Posted on 02/03/2015 8:20:04 PM PST by Swordmaker
“RadioShack Corp. is preparing to shut down the almost-century-old retail chain in a bankruptcy deal that would sell about half its store leases to Sprint Corp. and close the rest, according to people with knowledge of the discussions,” Lauren Coleman-Lochner, Jodi Xu Klein, and Scott Moritz report for Bloomberg. “The locations sold to Sprint would operate under the wireless carrier’s name, meaning RadioShack would cease to exist as a stand-alone retailer, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks aren’t public.”
“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,” Coleman-Lochner, Klein, and Moritz report. “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. In more recent years, though, competition from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and an army of e-commerce sellers hurt customer traffic.”
“In a sign of RadioShack’s escalating woes, the New York Stock Exchange said Monday it would suspend trading of the stock immediately. The exchange took the step after RadioShack failed to submit a business plan that would address its lack of compliance with NYSE rules. Companies listed on the exchange are required to have an average market value of at least $50 million for 30 straight days or shareholder equity of that amount,” Coleman-Lochner, Klein, and Moritz report. “RadioShack currently has more than 4,000 company-operated U.S. stores. Sprint is discussing the acquisition of 1,300 to 2,000 locations, the people said. In one possible scenario, RadioShack considered keeping the name alive as a store-within-a-store concept involving wireless carriers, two of the people said.”
(Excerpt) Read more at macdailynews.com ...
Related:
Amazon and Google’s rumored moves may be ill-advised (Buying Uber and RadioShack?)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3253702/posts
Report: Amazon Interested in Radio Shack Stores
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3253590/posts
Too many things one needs are no longer available when you go to Radio Shack to find them. . . and too many things one doesn’t need are for sale when one goes to Radio Shack when one is in their store looking for what one needs. This is their failing. . . and the reason they are going under.
I went looking for a lighted SPST 125V 10A or greater switch the other day and even though they carry them the guy they had behind the counter had no idea what I was talking about. He was more interested in selling me the batteries they had on sale that were higher priced than what I could buy next door in the grocery store. . . or pointing out the displays of out-dated iPhone 4s and 5 cellphone cases. . . or the un-sold remote controlled helicopters and army tanks from Christmas marked down 25% in stacks on the show-room floor. What I did not find were much in the way of electronic parts.
it would be a brilliant move by Amazon, which already has 1/3 of all e-commerce - they need the local time/place utility provided by brick-and-mortar stores to maintain their position vs. the one competitor that can threaten them: Wal Mart.
IMO, Radio Shack lost their “soul” and tried to compete in too many areas in which they could not do a good job of such.
It used to be a great place to go, for electronics hobbyists.
Yep, when they lost sight of their name ‘RadioShack’, they were gone. Once was a great place to buy electronic parts and equipment ... suddenly they decided to get into the over populated cell phone market. Stupid move by stupid people.
Agreed. And you can add electronics related tools and supplies. The last thing I bought there was a DTV receiver with one of those gov’t coupons for the transition, and even then, the thing was not even their own brand. Before that, yeah, I think I purchased a switch I needed in a hurry, and had a hard time finding the thing. In the “old days” I’d have walked right up to it.
Radio Shack (and a host of others) also did NOTHING to help keep the hobby alive. Those who did so, primarily on the Internet, have found all sorts of niches.
I bought some quality Ham radio equipment dirt cheap when they closed out those items. HF, 2 and 6 meter,
and 440 mhz. Their going out of business sale should be fun.
I worked for them for three years right out of college. They should have gone to the IBMPC long before they kept the TRS Model III alive, should have allowed 3rd party development on their software, and UGH, that God-awfel “ColorComputer” (CoCo). I can now get small parts over the InterWeb at far cheaper prices, computer parts at MicroCenter with a HUGE selection...RS has/had a business model that acted like they were still the Only Kid On The Block for stuff.
Also...made two really nice junk bookshelves out of the old CB displays when they got out of THAT back in the 80s, and a nice minibar from the top of a car stereo display when they bailed on THAT.
I recall as a teenager browsing the electronic catalogs of Lafayette Radio Electronics and the Allied Electronics catalogs, drooling over all the cool things. . . and occasionally buying something. Lafayette had cooler things than Allied. . . ad a better catalog.
Then Lafayette started opening stores and even had some of the first computers for sale to the public. They had a row of various makers' computers and you could try them all out. Commodore, Atari, Apple, TI, even Timex 1000. . .
The Lafayette Store was a place I generally stopped in at least two to three times per week. Radio Shack never had that kind of feeling. It was really a joke in comparison.
I was quite upset when the employees showed up for work one morning to find the Lafayette store closed without warning. The following week, they re-opened with new close-out staff, with all the prices raised for "specials" and started discounting from the higher prices until everything was gone. The entire chain basically disappeared within months.
Don’t wait too long. I was in my RS the other day, the shelves were pretty bare, everything was 25% off.
Remember their attempt at a IBM clone? The standard cards wouldn't fit in the case they had for it. . . The slots were there on the board, but the cards to fit the slots would simply NOT fit in the case!
Yeah that's the ticket to success in having a loyal base.
I used to live a couple of miles from the North Fort Worth outlet store (closed about 3 years ago).
They had tent sales and sold some strange stuff. One thing was a holdover from the original PC period, a full length ISA card that would back up the hard drive to a VHS tape, but with no software to make it work (if it ever did work).
I loved to bargain hunt in the outlet section and those occasional tent sales.
I had a powerhouse Lafayette stereo receiver (160 Watts RMS per channel)in the early 70s and loved it.
There was a store similar to that in North Sacramento called California Radio Electronics that literally had everything associated with electronics except consumer electronics. It had been in business since Moses had acne.
In the main part of the store they had inventory that had not been dusted, touched sold, moved, or even repriced since the 1950s. It was a store where you could ask for a single 10 ohm, 1% resistor, and the sales person would spend just as much time with you making sure you had the correct part as he would with a customer buying a $1000 piece of equipment. If you asked for a left-handed Franistan, they'd ask you "What color" and they have several in stock for you to choose from.
In the back and upstairs in the attic, they had government surplus electronics and associated hardware and parts, such as rheostats from 3 inches to a FOOT in diameter, bins of knobs, bins of toggle switches with up to twelve poles, ball-bearing drawer slides that would support up to 2000 pounds per pair, or oil emersion capacitors a foot high and eight inches in diameter, and other esoteric stuff you didn't know you needed until you needed it. You could go back or up, and look around to see what was there and if you found something you needed, come down with and ask what they wanted for it, then start dickering. They might say they wanted $200 for one of those 1 Foot diameter rheostats, but you might walk out with it for $50, but where would you find one if you needed one?
On a Saturday morning, every sales position was literally ringed ten people deep. One had to take a number to be waited on. Some days there was a line out the door.
About ten years ago or so, I drove the sixty mile from Stockton to California Radio Electronics to buy some heavy duty drawer slides.
I KNEW there was trouble when I pulled into the parking lot. There were only TWO cars in the normally packed lot! When I walked in the door, there were only ten clerks and NO customers! CRICKETS! The place was CLEAN! New Lighting. SPARKLING! You could eat off the new linoleum floor.
I walked over to a clerk I had done business with and asked, "Mind if I go into the back? I need some drawer slides."
"No, you can't," he replied. "That area's employees only. Besides, it won't do you any good."
"WHY?" I asked, "What's happened around here" Where is everybody?"
The clerk proceeded to tell me the whole sordid tale of what happened to California Radio Electronics. It seems about three months earlier, a chain operation, having surveyed the area and seeing the phenomenal business that California Radio Electronics was doing, decided they wanted to have a presence in the retail electronics business and offered the owners an amount for the business they couldn't turn down, considering they were nearing retirement age anyway.
The company brought in a young, new manager, He decided that ALL sales of electronic parts would henceforth be made on bubble cards; in other words if a customer wanted to buy ONE resistor, he must now buy TEN identical resistors in a bubble pack. In addition, since only a small minority of customers bought 1% resistors, CRE would no longer stock 1% resistors of any size. 5% resistors would be adequate for the majority of customers. In fact, only resistors in certain sizes would now be stocked. . . those that were most commonly required. Same for capacitors. And no, special orders were not worth doing. All old stock was sold for 5% on the dollar along with all odd sized electronic parts. . . and sold to a discounter.
After I had picked up my lower mandible from the sparkling clean linoleum, I asked, "What about all the government surplus electronics and stuff in the back?"
"They had it all hauled to the dump!"
"OH NO! That's why a lot of your customers came here!" I said. . .
"You and I know that, but they wouldn't listen. To them it was 'junk.' It took two and a half weeks of hauling it out and dumping into dump trucks. It cost them tens of thousands in dump and recycling fees. They weren't even smart enough to take it to a metal recycling place where they could have sold it for scrap!" He said.
"Stupid, in so many ways!" sez I.
"It didn't take long before our customers learned we no longer carried the things they wanted or needed. . . and they just stopped coming. We could not get through to the company what was happening. They kept saying the customers would accommodate to the changes. They said this model works for Radio Shack and it will work for us! We tried to tell them it WASN'T working for Radio Shack!"
I walked out totally depressed. Six months later a "FOR LEASE" sign was in the window of what used to be the best electronics store in Northern California.
And that, my fellow Freepers, is how one kills the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I remember that technology. . . it worked. However, there was a limit on the size of the hard drive that was not that huge. And restoring was finicky, if I recall correctly.
I drooled over a lot of their electronics. I bought a reel-to-reel from them. It was great.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.