[Red Badger]

Sad, but it has been coming for years. They had a good thing going until the management killed it..................

[goldstategop]

Its the end of an era.

Radio Shack is no more.

[C19fan]

With the internet and places like eBay and Amazon there is no need for a brick and mortar store selling electronics and other DIYs parts.

[RayChuang88]

I’m not surprised, considering people are buying electronic parts mostly from Amazon.com, Newegg.com, and other online retailers nowadays.

[Alex Murphy]

The company had a deadline of Jan. 15 to come up with $100 million in combined cash and available credit, or its major creditors can pull the plug on the long-term financing it needs to survive. RadioShack only had $63 million available heading into the Christmas shopping season. The struggling electronics retailer has been trying to close 1,100 of its 5,000 stores since March, but it's an expensive undertaking. It only came up with enough cash to close 175 stores through the end of October.

They managed to scrape up enough money to afford Weird Al Yankovic for their Christmas commercials.

[lysie]

Sad, yes. Loved their stores back in the day hubby and I would go there. No clue what he was buying, but it made me happy when he found it. :-)

[Lou L]

I think they simply lost their vision of what their company was and is. Are they a place to by electronic components? Phones? Batteries? Electrical gadgets? There’s a lot of competition that sells nearly all of those things. And what I can’t find at a brick and mortar competitor, I can find online. How many can really say, “I shop at Radio Shack for ______ because they do it better than ______ (named competitor.)”

[Sherman Logan]

More likely there business model became no longer practical.

Sharp management might have been able to move into a different business model, but I don’t think anybody could have kept this one going.

Sort of like Kodak and film, or Blockbuster and video rental. When your market goes away, even brilliant management can’t bring it back.

[KoRn]

Pretty bad when you don’t even have enough money to close stores. lol

Radioshack has been a TERRIBLE store for years. I remember it being ‘ok’ back during the 80s when I was very young, and during the 90s they started going downhill and FAST. Their inventory reduced to where you couldn’t really find anything when you needed it, and what they DID have was WAY overpriced, ‘off brand’ junk.

Just for the hell of it, I went into one last year. I noticed they had an ‘off brand’ 4GB USB Flash drive on sale for around $30. LOL (you could probably get one of those from Walmart for under $10)

[ontap]

Radio Shack is still in business?????

[4yearlurker]

Are there any more 1 Hour Photo Huts left? I remember my Uncle Hank in the early 1970s. “I’m going down to the Radio Shack for some battrees.” (South Jersey slang)

[Lisbon1940]

It’s the place for antennae and DTV boxes for cable cutters.

[virgil283]

As a kid I would go thru RS catalog as if it held all the things I could wish for... .....

[Fester Chugabrew]

One thing they are good for: That odd battery, cable, or connector you “need right now” on a Sunday afternoon.

In their early days you could purchase kits (Heathkit) to build your own electronics. They could rise again if they had the right vision and a way to execute it. Explore some of the cutting edge offerings. Build your own NSA foil, for example. Tin foil hats, too.

[Paine in the Neck]

RS has been a zombie for decades. They have no reason to exist any more.

[Seruzawa]

RS purposefully targeted and destroyed most of the old Mom & Pop electronic stores. Then they stopped offering parts and kits and went to that crappy line of Realistic junk. Bankruptcy couldn’t happen to nicer people. I feel sorry for the employees. But I’m sure the top tier will do nicely out of this.

[trebb]

I can’t remember the last time I went into one and wasn’t the only customer there. The clerks make the Maytag repairman look like a super busy whirling dervish...

[Texas Eagle]

Crap. NOW where am I going to take my Commodore 64 for repairs?

[AFreeBird]

My first computer was a TRS-80 CoCo. 16K of RAM, cassette tape storage, a 300 baud modem and a Videotex ROM cartridge. Came with a trial subscription to Comp-U-Serve.

Ahh the memories.

[BitWielder1]

Last time I was in a Radio Shack I actually did find the connector I was looking for. It wasn't exactly right but it worked.
Their hobby shelves are just sad now.
I was especially put off by the whole wall full of cell phone covers.
Really now, an electronics store selling pink cell phone covers!!

[circlecity]

I’m not surprised. I’ve been in a Radio Shack store about three times in the last 10 years and each time I was the only customer in the store the entire time I was there and the prices were outrageous.