After 94 years, RadioShack may be about to pull the plug

Fortune ^

[Red in Blue PA]

The troubled electronics retailer is reportedly in talks to sell half its stores to Sprint, while shuttering its remaining locations.

Troubled electronics retailer RadioShack is reportedly close to filing for bankruptcy and is in talks to sell half of its more than 4,000 stores to Sprint while shuttering its remaining locations.

[Ditto]

What ever happened to Heath Kit? ;~))

[Vince Ferrer]

It is kind of ironic that today, with cheap 3d printers and drones, and even cheap robots, there is a lot of innovation and experimentation that is being done by young people. But Radio Shack is not where to go to buy that stuff, unlike their TRS-80, electronics kit days.

[TexasGator]

What ever happened to Heath Kit? ;~))

http://www.adafruit.com/

[Uncle Miltie]

What is this “radio” of which you speak?

[DarthFuzball]

RS used to all carry a full line of Sam’s Photofact repair manuals. I could fix almost any stereo or tv with those to go by.

[Vince Ferrer]

The women knew they’d lost him to his new love.

[lavaroise]

Maybe they should have targeted the drone building, laser making, survivalist and 3D printing market.

They went too liberal when Apple got that market. You cannot be hip and RS

[SamAdams76]

Nice job catching the subliminality in that!

[Myrddin]

A bit sad to see them go. I worked at a Radio Shack in grad school. Having an Extra class ham license and First Class Radiotelephone license made it easy to build a very large body of regular customers. It was a job I could work around my grad school classes. I left Radio Shack and moved to Marine Electric Company in San Diego. I earned 3x the hourly wage and had plenty of fun plying my technical skills in the field. In time, I moved to PacBell. Another 3x on pay and more technical work. Finally, I moved to my current employer. Many of my contracts required EE/CS tasks...and Radio Shack was still there to provide the odd parts on field trips. Digi-Key, Mouser and Spark Fun get more attention now. AdaFruit as well. There are fallbacks, but they are all online order and wait for the package.

[Vince Ferrer]

Which brings up one of the things that killed Radio Shack, in that electronic devices today are not built to be repaired, they are build to be replaced. This killed a lot of the kid’s ability to tinker with things. Thoses electronics kits were great, but today when we just throw something away when it breaks, why bother learning?

[max americana]

I go to BB to window shop and actually buy it online. The worst part of BB is the exchange policy. These effers’ swipe your drivers license for only the slightest exchange such as a laptop or remote. They treat you like a criminal unlike Target’s no question asked policy.

[Myrddin]

That's a nice reference. I have original paper copies :-)

I ordered the Allied Radio catalog in 1966. It was full of interesting stuff and I had yet to see a Radio Shack store. By 1969, Radio Shack had acquired Allied Radio. The new Allied-Radio Shack catalogs became an annual treasure. The place became less "nerdy" when Tandy acquired the company. More consumer electronics and fewer parts and kits.

[Joined2Justify]

Heath ... and ... Allied and Lafayette ... and I’m probably missing another. Were fine places back in the days, early days of Ampex machines, not long after came the early Hi-Fi years. Rek-O-Kut turntables anyone? Soon it was Stereo and some other Boston (MIT?) folks had AR going and ... but then along came Computers .. uh oh

But what we need now is ... how about some app that plays 45’s on a 16” Rek-O-Kut .. !

[DUMBGRUNT]

Forrest Mims:Meeting Doctor Doom [Top scientist advocates eliminating 90% of population for ecology]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1608026/posts

[omega4412]

Radio Shack tried serious advertising in Make magazine to reach this market. Too little, too late, too much of a time warp, I guess

[ctdonath2]

If the clerk doesn’t know what a crystal radio is, it ain’t a Radio Shack.

[Johnny_cash]

Several years ago they were doing pretty good when people were TESTING programers to get free satellite signal from smart cards.

Counter measures were put in place by the two sat companies that pretty much stopped that.

So I have been told.

[KoRn]

"Sounds like a personal problem."

If you buy stuff from them often, especially expensive items, the problem is all yours lol.(if nothing else you are paying TOO MUCH)

I've bought big TVs from them in the past. They aren't ALL bad, but more often than not, they will rip off naive people, trying to 'upsell' things they don't even need, or could do in a more cost effective way.

[ctdonath2]

When some salesdroid tried to convince me that the 3D TV I was looking at “popped” more than another model because it had higher resolution, I was done with Best Buy.

Only reason I’ll go there now is to buy things like specialty batteries or lenses (say, Nikon branded) that I want to examine in person before purchasing because there’s so much deception about such products online. I know I’m paying thru the nose for it, but have gotten BS elsewhere often enough that I’ll pay for the convenience & confidence. Anything else, well, forget it.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Also, the most important part of modern electronics is all within chips that are built in billion dollar factories. Electronics technology has gotten too good for the average hobbyist who wants to do more than slap some chips on a board.