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RadioShack Is Preparing to File For Bankruptcy Again (bloomberg.com)
BarbaraHudson writes: Bloomberg is reporting that the "new" RadioShack is preparing to file for bankruptcy. From the report: "General Wireless Operations, the RadioShack successor created by a partnership between Sprint Corp. and the defunct retailer's owners, is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the matter. A filing could happen within the coming days and will probably result in liquidation, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process isn't public. The beleaguered company, which does business as RadioShack, operates outlets that share space with Sprint's retail locations, as well as franchising the name to other stores." Investors had thrown $75 million in lines of credit and term loans at the business, which was used for "renovated locations and updated inventory." That's less than $60,000 per store -- chickenfeed in today's world, where renovating a McDonalds can run between $500,000 and $2,000,000, and you're not trying to pivot.
Almost nobody will shop at RadioShack anymore because in the 90's they decided that annoying people at the cash registers to buy extra batteries and later to try to switch their cell phone plans was worth alienating the customer base, just as the Internet was coming along to offer people other options.
Meanwhile, retailers like Walmart picked up most of their commonly useful inventory and made mint while not harassing customers with upsales. Apparently Walmart isn't driven by quarter-on-quarter-driven MBA's.
On the other hand, they probably left with big bonuses and nobody knows who they were, and two bankruptcies later they're not black-balled.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It takes an ocean liner a lot longer to sink than a dinghy.....
love is just extroverted narcissism
More than any other? Perhaps you forget video rental stores. An entire industry is gone. RadioShack sticking around this long is actually quite noteworthy!
People tend to think that the video rental business disappeared just because Blockbuster is gone. But their demise was mostly due to bad business decisions. There's a video rental store a short distance for my house, and judging by their parking lot, I would say they are still doing quite well.
Blockbuster was bought by Viacom. A few years later Viacom decided that they didn't want Blockbuster anymore so it was spun off as a separate company, a process that left it deeply in debt. Blockbuster was always profitable but couldn't generate enough money to pay down the debt so they filed for bankruptcy. The same thing happened to the Borders book stores (bought by K-Mart and then dumped). Massive debt cause by bad management has killed far more businesses than the Internet.
I think RadioShack's problems predate turning themselves into a cell phone store. In the 1980s RadioShack was, at least in my town, the center of the community's technical world. The manager was a great guy who would lead teenagers like myself muck around with the latest Model 100 or Model 4, and indeed my first three computers were all Tandy/RadioShack computers. RadioShack was sort of a geek cultural center back in the day, but by the 90s it was trying to transform itself and I remember the stores became a lot more "corporate", with management that was far less friendly. Yes, the slow degradation of the components section of the store had its effect in reducing the hobbyist traffic, but it was also that the soul of the place seemed to die out. Where in the 80s and early 90s you actually had staff who knew something about the products they were selling, by the early 00s, you had kids who could barely read a script.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.