RadioShack co-branding of stores with Sprint wins court approval

Reuters ^ | 3/31/2015 | Nick Brown and Tom Hals

[mac_truck]

A plan to salvage RadioShack Corp’s RSHCQ.PK business by co-branding most of its 1,740 surviving stores with cellular phone provider Sprint Corp (S.N) earned U.S. bankruptcy court approval on Tuesday, ending four days of contested court hearings.

The stores are what survived of more than 4,000 outlets after RadioShack went bankrupt in February. Founded in 1921, the chain was a go-to retailer for electronics before becoming increasingly irrelevant in the digital age.

Judge Brendan Shannon, in Delaware bankruptcy court, approved a sale of the stores to the Standard General hedge fund, which plans to keep most of them open under a deal in which Sprint will occupy one-third of each space.

The sale could preserve about 7,500 jobs, and allow RadioShack to stay in business, a big challenge for retailers who file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

[mac_truck]

Good for RadioShack, but I'm still trying to figure out how this association helps Sprint which is already highly leveraged.

[Resettozero]

Wonder if they’ll unload the RS stock and just go with cellphones and such.

(I’m slowly but slowly getting rid of hundreds of dollars worth of RS adapters for equipment that no longer exists.)

[Alex Murphy]

The rebranded stores will be known as Shint.

[Vigilanteman]

I'd really, really like to see Radio Shack survive. Even more, I'd like to see them get back into the business of selling smaller electronic parts, even if they only stocked the most popular and had an on-line ordering and pick-up capability for the rest.

There were a great store once upon a time.

[exPBRrat]

Well that is the perfect resolution for me as well.

[freedumb2003]

>>(I’m slowly but slowly getting rid of hundreds of dollars worth of RS adapters for equipment that no longer exists.)<<

I have a big bin I call “The Land of Misfit Technology” — adapters up the wazoo, ISA Windows Sound cards, SCSI drives, PCM CD readers, etc.

I just can’t seem to let them go.

And just recently I had a use for my RCA connectors so you never know... ;)

[catnipman]

“I have a big bin I call “The Land of Misfit Technology” — adapters up the wazoo, ISA Windows Sound cards, SCSI drives, PCM CD readers, etc.”

Well, in that case, I suspect you have an even BIGGER bin of obsolete cables, you know, big fat parallel-port cables, serial cables, IDE ribbon cables, not-quite-yet-obsolete VGA cables, and the like. After all, obsolete cables take up WAY more room than obsolete electronic boards and parts.

[Myrddin]

Both Pocatello stores are stripped clean and back on the market as general retail space. The Radio Shack signage is all that remains.

I'm reduced to DigiKey, Mouser, Sparkfun, Adafruit and Element14 using online ordering for parts. The days of making a field visit for an electronics repair and having basic parts on hand at a local RS store are over.

[Resettozero]

After all, obsolete cables take up WAY more room than obsolete electronic boards and parts.

Thanks! That's where I'm headed. Right after lunch. One day.

[fireman15]

“Founded in 1921, the chain was a go-to retailer for electronics before becoming increasingly irrelevant in the digital age.”

I have depended on Radio Shack for decades when I have needed a specialty component to help repair electronic devices. I can't tell you how many times in my youth when I was able to get a stereo or TV working again after a quick trip to Radio Shack.

I do miss the days when one could find a project in an electronics magazine, run down to Radio Shack and pick everything that was needed for a reasonable price. Radio Shack also used to have a large selection of paperbacks with electronics projects for which they generally had all of the parts.

But everything has changed. Part of the problem for Radio Shack is that modern electronics have become less and less repairable. It used to be when something went pop and a little puff of smoke came out of the back of your radio... you could take the case off, sniff around a little, identify the burned parts, trouble shoot the circuit, remove the bad parts, solder in the new parts and you were back in business.

These days a lot of the time you have surface mounted specialty IC chips doing most of the work in tiny devices... they are hard to troubleshoot, hard to find and hard to remove and reinstall. Additionally, the value of modern electronic items drop very quickly so that by the time they break they are often not worth messing around with.

Radio Shack has had a smaller and smaller variety of parts in stock. And of course even if there was a market there is no way that they could stock specialty IC’s for things like phones and tablets. If you have to wait for parts to come in, other component suppliers such as www.digikey.com, www.jameco.com and sellers on eBay and amazon have had far better selection, much cheaper prices and more reliable shipping times.

Radio Shack has been facing very challenging times. I hope that they can continue finding niche markets and survive. I still like visiting the stores. There are generally interesting people working at the stores and they usually have a fun selection of items.

[fireman15]

I'm reduced to DigiKey, Mouser, Sparkfun, Adafruit and Element14 using online ordering for parts. The days of making a field visit for an electronics repair and having basic parts on hand at a local RS store are over.

Thanks for the post! I haven't ordered anything from Sarkfun, Adafruit or Element14. I have been looking over their websites in the last few minutes.

[TheGipperWasRight]

I’m glad that I had already swallowed what I was drinking before I read that.

[showme_the_Glory]

Can you still test your tubes there?

[subterfuge]

Will they still ask for my address when i go in there?

[discostu]

Soooo being a cellphone reseller didn’t work for them and now their plan is to be even more of a cellphone reseller?

[freedumb2003]

I don’t have bisync nor Bus-n-Tag — If I would have thought about I would have grabbed some in 1987 when I used both of those.

And can you imagine having the 110 BAUD acoustic coupler with the box to shut out external noise?

And to have a rack of 1 MB core memory.

I wish time travel was as easy as in Star Trek — I would just grab old time stuff! :)

[Myrddin]

I use those vendors for small scale prototypes. Good for PIC, XBee, Arduino, many sensors, power supplies, USB interfaces, programming tools and Raspberry PI. The XBee with Digimesh firmware was helpful on my railroad project in 2008.

[Myrddin]

As a young married couple, our budget was stretched. No room for extravagance like a TV. My dad's old TV was built with discrete components. The shop said $250 to diagnose and replace the bad board. He handed me the TV for free and purchased a new replacement for himself. I had the schematics. I turned it on and the problem was obviously sync. The sync board had 9 transistors. I used my VOM to check the EB junctions and found a bad one. A trip to Radio Shack yielded a replacement for $1.59. A couple minutes with the soldering iron and the TV worked again. I kept it for another 3 years util the wafer switch contacts had such deep grooves that the tuner was unreliable.

[fireman15]

It is strange that with all of the electronics that we are now inundated with that fewer and fewer people seem to have a clue how to do anything with the hardware. I do have a couple of eprom programmers and various other equipment and tools, but I have to admit that all that I have ever done is repair stuff and build projects from kits and plans.

I am hoping my next project will be a CNC conversion on a small milling machine. I have a book with plans for building one up from scratch, but will probably get a kit to convert one of the X3 type mills Harbor Freight or Grizzly sells for a few hundred dollars. I always have admired people as creative as it sounds like you are.

[OldMissileer]

There were a great store once upon a time.

The back wall with all the resistors and other electronic components was my adult toy land.

I worked at Radio Shack for over three years as a part time job while I was in the Air Force and then while I went to college. I used my employee discount to build a lot of projects and I still have a couple of large tackle boxes full of components.