With Nothing Left To Sell, RadioShack Is Selling Itself To People (theverge.com)

RadioShack, an almost 100-year-old American chain of wireless and electronics stores, had a hell of ride at retail. The cradle of building your own electronics at home, and an early participant in the PC revolution, is finally facing the end after a long, slow death at the hands of consumer disinterest, a dysfunctional marriage with Sprint. From a report: Tons of electronics stores have shuttered over the past decade, but few are as tragic as RadioShack, which filed for bankruptcy in 2015, appeared to be rescued by Sprint in agreement to co-share the stores, then got kicked to the curb and had to file for a second bankruptcy this past March. The new agreement means hundreds of RadioShack shops will officially close down and be replaced by Sprint stores, fizzling out dreams of the Maker movement. So while this is an end to another chapter of our American electronics retail culture, we do have to wonder: how are the folks at RadioShack doing? They have been selling the leftover stocks of electronics for a while, with only mostly store fixtures, ladders, and carpet tiles seemingly left on offer. This is what RadioShack posted earlier this month. The company has since been tweeting about the leftover stuff it has up on sale, though.

Comments

Digikey kicks their butt

[AntronArgaiv]

Actually, I think surface mount kicked their butt. I spent a lot of money at Radio Shack in my youth.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[avandesande]

Moreso the internet... online you can buy just about anything you need for electronics and much cheaper.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[elrous0]

No, what got me to stop going to Radio Shack was this:

Me: "I'm here to buy a capacitor"

Radio Shack: "We don't carry electronic components anymore. Can I interest you in an overpriced cellphone instead?"

Me:"Uh, no...do you at least have 9-volt batteries?"

Radio Shack: "Sure. That'll be $10.99. I'll need you address, phone number, and the names of all your children before I can ring you up though."

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit - this can't possibly be upvoted enough. This right here is the ACTUAL answer as to why they failed.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this so much ^

I remember getting my first electronic project kit from Radio Shack as a kid for Christmas. It was followed by their CB Base-station, Battery club card and more electronic grab-bags than I can remember.

Some of my first experiences programming was on a Coco3 (running os9 btw)

Fry's Electronics recognized the market place and took over from Tandy in a BIG way.

If anybody really believes that there is no market for the 'old' Radio Shack, then they should step into a Fry's Electronics and see where all the customers have gone.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[The Grim Reefer]

Yeah, that's pretty much what did them in of me too. I spent a lot of time an money at Radio Shack in the 70's and into the late 80's. But once they started selling cell phones, it was over for me pretty quick. I actually had a very similar conversation sometime in the very early 90's, except I was looking for a resister. The sad part was that they actually carried all of those components still, they just had them stuffed into drawers. But no one seemed to know about anything other than phones. Nor were they interested in anything else either.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and the recent employees thought that "bad boys rape our young girls but Violet goes willingly" was a rap song

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[TWX]

In the nineties it was the outgrowth of Fry's Electronics.

Radio Shack had been a division of the Tandy Corporation. Tandy had several major divisions, of which Radio Shack was merely one. Tandy made missteps, opening "The Incredible Universe" with a fair amount of fanfare and expense as a competitor to the ever-growing Fry's Electronics, only to screw it up. To add insult to injury, Fry's took over many of the locations and ran them profitably without even doing a real remodel on them for a decade, not even repainting the delivery trucks other than sticking a Fry's logo on the doors.

Then they opened Tech America, as a new retail store to get rid of the excess fanfare that apparently didn't work for the Incredible Universe stores, but at least the one here was opened in the same strip mall as an existing Radio Shack, and on top of that they didn't do a good job of advertising what services the store offered. It was not even centrally located so geeks on the north or west sides of town had to drive 20-30 miles to get supplies. May as well mailorder them if that's the case, and then suddenly Tech America is competing with cheaper mailorder.

Then they renamed Tandy Corporation to the Radio Shack Corporation and brought the cell phones in, when everyone was selling cell phones, and they renamed the Tech America stores to Radio Shack . com, only to close them a couple of years later.

Radio Shack should have been the convenience-store of electronics. It should have had later hours, opening say noon and closing at 9pm, such that geeks that were working on their hobby projects could have somewhere to go to get those capacitors or relays that they needed when they either ran-short or were in a pinch to complete it. Radio Shack could have arguably charged ten times what the components were worth if they were readily available and purchasable in small quantities, people in a hurry are willing to pay the extra markup to have it now.

Instead they tried to be Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, and the cell phone store all at the same time, when in reality they should have been more like Fry's Electronics without so much of the TVs and DVDs and major appliances. They also should have pared-back on the number of stores and looked over their geography to pick locations that were convenient for residents of the cities they wanted to operate in.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[Penguinisto]

Nah, not really. Surface-mount would have been minor - if the management had half a working neuron to share between them, they could have sold those components, as well as finer-tipped soldering irons, a cheap-but-big lighted magnifying glass, and other bits needed for basic surface-mount repair. If they were really sharp, they could have procured and sold decent not-quite-lab-grade-yet-still-quite-usable higher-end gear to go with it (e.g. Oscilloscopes, etc).

They could have also launched a usable website to sell components back in the 1990s, and if they were first, they could have kicked butt against the likes of Mouser.

Shit - if they hadn't screwed up with the Tandy Computer line, they could have went in that direction harder, and could have grown into a halfway decent PC OEM by now (or at least do what NewEgg is doing now, but would have been bigger by dint of being among the first to do it...)

Radio Shack's problems, as one sibling hinted at, boils down to this: They had a management that was both disorganized and dysfunctional as hell. They were completely blind to changes outside of their domain, never looked beyond the tip of their nose, and only reacted to changes when shit threatened to get real on their bottom line... then they reacted in the totally wrong manner to each of these crises - and did so consistently.

(Seriously - anyone applying for a management position that has "Radio Shack" and "Executive" in the same job description on their resume should be summarily ignored...)

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[Fly Swatter]

Once I realized that was a reference to the resistor color code, I had to laugh.

Sadly you got down modded, probably by a clueless millennial.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[Darinbob]

Fry's worked because it was in Silicon Valley, back when there was still silicon in the valley and not just web advertising companies. There was a whole region full of people who wanted this stuff a couple decades before "Maker" was coined. They wanted to build a computer, they knew how to solder, they wanted DIY kits for their kids, or get a phone cable crimper.

This was also in the boom of technology I think too, before the monoculture of the dumbed down PC and passive consumers. Remember the pilgrimage from Fry's to HT Electronics to the Computer Literacy Bookshop.

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[neilo_1701D]

Yeah, and the recent employees thought that "bad boys rape our young girls but Violet goes willingly" was a rap song

I was taught "Bishop Brown raped our ..." so we knew where brown and black lay in the scheme of things. But that was 30 years ago....

Re:Digikey kicks their butt

[ogdenk]

Even uttering that within earshot of anyone under 35 now can get you fired. I tend to use "Bad Beer Rots Out Your Guts But Vodka Goes Well - Get Some Now" instead so I don't get accused of supporting "rape culture" and "slut-shaming" by virtue signalling militant morons.

They've had it coming for decades

[suso]

I recently went to a local RadioShack going out of business "sale" and heard one of the employees yell at the customers "I don't have a job, stop buying stuff at Amazon people!". I can certainly agree that people have been buying too much toilet paper from Amazon to the demise of local business, but in RadioShack's case, its much deeper.

The start of RadioShack's demise predates online shopping by at least a decade. I'm sure many long time readers here will attest to this that RadioShack for many years has lost its way. I found one of my own blog posts from 2002 in which I complained about RadioShack. There was an episode of Seinfeld in the 90s where they made fun of RadioShack for asking for your phone number when you buy batteries. Hiring people who had no idea what they are doing and little interest in working or helping customers. A product selection that was out of date with what was available on the market and prices that were unreasonably high. Even with their 90% discount on component electronics and maker stuff, I still wasn't interested in buying what they had left because it was still no better than online pricing.

Now i'm hopeful that the vacancy left by RatShack (Its pet names go way back) can be filled by people who may wish to cater more to the Maker market, but have not wanted to risk trying to compete with RadioShack still around.

Re:They've had it coming for decades

[jellomizer]

RadioShack only has itself to blame. In the internet age, stores are no longer a place to buy products, but a place to get a product quickly or a place to talk to actual people. They should had jumped onto the maker movement and RadioShack could had been a Maker Space headquarters. However they just sold phone and phone supplies which you can get anywhere.

Re:They've had it coming for decades

[Aighearach]

I stopped shopping at Radio Shack in the late `90s, back when Amazon was only a bookstore.

The thing is, people who are buying loose parts often have to browse and look at the parts, and compare them, and stand there thinking about which one will work in some project.

And as soon as I walk in the door, they want to "help" me, and after I tell them, "No thanks, I'm just browsing," a second employee, who was in the room when the first one tried, walks up and tries to "help" me, and I respond, "NO thanks" in an irritated voice. Of course I'm irritated, you just freakin' heard me say I don't need "help" and then you walked up and lied to my face by asking a question you already heard me answer. It is offensive to be treated that way. And then a third person walks out of the back, triggered by the door chime, who also asks if I need help. And there is nobody else in the store, so they already know that if nobody is "helping" me, the other two people already asked. At this point, I haven't even found the part I was considering yet, but I'm already angry and leaving.

Stores that don't believe in customer service will die, even when their customers grew up liking them and really really want to give them another chance. I popped back in a few times over the years since, and I always had the same awful experience, and I always walked out without buying anything.

Even when I was still shopping there, they were the first store in town to start trying to demand personal information like name and phone numbers. Once I even had to talk to the manager to make an anonymous cash purchase, because the person at the register hadn't even been trained on what to do when somebody says, "No thank you, cash only." They actually thought they weren't allowed to make the sale!

The only other store I had that sort of experience at was that national woodworking chain store. That was only 2 years ago, and when they said there was no manager available I made them call their regional office to find out that yes, in fact they are allowed to make a cash sale to the general public. They don't seem to be aware that they don't have a cornered market, even if they're the only brick-and-mortar selling some of their items.

Stores should realize, if retail workers are doing something other than assisting the customer with what the customer wants assistance with, they'll get replaced. And the means of replacing them is to not shop at your store.

Re:They've had it coming for decades

[UnknownSoldier]

> I'm sure many long time readers here will attest to this that RadioShack for many years has lost its way.

Indeed.

> There was an episode of Seinfeld in the 90s where they made fun of RadioShack for asking for your phone number when you buy batteries.

Perfect textbook-case example!

I didn't realize how bad their complete lack of respect was until ~2001 when a friend was buying something trivial from them. His response to the telephone question was "Cash customer." I thought that was a very clever and polite way to say "Fuck Off with your Marketing bullshit already!"

The Clerk didn't even blink and continued the sale.

> A product selection that was out of date with what was available on the market and prices that were unreasonably high. Even with their 90% discount on component electronics and maker stuff, I still wasn't interested in buying what they had left because it was still no better than online pricing.

Yup, you've succinctly nailed the 2 reasons why Radio Shack failed.

> RatShack (Its pet names go way back)

WHOA, haven't heard that in a LONG time.

The one we used was "RadioShit" .. because they were slowly turning to crap and seemed to be completely oblivious to the sinking of the Titanic.

Everyone whines that "Internet is killing Brick-and-Mortar stores" -- but considering I don't have to deal with pushy salespeople, or completely CLUELESS sales people (I"m looking at you "Worst Buy") -- then you didn't have to be a Kreskin to know that Radio Shack's primary failure was the inability to adapt.

Why didn't RadioShack become the next DigiKey ?
Why didn't they hire knowledgeable people ?

They were so focused on the bottom line that they became the bottom.

--
Fuck You Red Cross for hijacking the color red, and the + operator hundreds of years AFTER the Templars.

That was my shortest job ever

[damn_registrars]

I worked at a local RadioShack for a few hours once. I had gone through their training (which I had to go to a different suburb for), had store orientation, then by the time my first day came up I had a job offer somewhere else. It so happened that first day was the only day they put me on the schedule - presumably with plans to arrange the rest of my schedule at the conclusion of that day - and so I worked through my day and said thanks but no thanks, I have another job offer elsewhere.

Re:That was my shortest job ever

[DontBeAMoran]

Wait, do you want them to hit the ground, or do you want them to run? You can only pick one.

How did Sears outlast them?

[damn_registrars]

Really that is the only question I have left. I guess Sears is staying afloat by the fact that they own most of their real estate and can use it as collateral. RadioShack by comparison has really nothing to offer any more to keep the doors open. Even as stupid as the decisions made by RadioShack top brass have been, they are nothing compared to the rampaging stupidity and arrogance that is Sears CEO Eddie Lampert.

Re:How did Sears outlast them?

[damn_registrars]

I distinctly remember a stand-up comic joking about the absence of employees at Sears back in the early 90s.

I recall a Leno joke about that back in the day. Sears had an ad campaign back then about how smart their shoppers were, which they used in a lot of commercials. They had one commercial that was something like "who is smarter, this Nobel prize winning scientist, or this Sears shopper?". Leno replied that it was likely the latter, provided they could locate a cashier at Sears in order to pay for their merchandise.

I'll trade you

[freeze128]

I would happily let Radio Shack close all its stores if it meant that we could get just one Fry's electronics store in my state (MN).

Re:I'll trade you

[AntronArgaiv]

I would happily let Radio Shack close all its stores if it meant that we could get just one Fry's electronics store in my state (MN).

Dude: you've got Digikey! And Duluth. Quit being so greedy! :-)

(yeah, I know, it's all mail order)

Re:I'll trade you

[__aaclcg7560]

I'll gladly trade all the Fry's Electronics stores in California for a Micro Center store. The one we had in Silicon Valley closed years ago.

How to succeed in retail

[sjbe]

RadioShack only has itself to blame. In the internet age, stores are no longer a place to buy products, but a place to get a product quickly or a place to talk to actual people

Agreed with some additions. I go to a store for one of a few reasons:
1) Entertainment. Shopping can be fun. Retail stores that do well understand this and work hard to make the shopping more than just an exchange of money for goods
2) Convenience. Sometimes you need something fast or more efficiently than is possible through online shopping. If I need something Right Now then I'm probably going to make the drive to the local store.
3) Selection. Some goods like produce and meats aren't identical from unit to unit and I want to pick the specific one I want. Also some goods are better purchased when you can actually touch and feel them. If all a retailer is selling is undifferentiated boxed goods then they are in danger of being eaten by Amazon.
4) Expertise. While you can get expertise though an online experience, sometimes there is no substitute for talking to a qualified expert in person. When I bought my first SLR camera it was invaluable to talk to the experts at my local camera shop even after I had done a ton of internet research.
5) Service. Good retail stores often have a service component to their business that is hard to replicate online. My local John Deere dealer services my lawn tractor every year in addition to having products for sale. Amazon would have a hard time replicating this business model.

Good retail businesses incorporate many of these features. Stores like Sears and yes, Radio Shack that sell the same boxed crap I can get elsewhere for less than amazing prices are doomed to failure.

Radio Shack failed because they didn't adapt

[nucrash]

That's what happened pure and simple. Someone pointed out about how they moved away from being a hobbyist shop to an overpriced electronics shop and never moved back into the hobbyist market when the hobbyist market picked back up. They should be the place where you can buy Drones, 3D Printers, and Raspberry Pis and.. have classes where they can bring in outsiders to experiment with the products or troubleshoot what they need to do.

Instead they failed and failed hard. I know I am being a bit of a Monday morning quarterback, but I had been preaching this for a long time. I watched other companies such as Frye's and MicroCenter pick up the slack while CompUSA and Circuit City took a dive. I still don't know how Best Buy continues, but it does. (Not geared towards the hobbyist though)

It's tragic as I would really like to see someone fill the void and maybe mom and pop shops will. That's what I can hope for anyway.

Re: Radio Shack failed because they didn't adapt

[Pauldow]

The store near me in W. Springfield, MA had build a mini drone workshops during last Christmas' school break. RS had some elements of really good marketing, such as sponsorship at MakerFaire. They just couldn't focus on a long-term strategy, and the company was too cumbersome to adapt quickly to changing markets.

And, as was mentioned earlier, cell phones and Monster cables.

Sure, RS dug their own grave

[Anonymous Coward]

But when I was a wee physicist working on the space shuttle program back in the mid-90's (Jesus, has it been that long?), I had designed a control system to point a 24" mirror at the space shuttle for exhaust luminance measurements. About an hour before one launch I was tweaking pots in the box to zero out gimbal drift (the trailer I was in had a 250' power cord, and my local grounds drifted all over the place) - naturally couldn't find my pot tool so I used an ordinary screwdriver - and it slipped and shorted the power rail to a CCA inside. The display goes dark, the mirror won't move - I've got nothing. RS was AFAIK the only place to get electronic components. Went out, bought a bag of parts - relays, resistors, caps - they had it all. Cobbled a bypass for the roasted CCA and got it all working at T-3 minutes.

Sure, they dug their own grave, but they saved my bacon back then, and for that I will always think fondly of them.

Oh, and my first complete program was Space Invaders on a TRS-80.

Re:Wish I had a Fry's near me

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Fry's is a shell of its former self. I'll go there tonight for a very cheap Chromebook and a fairly cheap desktop, but all the little odds and ends I couldn't help but throw in the cart years ago are gone now.

The Onion called it

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theonion.com/article/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how-radioshack-still-in-b-2190

Battery Club 4 life!

[Thud457]

Once they removed the TV tube testers, they were dead to me.

Re:Battery Club 4 life!

[cheesybagel]

No shit. Think of all the things they could have been selling instead. FPGA boards, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, build your own drone kits, build your own 3D printer kits. You name it.

Fizzling the dreams of the Maker movement?

[enjar]

People I know who are into the Maker electronics scene buy from Amazon, Sparkfun, etc. We have a local place that's independently owned that does good business. The staff are well trained and they aren't trying to push overpriced batteries and on phones.

For R/C cars, planes, drones the selection online is far better than any one store could ever provide.

If I need a cable I go to Monoprice or Amazon. It seems any physical entity charges highway robbery for the most mundane of cables. I can buy what I need plus backups/extras for the same price as any brick and mortar store.

For computer stuff we have a Micro Center near us, every time I visit the place is busy. They stock everything needed to build a PC if you want to buy local, or you can walk out with a complete system. Sales people at Micro Center generally know what's going on, or will summon someone who does if it's not their department.

The cell phone stores are pretty ubiquitous and can provide more in depth service, although I've gotten my two last phones from one of the online resellers. My MVNO is happy to point me at the reseller and tells me exactly which one to buy. Phone shows up at my house and I activate it with a few mouse clicks.

A/V equipment is really well covered online. I've bought from NewEgg, Amazon and Crutchfield over the years. Crutchfield by far stands out as the best car stereo buying experience out there. I replaced a head unit and they also put in all the "extras" needed to put the thing in my car, and the included instructions were clearly written and easy to understand. For other stuff like TVs, receivers, blu-ray, consoles the prices are pretty much the same and shipping is quick.

Batteries can be found anywhere from the local BJ's/Costco to online at the usual suspects, for a decent price and in just about whatever quantity you might like.

I don't see what Radio Shack could do that could keep up with the better options available out there, plus their staff was generally poorly trained / unresponsive and the stores didn't stock anything useful. I went in looking for basic stuff on more than one occasion but walked out empty handed because the price was ridiculous or it wasn't in the store, or both. It's no wonder they were circling the drain for so long. There's probably even a net gain in the size of the market they were serving, and more jobs for the market, too.

I was one of the last true Radio Shack Employees

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in college ('97,'98) Radio Shack was still holding on to it's true roots and was an awesome place to have a part time job. Your pay, while commission based, required that you pass a series of tests, and these tests were no joke. You had to understand circuits, voltage, amperage, why you can't sell anyone a business band radio etc etc. Radio Shack had never been about the money. It was about selling people things they didn't need, it was about helping them solve their problems.

When the new CEO took over he began to focus on short term profit like Long Distance service, Cell Phones, Satellite, and things like that. Then came "You must ask everyone for their name and address" and about their Long Distance Provider, and what cell phone they had. I shit you not, they even called it "Helping your customers".

The district and regional managers were slowly replaced by disgusting individuals who cared nothing about integrity and focused on profit. Our Manager Wayne Edwards was probably one of the most honest people I've ever known. What comes deeply disturbed him and it bothered me to watch him go through it.

I'll always remember the day Thomas Montegue (District of Cary, NC) came to our store and told us how he could easily beat us in sales and bet us $100. I interrupted him and said I'll take that bet where you do your sales thing, and I'll do mine. At the end of the day I told more than $1000 more than him and never sold a phone, never asked a single individual for more than necessary info (some things you had to give your info). This is where the real poison showed. He turned things and went "Well I made more money for Radio Shack. You focused on making money for you". I was a bit surprised by this considering I didn't work there to "make bank", I worked there because I enjoyed helping people solve problems.

Soon after, the test requirements were scrapped and Radio Shack starting hiring anyone they could "to meet growth needs". I'm talking the people who didn't know (or care) about the difference between a digital cable (hdmi) and analog.

During the summer of 2000 I was the top ranked salesman in our district 7 weeks in a row. I worked 5 hours a week, on Sundays but had developed such a relationship with certain customers (NC State professors, electronic hobbiests, etc) that they would leave orders for me to put in for them. Keep in mind this was before online purchasing really took off. Thomas contacts our store and says any online order over X dollars is no longer considered for commission and is a higher level sale. Doesn't make a lot of sense does it? Corporate was taking large order profits for themselves and cutting us out.

Needless to say this didn't sit well with those customers and they stopped doing business with us completely. They used us not because we were the cheapest, but because we knew where to order quality parts from and how to handle problems that arose to meet their needs.

The last straw for me was the increased "trainings" at the district office where Thomas would put in a VHS video from the last 70's early 80's to teach us how to better sell modern technology. I'm not kidding, we're talking the whole leisure suit mustache combo and everything. The guy would say "You'll probably only see that customer once in your career. Sell them everything you think they need and everything they don't! That's how to be a winner". It was embarrassing.

I placed my head on the table and was immediately called out by Thomas. I can't remember what he said exactly but it was something like "So Mr , is this training making you tired? Do you think you know everything there is to sales?" my response definitely ended my career. "Definitely not. But I beat your sales challenge, and everyone else for 7 weeks until you changed the rules." There was a lot of laughter.

I was terminated a week later for failing to ask every customer for their Name and Address supposedly due to a "hired test customer" during the week. It was funny because I only worked on Sundays and hadn