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."

Comments

So who's going to buy them?

[Sowelu]

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.

Re:So who's going to buy them?

[towermac]

That's some weak sauce man, although the Forbes rebuttal is even weaker.

They're counting the fact that dividends are taxed lower than wages. They're counting accelerated depreciation too. That's tax law, and it's no different for Wally World than it is for anybody else.

The big number is the shit wages that make employees rely on food stamps, school lunch; all those Federal subsidies. That argument actually has some legs. But is that Wal-Mart's fault? All those Federal subsidies were already there, thus creating the environment that Wal-Mart could survive in. Then they move in, take advantage of it, and get rich. If not an Arkansas hillbilly, then somebody would have.

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, ...
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.

Maybe you didn't go in. Everybody else did. You sure it's just 'The Government' that's at fault here?

The Canadian arm of the business is stil operation

[Meshach]

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?

One less cellphone shop I guess

[colin_faber]

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.

I predicted this 30 years ago

[eclectro]

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.

Re:Goodbye

[MightyMartian]

The Radio Shack of my youth did die years ago.

I remember in the early 1980s the owner of the Radio Shack in my town would let me monkey around with the Color Computers, the Model 4s and the Model 100s. My grandfather bought me my first computer; a lowly Radio Shack MC-10, when I was 10 years old and I remember reading the manual from front to back about three or four times. My earliest programming experience was on that little computer, with 4k of RAM onboard and a 16k expansion module.

Good memories, but that store went away a long time ago, replaced by an unremarkable stereo and cell phone dealer staffed by people who could barely read the sales brochures.

Re:I'll take an old computer, please

[MightyMartian]

One of my first jobs was getting on a old Model 16 that had been upgraded to a Model 6000 (a whopping 1mb of RAM), with two 20mb hard drives, and five or six dumb terminals. We actually used the Radio Shack multi-user accounting software and worked on multi-department accounting. Did the job nicely, actually, and it's how I got my training as a sysadmin/bookkeeper/manager. I inherited the beast when the company closed down and I monkeyed around with it for a while; got a Usenet and email feed going via UUCP. In the end the 8" floppy drive crapped out, so I gave it to a friend of mine who got things up and running again and had a private BBS running for a few years.

Tandy made some reasonably decent hardware. The 16/6000 was quite a machine: M68000 processor, Z80 coprocessor that could run CP/M, but under Xenix basically took care of all the I/O.

I also had an MC10 a CoCo, CoCo 2 and a CoCo 3 (though I never upgraded the latter to 512k). Played around a lot in OS/2 and wrote an accounting program in BASIC-09 (which was a dialect that felt like a mix of BASIC, Pascal and COBOL). But in the end the PC one the computer wars, I went out and bought a 486, switched between Linux and Windows 3.1, and my old equipment finally got chucked during my last move about eight years ago.

Re:What if they'd stuck with it?

[NormalVisual]

The Internet is killing a lot of the traditional retailers like Radio Shack and Sears

IMO Sears is doing more to kill Sears than the Internet is. When you order an item that costs several hundred dollars, and not only does it not get shipped to the store for pickup but no one even follows up on the order, you can't expect to keep very many customers.

Re: 4k

[Deadstick]

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.

Re:A shame. Arduino kits and a better parts select

[LMariachi]

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.

Re:Goodbye

[RSanna]

Radio Shack was a revelation to this 12 year old in 1972. We live in a small rural town in Montana, USA. Once a month we would load up the car and go to the big city, POP +/-35,000, for groceries and other stuff. I noticed the new store, but only got to walk by the front window that first month. The parts I had to work with came from cast of TVs, radios and mail order catalogs. I saved every penny every day and dreamed ever night for the next month. Walking into that store was a pivotal moment in my life. There were so many components I knew, understood and well wanted to play with that I had never actually seen save in catalog drawing and white paper schematics. I aches my soul to know that something so visceral has been torn from the experience of today's youth. There is a vast difference between reading about something (web or catalog) and seeing touching and yes smelling it in person. R.I.P.