess yesterday) the few electronic components they have are 10x the price of Jameco, Digikey, Mouser etc, and they hardly ever have what you need anyway. They were doomed as soon as they jumped the shark into being primarily a cell phone store, and jacked up the prices on everything else. It was only a matter of time and it's amazing they sold enough cell phone plans to last as long as they did.
I get that the overseas stores are not included in the sale to Sprint, because that would make absolutely no sense, but what I really want to know is what happens to them when Radio Shack goes bankrupt. In other words, I want to know if my local Radio Shack located inside a Borders store (I kid you not) will still be open.
I imagine because it costs more for Amazon to ship across borders, thus not stealing so much of the market share.
I don't see how that would be an issue, given that Amazon Canada has its own presence.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
You still have to work? LMAO LOOOOSER
..but I feel a twinge of nostalgia on hearing this. I cobbled more than a few hi-fi experiments using parts sourced from rat shack in the 80's.
Still have an Archer SWR meter. And a Micronta multimeter I strongly suspect is a Fluke in a different dress.
Oh well. Fare the well, Rat Shack.. you failed at adapting to a world without buggy whips.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
RadioShack knew a few years ago that they needed to change but they continued to sell crap no-one wanted to buy from them like crappy cellphone plans and overpriced junk. That and the whole "we need your entire life story and all your personal details before we can sell you that pack of AA batteries" BS.
If they had acted sooner, dropped the crap people didn't want like the cellphone plans and anything else that they couldn't get people to buy, dropped the personal data harvesting and maybe introduced some new product lines that people might actually go to RadioShack to buy, they could have saved the business.
While you changed through the years I still remember going to Radio Shack for my vacuum tubes, or getting the parts and board to build electronics projects.
I remember typing in page after page of some game programmed in basic, as found in some magazine, and then running out of memory with just a half a page left.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Imagine being a RS employee finding out your new boss is Sprint. Fuck! I'd slit the first wrist from RS I'd slit the other from Sprint.
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Radioshack squandered every advantage. There was nothing that would have stopped them creating an online business that really leveraged and complemented their highstreet presence and distribution network. But the management team apparently chose to plunder rather than innovate
Really, how much would it have taken to recognize 5 years ago that they could allow someone to order their choice from a wide range of items before noon and pick it up in-store after 5pm same day, next day for more exotic items that had to come from an out-of-area warehouse. Not only would that be a faster way to order things, but would be a much better way to offer a returns policy and give a chance to sell cables and other accessories.
For the geeky well endowed, could they really not have offered 3d printed parts on a similar delivery schedule (or even in-store) or small scale manufactured parts. Could they not have had a travelling maker demo that moved from store to store every Saturday hawking maker slide or raspberry pis or some such things.
For the less geeky at heart could they not have let people order in-store as they consult with someone who can guide them - Amazon would sure get a lot more business out of my parents if they somehow improved their comfort levels with buying online.
It's not like they would have had to stop selling cell phones if they didn't want to.
Nullius in verba
That wouldn't be Softside, would it? When they first started to publish Basic games for the TRS-80, R/S threatened to sue for IP violations; only R/S, they said, had the right to say "Radio Shack" or "TRS-80" in print unless they paid royalties. So Softside began referring to them as "S-80 bus" games.
R/S got their wish: nobody ever discusses Radio Shack computers in print any more.
As long as I could get a better deal on a 486 ordering it through Computer Shopper than at Radio Shack or Comp USA, there's no point in using a brick and mortar store. And once the Internet came around, "whoa boy", we now have newegg and pricewatch that I know of to get superb deals.
DO NOT look at fork with remaining eye!
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ..."
"Yeah, sad for me too. When I was a kid, in the late 1970s, with an interest in robotics and computers., my father and I would visit Radio Shacks to get various parts for my projects.
I was tempted to follow creimer's example from that discussion and buy some stock or options hoping for a bounce, but I guess financially now I'm glad I didn't:
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
"Radio Shack has been preparing for bankruptcy for years. There's nothing new in the WSJ report that haven't already been reported before. Radio Shack stock price dived to $0.26 this morning and climbing back up. I bought 80 shares @ $0.48 on Tuesday. I might buy more share later. This is a long shot bet that might triple or lose my money."
Still might have been fun just for the nostalgia though, like by getting the actual stock certificates. Sorry buying RS stock recently was apparently not profitable you, creimer. You might want to request the actual certificates and hope they become collector's items eventually? See: ..."
http://www.investopedia.com/as...
"Before online brokers and personally-directed accounts, holding a physical stock certificate was a necessity, as this was the only way to authenticate stock ownership. This is not the case anymore. Although you may not need to hold a stock certificate, you may request one. The corporation you are holding stock in issues stock certificates, and you can get your certificate either directly from the issuing corporation, or by contacting your broker who may get the stock certificate on your behalf.
Detailed on the stock certificate itself will be your name, the company's name and the number of shares you own. There also will be a seal of authenticity, a signature from someone with assigning authority authenticating the certificate and either a CUSIP or CINS number. Currently, stock certificates are seen more as collectibles and souvenirs than actual records of ownership.
On the other hand, corporations may not have an interest in sending all shareholders stock certificates, although they are required to by law if requested.
In any case, even if not totally unexpected, sad news...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I was hoping "Incredible Universe" would make a comeback...
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
It's not as much a failure of the demand on what they sell as much as it is the decline of the physical store front.
I don't think they're surviving any better up here. I have not found a reason to purchase anything from one of their stores for a decade now. At one point they had hard to find components. Now they have what exactly? A small quantity of stuff that can be purchased cheaper elsewhere...
Heh.
I worked for Radio Shack 'way back in the day, in college and grad school. They had a nice stock-matching program and it split three times while I was there. When I finally cashed out it payed for my first decent car. But my real claim to fame was to own the second TRS-80 Model I sold in my city. The district manager got the first one; I got the second. 4KB of RAM and it could (a) beat me at chess and (b) with the Eliza program converse convincingly with my girlfriend. She said that the computer understood her a lot better than I ever did!
Treats employees like shit.
Overpriced, shitty merchandise with useless, uncaring sales personnel.
Sounds familiar?
Goodbye old friend.
Man, me too...
I *love* Radio Shack.
I love going in and rummaging through the parts to see what kind of stuff I could make.
Well...now it's different. When I was a kid it was with my dad for fun, now I'm making hand-crafted electronics and it's more immediate.
I just can't help but think that with the right merchandising Radio Shack can be a hit.
A deal with Apple makes total sense...b/c Radio Shack is so many places where Apple stores are not.
Ah well...
I hope the current locations can stay open where I live at least when the Sprint changeover comes.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'm wondering if the variance in reported RS experiences reflects a difference in management between the company-owned outlets and the franchise stores. Maybe the one you went to was a franchise, where the owner is invested and thus takes an active interest in making a go of it, instead of simply following edicts from corporate.
because suburbanites and flyover folks won't shop in them. Mom and pop and competing national chain open on the same block, the entire crowd flocks to national chains, particularly in smaller communities. Hell, they're even proud to have them. Getting a Wal-Mart means they've arrived, it puts them on the map.
The only place where Mom-and-pop shops still survive are in heavily blue urban areas, where they continue to do well. That's no accident.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
They seem to have decided a number of years ago to try to be Best Buy, only in 1/20th of the floor space, with higher prices, and while ensuring that they rebadge any major brand products to bear their own, woefully antiquated and little-known brand badges instead, to ensure that consumers would gravitate to Best Buy instead, where said major brands with which consumers were familiar continued to remain on display.
It started to make zero sense sometime in the late-1980s and it just got worse and worse from there.
I still buy parts, diagnostic equipment, and accessories for many tech items in the house. Just now I buy them on Amazon.com. I just bought a pack of about 30 DPDT switches the other day for $5.00 or so. I don't need 30, I just need one. I'd have just as well paid Radio Shack $2.99 for a switch and had it the same day—only the local store doesn't carry that stuff any longer.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Goodbye to Allied Radio, Heathkit, Lafayette Electronics, Henry Radio and the rest of them. Times have changed. It's so sad to see the end of the ability to design and experiment with electronic hardware. Let's face it, who's going to attempt to hand wire ASICs, SMT devices and keep signal integrity on what was previously-known as a "breadboard" circuit? Things have changed but there is a huge gap in the ability for hobbyists to design and construct hardware. All that seems to exist is video shit/games. Minecraft, Halo et. al. My son is "getting in to it" but it's very limited. Nothing of substance except messing with programming languages. I see a niche opportunity. Not easy to accomplish but it would be interesting to see if an interface of SMT devices for experimenter hardware could be accomplished. However, in the day of "immediate gratification" youth, I'm not sure it it's viable. From a financial perspective, likely not. Gone are the days. (time to bring the Swan 350C back from the dead)
This AC speaks the truth. The frys in Austin doesn't even have magazines anymore. When you walk in the front door, there are tables set up with knock-off fragrances like you would find at a flea market. Sad times.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They'll be eating Poutine and Beaver Tails. They manage to stab themselves in the cheek at times but they do apologize about it profusely.
Too bad Alibaba didn't make an offer to buy their stores. They could stock them with the top 250 or so electronics gadgets that sell. They could also handle all the local returns or warranty issues. Oh well, it was nice while they lasted from the 60's as Allied Radio and as Radio Shack until the late 80's
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Their angle was "in stock and in HAND today". They lost sight of that, their most valuable resource. instant availability. I dropped $300 on dx.com last month in a single order. That gets you a crapton of small electronics. But you have to wait for it. I'm still waiting on one of the packages to get here. Ignoring the fact that 80% of that stuff RS doesn't carry, if they did, it would have cost well over a grand.
I remember them putting out an open invitation for surveys last year, and I tried to explain that to them. But they were asking questions like "do you want more DIY stuff and kits". Those were radio shack's bread and butter earlier that they got rid of over time recently, but those actually needed to go away. I can get arduino clone boards for $16 that cost $65 at the shack. No one in their right mind plans to buy that locally. It costs way too much, and you don't need it today.
The classic view of modern Radio Shack being a battery store is actually quite keen. Batteries are the perfect example of something you need now. If they were to survive, they were going to need to identify and focus on items like that. Small items that they can sell at a modest markup that people need TODAY. Anyone that can wait for something will order it from China. But instead they listened to the people that were reminiscing about how they used to shop at Radio Shack, and though that returning to a 20 yr old business model that they'd left behind was a good idea.
It was not.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Another part of my youth about to be tossed in the dustbin of time.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Let me ask you this: On the day Wal-Mart opened in your town, there was still a hardware store, and an independent grocery store, clothing and shoe stores, ...
There is a Walmart 4 miles south of the downtown where I live. It sees plenty of business as does the Lowes right next to it. We don't have an independent grocery store in our downtown but we do have a Kroger there and two independent grocery stores within 3-4 miles of downtown. What do we have downtown? We have a hardware store, several boutique clothing stores, a shoe store, several good restaurants, a bakery, a coffee shop, and a bunch of other generally thriving small businesses. Walmart has hardly made a dent in their businesses because they aren't really competing with Walmart.
What we don't have is a bunch of businesses trying to compete with Walmart head on. If you want cheap stuff from China that's fine and Walmart is the place to go and nobody does it better. If you want an actual high touch shopping experience, you'll go somewhere else. Walmart is only a death knell to small business that try to provide the same services for higher prices. We have a local grocery store that provides a MUCH different experience than Walmart. They have a high quality butcher, they sell far better quality produce, they have baked goods you wouldn't dream of finding in Walmart, they have a greenhouse, and cooking classes, etc. If you want cheap kraft mac-n-cheese, they might have it but you'll get a better price at Walmart. They don't compete on price because ultimately there can only be one winner if you compete on price. They sell stuff you won't and never will get at Walmart and they're doing fine.
Did you still go to those places, and never go to Wal-Mart? Myself, I resisted, but soon those stores were gone. And one by one those employees went to work at Wal-Mart for half the money.
Sounds like those stores were only thriving because they were capitalizing on the fact that there was no price competition pre-Walmart. I have no love for Walmart but they serve a purpose which is to be a place to buy basic merchandise cheaply. Why would I spend more on the exact same shampoo or dog food elsewhere? Honestly I buy plenty of stuff from Amazon which is even better for me because I don't have to go anywhere. It just comes to me. But I still go to my local stores because they provide me things I can't get through Walmart or Amazon.
RadioShack dabbled in Enthusiast PC hardware, but gave up on it. I found them to be fairly priced for getting stuff I needed "now"
Really? I have bought some stuff I needed "now" though RadioShack in the last few years. I pretty much always felt like they were gouging me on price and their selection generally sucked. The ONLY reason I ever had to go to a RadioShack was when I needed something right this minute and there were no other convenient options. I have a Microcenter across town but it's a 45 minute drive to get there. I can order from Amazon if I can wait until tomorrow. But the number of times when RadioShack actually was the best available option has been very few.
and eliminated Radio Shack's advantage. Building, and repairing, electronics from components used to be common enough so that RS could build a good business being the local component supplier. Add to that staff knowledgeable about electronics and you had a nice niche market. As electronics moved from the ability to build at the component level (anyone remember Heathkit?) RS started to lose its customer base. Someone with a reasonable amount of skill could learn to solder a resistor on a circuit board but soldering microchips and ICs required a whole different level of skill and equipment; as a result building electronic equipment became more plug and play rater than etch and solder. Once their core market began to decline they needed to move in other directions, which put them in competition with the growing big box stores (electronics such as stereos) selling name brands at cheap prices and computer manufactures selling IBM clones and Apple. Add in the cheap electronic toys at Christmas and now you have a mix of items, none of which proved profitable enough, or compelling enough to bring in customers, to make a go at it. They wound up being a little bit of everything but not enough of one thing to survive when competing with better stocked stores with more choices in each market they were trying to reach.
While management has a large amount of the blame for RS dying, the shifting marketplace and changing consumer really sealed their fate no matter what management did.
The idea of Amazon buying their stores was intriguing as it helps deal with one of their logistics problems; namely how can we reduce the cost of shipping to homes? Given their foray into predictive purchasing that could stock stores based on anticipated demand and eliminate the cost of shipping door to door. The question would be is running stores cheaper than shipping? My guess is no unless it generates enough additional sales to cover the costs and meet the desired profit margins.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
A deal with Apple makes total sense...b/c Radio Shack is so many places where Apple stores are not.
It's not about quantity of locations its about quality of locations. Apple chooses the locations for their stores VERY carefully. They aren't in 2000 strip malls for a reason. They would have to seriously compromise a lot of about what makes their product and sales experience different. Honestly I cannot think of any value in RadioShack's rotting carcass to Apple.
Amazon on the other hand... maybe. The biggest risk to Amazon is companies like Macy's or Walmart finally figuring out that stores can serve as warehouses. Amazon is building warehouses all over the place to get closer to customers but Macy's and Target and Walmart already have this. They just lack the back end IT that Amazon has. Amazon is working towards getting storefronts and if the price is right this might be a way to do it. Maybe...
How appropriate that many of the Radio Shack's will become Sprint phone stores? Finally get rid of all that other crap wasting shelf space for cases, accessories
and more phones! Good luck with that Sprint, as if your business model is in any better shape then Radio Shacks?
And totally failed to have a competitive advantage. Everything they changed to was something someone else was already doing, and they didn't make a sufficiently serious effort at it to do it well. If they were going to have only employees who knew how to sell cellphones, they should have just ditched all that other stuff completely or moved it to online-only and just been a cellphone store. But they were a crappy cellphone store, because they didn't focus on that. Nor, in fact, did they ever focus on anything ever again. Hey, look, a squirrel! Bankruptcy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's why I liked my VIC. Only 3.5K available, but I used to be able to really cram programs that supposedly needed 5K by removing the REMs and using the command tokens (first letter, then second letter shifted).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I haven't heard anything definitive, but are they going to throw a massive closeout sale ala Circuit City, or just lock the door? If their prices are reasonable I may go raid them for their DIY electronics gear.
So long Radio Shack (give me none of this newfangled "RadioShack" spelling). To me you'll always be the place where ignorant salespeople charged me disproportionate prices for a few resistors and LEDs, back when I was young and didn't know any better. But at least you had resistors and LEDs and breadboards and stuff. You know I still have my Realistic CTR-80 tape recorder? I bet it would still work if the C batteries hadn't leaked all over it -- yes, they were Radio Shack batteries, why do you ask? Anyway, so long and thanks for all the LEDs, and can I have your address and cell phone provider?
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I was in Radio shack a few months ago looking for a Mic for my HAM Radio. The guy at the counter said "We don't sell radio stuff like that..." I said "But you're radio shack!" He laughed at me "No-body comes to the Mall to buy Radios" I finally said "The only person you currently have standing in your store came here for a Radio, you might want to rethink your inventory" and walked out. Morons.
Could you imagine how awesome it would be if Sparkfun, AdaFruit, 3d Printing and Laser Cutting companies and startup incubators pitched in and bought out Radio Shack..I would be breaking down the door saying take my money to Maker Spaces like you could only dream of.
Not mentioned too often (or at all; I've not seen it mentioned even once) is the story of Radio Shack's experiment with a chain of stores called TechAmerica.
TechAmerica was like a giant RS plus the parts aisles from a Frys, plus audio, ham radio, kit stuff, science toys, books, cable, computer parts, you name it. Maybe 40,000Sq feet. The one near me was half of a former discount store so quite large.
Anyway, TechAmerica had three stores in Colorado, Arizona and Georgia. They were great for hobbyists but there were problems. One was pricing. They expected people unsure what the store was about to be happy paying premium prices. And of course the hobby types already knew where to get cheaper parts and batter deals so they didn't like the prices either. Two, it was stocked with what seemed to be an idea that all they had to do was put stuff on the floor and it would sell, which wasn't the case. You know, spools of wire might sit for years. This is fine if you expect that. But bad if you want SKUs to move weekly.
The third problem was RadioShack itself. TechAmerica was created around 1999 or so right at the dawn of the e-commerce boom. RS didn't have a competent online presence (and never got one) and looked at TA to be their online fulfillment spear. It was a disaster.
Had they let TA bloom and find its own way, it might have worked. They were unique places where you could go buy all the neat stuff a normal RS would not have. Well, provided you didn't mind paying extra for it. You could get computer parts too, except more costly than anywhere else.
These stores would have been great for the Maker movement except they were 13 years too early and overpriced. And they didn't have 13 years to wait for a movement to spring up .
After about two years, 2001 or so, corporate threw in the towel. The TA stores were renamed to "Radio ShackDOTcom" around 2001 and stuffed with crappy even more RS merchandise. The hobbyist angle was dropped. One of these RadioShackDOTcom stores was even in the same strip of stores as a normal Radio Shack which did more sales that the old TA.
The whole TA project was scrapped and forgotten. RS largely forgets that they ever existed.
Sig for hire.
Crap, now where am I going to buy more inodes when I run out?
Years ago I emailed RadioShack corporate (RS), Mouser, Newark and DigiKey. I told each to collaborate with RS making each of RS's retail stores a pick-up point for the electronics distributors (Mouser, Newark and DigiKey) who could ship to RS's distribution hubs instead of directly to hobbyist customers. In other words, I order something from Mouser, and pick it up a week or two later at my local RS. I win because I don't have to pay $7 to ship a few diodes, Mouser wins because of increased business, and RS wins because they get a tiny cut of each sale and/or they get more foot traffic in each store, someone who might need some solder after all.
Alas, none emailed me back nor apparently ran with the idea.
R.I.P. RadioShack, we had some good times, though it was long ago.
This really sucks.Our home town Radio Shack was closed a while back and I could understand that in such a small town but for the entire company to just give up and go bankrupt...I don't get it...they literally have NO competition in the majority of their items. Yes, they could ditch the phones and standard networking equipment that everyone knows everyone else sells way cheaper but they are the only place in the nation to get your hands on IC items, They're killing a lot of people's hobbies for nothing. Just because they didn't realize what merchandise was practical for them to sell and what wasn't. Poor management all the way to the top.
Why the hell is this article under YRO ("Your Rights Online")??