Radioshack Declares Bankruptcy 294
gemtech writes RadioShack has declared bankruptcy today. As reported Monday, the company has struck a deal to sell up to 2,400 of its approximately 4,000 stores to Sprint. From the article: "RadioShack said the remaining stores are expected to close. The company's franchise locations, as well as stores in Mexico and Asia, are not included in the deal. The bankruptcy announcement is no surprise. The New York Stock Exchange suspended trading of its shares on Monday. And RadioShack workers have told CNNMoney that some locations have already been converted to clearance stores."
So who's going to buy them? (Score:5, Interesting)
So you have a bunch of stores for sale in tech-sector-friendly locations, just when Amazon is starting to establish a physical presence... Hmm.
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Amazon could just rent out a few of the soon-to-be-abandoned locations and not deal with RS.
verizon may buy half the stores (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Curiously, Radio Shack in Sunnyvale was basically empty a few days ago except for the electronic components section, which is all I care about anyway. Here's hoping they co-brand it with Sprint and keep that back section stocked as-is. :-)
Better idea: Frys (Score:5, Insightful)
Frys or Microcenter, or even NewEgg.
Prime thing, though, they need to offer a small selection of electronics.
RadioShack dabbled in Enthusiast PC hardware, but gave up on it. I found them to be fairly priced for getting stuff I needed "now"
The business model needs to change, but RS was unwilling to be more than just another wireless retailer with a few toys and electronics added in the mix. If you have a B&M footprint, you have to give consumers a reason to come in. Providing goods that people usually can't wait for 3 days to get, or offering some sort of technical training for all the new tech, as well as easier returns (or pickup) for mail order goods is a start.
Maybe a "tech of the month" display to show people what they won't see at Best Buy or Walmart, but can order through a kiosk on site after checking it out. Many consumers still like the personal treatment when buying big ticket items, but they don't like paying a premium, or dealing with clueless stockers when they have a question.
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Frys is next to shut down (Score:2)
No reason to go there (Score:4, Insightful)
RadioShack dabbled in Enthusiast PC hardware, but gave up on it. I found them to be fairly priced for getting stuff I needed "now"
Really? I have bought some stuff I needed "now" though RadioShack in the last few years. I pretty much always felt like they were gouging me on price and their selection generally sucked. The ONLY reason I ever had to go to a RadioShack was when I needed something right this minute and there were no other convenient options. I have a Microcenter across town but it's a 45 minute drive to get there. I can order from Amazon if I can wait until tomorrow. But the number of times when RadioShack actually was the best available option has been very few.
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Radio Shack: $35
Staples: $25
Office Depot: $20
I'm probably wrong about the specifics, but that was the general range. Meanwhile i could go online and get a cable from Monoprice for $3-4, and, rather insultingly, Office Depot's online store had one for $5-6.
If Radio Shack had a cable fo
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Actually, no (at least not completely). Digi-Key is a favorite shopping spot for many hobbyists because they have cheap shipping, and an incredible inventory. The prices are rather high though, but for people ordering only single-digit quantities, it's not out of line. But unlike a lot of places, Digi-Key will ship small orders by First Class Mail for next to nothing, whereas most other distributors want to send everything UPS Ground for $10+ per shipment. If you just want to order a handful of cheap pa
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FYI, Digi-Key will ship your order for free if you mail them a check or money order.
* When a check or money order accompanies your order, Digi-Key pays all shipping and insurance (our choice for method of shipping) to all addresses in the U.S. and Canada.
Section II.6 [digikey.com]
Mom-and-Pops don't survive in America (Score:4, Insightful)
because suburbanites and flyover folks won't shop in them. Mom and pop and competing national chain open on the same block, the entire crowd flocks to national chains, particularly in smaller communities. Hell, they're even proud to have them. Getting a Wal-Mart means they've arrived, it puts them on the map.
The only place where Mom-and-pop shops still survive are in heavily blue urban areas, where they continue to do well. That's no accident.
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How about just cut their constant tax giveaways.
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No not outlaw Walmart, simply tax Walmart.
FTFY
Walmart is quite subsidized [americansf...irness.org] to the point that it makes the 30% Mom & Pop pay downright mean.
Re:So who's going to buy them? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's some weak sauce man, although the Forbes rebuttal is even weaker.
They're counting the fact that dividends are taxed lower than wages. They're counting accelerated depreciation too. That's tax law, and it's no different for Wally World than it is for anybody else.
The big number is the shit wages that make employees rely on food stamps, school lunch; all those Federal subsidies. That argument actually has some legs. But is that Wal-Mart's fault? All those Federal subsidies were already there, thus creating the environment that Wal-Mart could survive in. Then they move in, take advantage of it, and get rich. If not an Arkansas hillbilly, then somebody would have.
Let me ask you this: On the day Wal-Mart opened in your town, there was still a hardware store, and an independent grocery store, clothing and shoe stores, ...
Did you still go to those places, and never go to Wal-Mart? Myself, I resisted, but soon those stores were gone. And one by one those employees went to work at Wal-Mart for half the money.
Maybe you didn't go in. Everybody else did. You sure it's just 'The Government' that's at fault here?
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Don't compete on price with Walmart (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me ask you this: On the day Wal-Mart opened in your town, there was still a hardware store, and an independent grocery store, clothing and shoe stores, ...
There is a Walmart 4 miles south of the downtown where I live. It sees plenty of business as does the Lowes right next to it. We don't have an independent grocery store in our downtown but we do have a Kroger there and two independent grocery stores within 3-4 miles of downtown. What do we have downtown? We have a hardware store, several boutique clothing stores, a shoe store, several good restaurants, a bakery, a coffee shop, and a bunch of other generally thriving small businesses. Walmart has hardly made a dent in their businesses because they aren't really competing with Walmart.
What we don't have is a bunch of businesses trying to compete with Walmart head on. If you want cheap stuff from China that's fine and Walmart is the place to go and nobody does it better. If you want an actual high touch shopping experience, you'll go somewhere else. Walmart is only a death knell to small business that try to provide the same services for higher prices. We have a local grocery store that provides a MUCH different experience than Walmart. They have a high quality butcher, they sell far better quality produce, they have baked goods you wouldn't dream of finding in Walmart, they have a greenhouse, and cooking classes, etc. If you want cheap kraft mac-n-cheese, they might have it but you'll get a better price at Walmart. They don't compete on price because ultimately there can only be one winner if you compete on price. They sell stuff you won't and never will get at Walmart and they're doing fine.
Did you still go to those places, and never go to Wal-Mart? Myself, I resisted, but soon those stores were gone. And one by one those employees went to work at Wal-Mart for half the money.
Sounds like those stores were only thriving because they were capitalizing on the fact that there was no price competition pre-Walmart. I have no love for Walmart but they serve a purpose which is to be a place to buy basic merchandise cheaply. Why would I spend more on the exact same shampoo or dog food elsewhere? Honestly I buy plenty of stuff from Amazon which is even better for me because I don't have to go anywhere. It just comes to me. But I still go to my local stores because they provide me things I can't get through Walmart or Amazon.
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I fail to see how the Cheerios I buy at Walmart are any different than the Cheerios I buy at any other store, and they aren't any different than they were before Walmart even existed. Sure if you buy a $100 bike at Walmart then it will be terrible compared to the $400-$1000 bike at your local bike shop, but what did you really expect. That's not specific to Walmart, all large retailers sell the same junk.
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and democrats only care about their bureaucratic fiefdoms. the two together create the hell we have.
Re:So who's going to buy them? (Score:5, Insightful)
You think you're enlightened, but you're a foot soldier for 'the people in charge'.
Down with the rich eh? That's what the French did. The Russians did it too. They finally got fed up. I mean, that's what you actually have to do in the end, if you really want to take the rich people's money. You have to kill them all, and their families. Then, the next day, you and I report to new rich people, albeit with less taste.
Did you really just envision a society without charity? Can you hear yourself?
The answer is not to oppress everybody equally.
Re:So who's going to buy them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Down with the rich eh? That's what the French did. The Russians did it too. They finally got fed up. I mean, that's what you actually have to do in the end, if you really want to take the rich people's money. You have to kill them all, and their families. Then, the next day, you and I report to new rich people, albeit with less taste.
As it turns out, people are not very smart, and rich people are not actually any smarter than the rest of us. What actually happens is that people who have advantages over others exploit them, often heedless of consequence to others, and they then get to remain in control of the system, with eventual ill effect for all. So what happens is, some people rise to the top regardless of merit, then they rest on their laurels and spawn inbred idiots, and then torches and pitchforks. Lather, rinse, repeat, up until we learn to become personally involved in politics by building systems of government which are powered by citizen involvement.
Re: So who's going to buy them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes. The idea that the rich create jobs and businesses out of the goodness of their hearts.....
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That begs the question: Does a wealth gap inflict damage?
Well, the answer is no. But that still doesn't mean everything is good. A wealth gap is the damage. A healthy society is mostly middle class. That's how you know it's serving the needs and desires of its citizenry: it enables success.
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Odd then that you seem to favor Democrats over Republicans. Democrats have handed out huge favors to the rich, to banks, to Wall Street, and to corporations.
You're right: depending on private charity is demeaning and unreliable. Unfortunately, it turns o
Re: So who's going to buy them? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you have terrible government, which seems to be a reflection of the apathy towards politics enjoyed by the majority of Americans. You get the government you deserve. That doesn't mean all government is necessarily bad.
Socialism as practiced in Western Europe doesn't seem so bad. At least they have decent health care. But of course the American system which spends way more and has worse outcomes is superior because Murikah
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Small businesses are flourishing under Obama is your position?
"Small businesses" in this context are ones that hire 499 or fewer employees. We're not talking about pizzerias here.
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citations, please.
Methinks you need to lay off the CNBC & MSNBC...
consumerism wins! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what happens when nobody builds or repairs anything anymore ever. Throw it away, buy a new one. Luckily the corporate consumerists haven't adopted the same strategy yet, or we'd be seeing massive layoffs and turnover.
Re:consumerism wins! (Score:5, Funny)
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It might be different in the US, but in Canada they always had terrible stock. So if your thing didn't have a broken lamp or speaker, or a dead battery - you were SOL, as they didn't carry anything else.
There's so much different silicon now that it isn't really feasible to stock even a small portion of it in every mall anyway, so most anything you fix you'll have to order in parts for...
It would have been more reasonable when I was a kid (and they only stocked a whopping 3 transistors and zero fets then, to
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Radio Shacks problems stem in large part from migrating from a parts/geek store to a consumer store.
Selling gadgets, phones, TVs, and such, and less of the stuff they were originally known for.
They shifted markets, shifted their focus, and were unable to compete.
Meanwhile their backstop, components and parts, they tried to still do, but now you had to order and wait, rather than having a stock in store. Problem was as they did this, the internet was making them irrelevant. Why go to a physical store and pla
they probably still want your name, address, and p (Score:5, Funny)
they probably still want your name, address, and phone number in the clearance store
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And I suppose monoprice.com are greedy for selling me a 2 dollars cable when the same one only cost 50 cents on eBay shipping included?
Monoprice, however, sent me six replacement cables for free (including shipping) when I emailed them that the five I bought had failed in the last three years.
Goodbye (Score:2, Interesting)
Goodbye old friend.
Although, I thought you had died years ago.
Re:Goodbye (Score:5, Interesting)
The Radio Shack of my youth did die years ago.
I remember in the early 1980s the owner of the Radio Shack in my town would let me monkey around with the Color Computers, the Model 4s and the Model 100s. My grandfather bought me my first computer; a lowly Radio Shack MC-10, when I was 10 years old and I remember reading the manual from front to back about three or four times. My earliest programming experience was on that little computer, with 4k of RAM onboard and a 16k expansion module.
Good memories, but that store went away a long time ago, replaced by an unremarkable stereo and cell phone dealer staffed by people who could barely read the sales brochures.
Re: 4k (Score:3)
I remember typing in page after page of some game programmed in basic, as found in some magazine, and then running out of memory with just a half a page left.
Re: 4k (Score:5, Interesting)
That wouldn't be Softside, would it? When they first started to publish Basic games for the TRS-80, R/S threatened to sue for IP violations; only R/S, they said, had the right to say "Radio Shack" or "TRS-80" in print unless they paid royalties. So Softside began referring to them as "S-80 bus" games.
R/S got their wish: nobody ever discusses Radio Shack computers in print any more.
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Heh.
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Yeah, I feel that way too... See also my other comment to this story (which links to my Jan 15 comment).
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
Or, as it says here:
""This Is Why RadioShack Is in Trouble"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
"Feb. 2 -- Radio Shack is in talks to close half it's stores and convert the other half into Spirit mobile shops. If that happens will anyone even notice? Bloomberg took to the streets of San Francisco to ask potential customers how much they really know about Radio Shack. The lack
Re:Goodbye (Score:4)
I remember the day the dream died for me: walking into a store newly stocked with consumer goods and asking "Where are your ICs?". After a little confusion (and perhaps consultation with the old-beard I imagined locked up in the storeroom) I was directed to a small carousel containing LEDs and switches, but sadly not the ICs I was after.
I walked away... never to return.
Re:Goodbye (Score:5, Interesting)
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Stereos? Not anything of note for years now.
In 1973 my parent's got a Clarinette 85. That stereo lasted forever. I'm still using the speakers. I gave away the receiver/8 track/phono to a poor lady in 1988, still working wonderfully. It was replaced by a 1988 Realistic, which I'm using now.
That was a reason to go to Radio Shack. Why they got rid of their brands is beyond me.
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Goodbye old friend.
Although, I thought you had died years ago.
Oh they did die years ago, it's just nobody found out until now...
hope not... (Score:2)
Goodbye old friend.
Man, me too...
I *love* Radio Shack.
I love going in and rummaging through the parts to see what kind of stuff I could make.
Well...now it's different. When I was a kid it was with my dad for fun, now I'm making hand-crafted electronics and it's more immediate.
I just can't help but think that with the right merchandising Radio Shack can be a hit.
A deal with Apple makes total sense...b/c Radio Shack is so many places where Apple stores are not.
Ah well...
I hope the current locations can stay open where I live at
Apple is not going to buy RadioShack assets (Score:3)
A deal with Apple makes total sense...b/c Radio Shack is so many places where Apple stores are not.
It's not about quantity of locations its about quality of locations. Apple chooses the locations for their stores VERY carefully. They aren't in 2000 strip malls for a reason. They would have to seriously compromise a lot of about what makes their product and sales experience different. Honestly I cannot think of any value in RadioShack's rotting carcass to Apple.
Amazon on the other hand... maybe. The biggest risk to Amazon is companies like Macy's or Walmart finally figuring out that stores can serve
The Canadian arm of the business is stil operation (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder why they were able to survive in Canada and not in the US?
Re:The Canadian arm of the business is stil operat (Score:5, Insightful)
Different management team.
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Indeed. Often, the failure of companies is simply due to bad management or sometimes cooking the books.
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I imagine because it costs more for Amazon to ship across borders, thus not stealing so much of the market share.
I do not know what The Source (They really called it that?) actually sells, but if it's the same as RS, then I bet they are looking at this with caution.
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I imagine because it costs more for Amazon to ship across borders, thus not stealing so much of the market share.
I don't see how that would be an issue, given that Amazon Canada has its own presence. [amazon.ca]
Re:The Canadian arm of the business is stil operat (Score:5, Funny)
A management team capable of eating a salad without stabbing themselves in the eye?
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Hey, A one eyed manager in a kingdom of blind managers is CEO.
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If you're lucky enough to live in a town big enough to have a Best Buy or similar stores in the first place. The Source, however, is everywhere.
Yup (Score:2)
I was just in a clearance store today. Got a couple LED ornaments, and some t-shirts for $1.50 each.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Funny)
One less cellphone shop I guess (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One less cellphone shop I guess (Score:4, Informative)
I stopped shopping there long ago because they stopped stocking anything useful. I don't need a cellphone from them, I needed parts, which they no longer carry.
Some stores no longer carry parts, and some carry a reduced inventory. But some stores still carry a decent supply of components ans similar small, useful items. We have two Radio Shack stores in the closest city; one is essentially useless and simply directs me to the other store (but I frequently try it anyway, since it's the closer of the two). The other one isn't half bad, and almost always has what I need. I shall certainly miss it if it goes away.
Yup, bewildering management. (Score:3)
They seem to have decided a number of years ago to try to be Best Buy, only in 1/20th of the floor space, with higher prices, and while ensuring that they rebadge any major brand products to bear their own, woefully antiquated and little-known brand badges instead, to ensure that consumers would gravitate to Best Buy instead, where said major brands with which consumers were familiar continued to remain on display.
It started to make zero sense sometime in the late-1980s and it just got worse and worse from
I'll take an old computer, please (Score:2)
I wonder if they have a Model 4p hiding in back. . . . .
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Radio Shack used to have a huge distribution center and "outlet store" in the Hagerstown, MD area where I was living about 20 years ago. I'd pick up all kinds of out-of-date stuff they must have gathered from back store rooms of Radio Shacks across the country.
I guess the distribution center is still there. I wonder if they'll turn it into the Mother of All Clearance Centers?
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Replying to myself because I couldn't be troubled to read my google search returns before hitting "Submit" on my last comment.
The Distribution Center is toast. [bizjournals.com]
I still have fond memories of the Radio-Shack-that-was, and that place is a part of them. "4 cubic feet of random parts for $25? I'll take 4!"
Brand new TEAC FD-55 360k floppy disk drives (originally intended for Tandy 1000 family systems)? Worked great with my TRS-80 and my old CP/M system, and a steal at $20 each.
Re:I'll take an old computer, please (Score:4, Interesting)
One of my first jobs was getting on a old Model 16 that had been upgraded to a Model 6000 (a whopping 1mb of RAM), with two 20mb hard drives, and five or six dumb terminals. We actually used the Radio Shack multi-user accounting software and worked on multi-department accounting. Did the job nicely, actually, and it's how I got my training as a sysadmin/bookkeeper/manager. I inherited the beast when the company closed down and I monkeyed around with it for a while; got a Usenet and email feed going via UUCP. In the end the 8" floppy drive crapped out, so I gave it to a friend of mine who got things up and running again and had a private BBS running for a few years.
Tandy made some reasonably decent hardware. The 16/6000 was quite a machine: M68000 processor, Z80 coprocessor that could run CP/M, but under Xenix basically took care of all the I/O.
I also had an MC10 a CoCo, CoCo 2 and a CoCo 3 (though I never upgraded the latter to 512k). Played around a lot in OS/2 and wrote an accounting program in BASIC-09 (which was a dialect that felt like a mix of BASIC, Pascal and COBOL). But in the end the PC one the computer wars, I went out and bought a 486, switched between Linux and Windows 3.1, and my old equipment finally got chucked during my last move about eight years ago.
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After getting laid off from a large defense contractor in San Diego in 1986, a friend who managed one of the local Radio Shack stores turned me on to an opening at the local Radio Shack Computer Center, which did repairs of Radio Shack's TRS80 computers. Since I was a component-level electronics tech for 5 years with the defense contractor, it was a pretty easy "slide" over to working on the -then new- personal computers. I worked there for about a year, when the guy who quit, which created the job opening
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I predicted this 30 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw this day coming after I worked there for a period. Treating their employees poorly was part of their business plan. [sbnation.com] I am surprised that it took so long though. Kornfield isn't around to see this, [nytimes.com] but he must have seen it on the horizon as well.
Like Dick Smiths & Tandy in Aus (Score:3)
They stopped carrying what their original customer base wanted. Tandy disappeared, Dick Smiths has got even worse and I don't know how they are still going.
But then JayCar came along. Picked up all of their old customer base and have been making a killing ever since. Jaycar's buzz line is "Better. More Technical" you can go in there an they have bins of components - Love that shop - http://www.jaycar.com.au/ [jaycar.com.au]
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You younglings don't get it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Before cell phones, before the internet, before computers... heck before REMOTE CONTROLS FOR YOUR TEEVEE!
Radio Shack was THE place for geeks to hang out. Kinda like a micro-Fry's in every mall. My dad swore by the Realistic stereos (I never did but when the only other alternatives at the time were Sears or JCPenney's for stereo receivers... They held up pretty well.) I cut my teeth on a TRS-80 Model 1 (Of course I promptly pooh-poohed it for the TRS-80 Model II because it's still true that geeks don't handle obsolescence well! Christmas was asking for the 150 electronics project kits or other gadgets.
Sure, it sucks now and we don't seem to live in a time where people play with electronics or chemistry sets anymore but a time where people are content to watch what the kardashians are up to and re-tweeting it on their phones because, gosh darn it, math is hard.
And now I watch as Radio Shack sells off to the Undying Lands. It's better this way anyway, it was a lousy cell phone store and the last time I went in there to buy a pair of speaker stands, to match the set I had purchased in that store 5 years earlier, I was told by the new kid manager that they don't have *and never sold* speaker stands.
yah... Fare thee well...
NOW GET OFFA MY LAWN!!!!
maker-places could replace some of this (Score:2)
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I'll be burning my last battery card in protest.
Ah, the first laptop, the Trash-100.
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Ah, the first laptop, the Trash-100.
I still have one.. Last time I checked it still worked.. Its one of the 8K of ram versions. Paid $795 for it in 1985. Guess it should be in a museum somewhere....
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I have a "Realistic" 7 transistor radio my dad bought from the original Radio Shack store in Boston by mail order, around 1957-58. Its case is red leather with a large tuning dial and a smaller volume dial and a metal plaque that says "Realistic". It ran on a -now-obsolete- cylindrical 9 volt battery, since been modded to work with the current rectangular 9 volt batteries.. Darn thing still works, although the case is kind of beat up. I'm pretty sure he paid over $100 for it, although I was only 7-8 at the
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Yep. In the days before Fry's, the Shack was the place to go for components.
Then they decided to become Best-Buy-wannabees.
We still have Maplin in the UK (Score:2)
We used to have Tandy stores that carried Radioshack stock but they were all bought by Carphone Warehouse in 1999 and now they only exist as an online store.
A shame. Arduino kits and a better parts selection (Score:4, Insightful)
A shame. I was just starting to think it was making a modest return to its roots.
When I visited one a few months ago, they had quite a decent little display of Makershed Arduino kits and books about the Arduino, and they had a kind of dense metal cabinet with shallow drawers filled with individual parts, a much larger selection than they used to have hanging on pegs in blister packs.
I needed a new soldering iron and I bought one there.
Re:A shame. Arduino kits and a better parts select (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm wondering if the variance in reported RS experiences reflects a difference in management between the company-owned outlets and the franchise stores. Maybe the one you went to was a franchise, where the owner is invested and thus takes an active interest in making a go of it, instead of simply following edicts from corporate.
Been a long time coming (Score:3)
Haven't been in one of their stores in probably 20 years, surprised that it took that long for them to fail. In retrospect, they were so poorly managed, they weren't even good at failure.
Good riddance (and yes, I'm still pissed about the time you assholes tried to charge me money to send me a catalog of your stuff!!)
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Then they expanded like hell, employed stupid corporate business policies like charging people to pay for store catalogs, ridiculous "i need all your personal info" so I can sell you a resistor, etc.
I remember this shift well. Our local store manager understood though. As soon as you gave him a WTF look he would reply with "Right. Kris Kringle it is then."
Big Surprise (Score:2)
Remember when Radio Shack was place to go for electronics hobby stuff and electronics components? Now (or guess yesterday) the few electronic components they have are 10x the price of Jameco, Digikey, Mouser etc, and they hardly ever have what you need anyway. They were doomed as soon as they jumped the shark into being primarily a cell phone store, and jacked up the prices on everything else. It was only a matter of time and it's amazing they sold enough cell phone plans to last as long as they did.
Overseas stores (Score:2)
I get that the overseas stores are not included in the sale to Sprint, because that would make absolutely no sense, but what I really want to know is what happens to them when Radio Shack goes bankrupt. In other words, I want to know if my local Radio Shack located inside a Borders store (I kid you not [wikimapia.org]) will still be open.
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I shouldn't feel this.. (Score:2)
..but I feel a twinge of nostalgia on hearing this. I cobbled more than a few hi-fi experiments using parts sourced from rat shack in the 80's.
Still have an Archer SWR meter. And a Micronta multimeter I strongly suspect is a Fluke in a different dress.
Oh well. Fare the well, Rat Shack.. you failed at adapting to a world without buggy whips.
Good-by old friend (Score:2)
While you changed through the years I still remember going to Radio Shack for my vacuum tubes, or getting the parts and board to build electronics projects.
Clicks vs Bricks (Score:3)
Radioshack squandered every advantage. There was nothing that would have stopped them creating an online business that really leveraged and complemented their highstreet presence and distribution network. But the management team apparently chose to plunder rather than innovate
Really, how much would it have taken to recognize 5 years ago that they could allow someone to order their choice from a wide range of items before noon and pick it up in-store after 5pm same day, next day for more exotic items that had to come from an out-of-area warehouse. Not only would that be a faster way to order things, but would be a much better way to offer a returns policy and give a chance to sell cables and other accessories.
For the geeky well endowed, could they really not have offered 3d printed parts on a similar delivery schedule (or even in-store) or small scale manufactured parts. Could they not have had a travelling maker demo that moved from store to store every Saturday hawking maker slide or raspberry pis or some such things.
For the less geeky at heart could they not have let people order in-store as they consult with someone who can guide them - Amazon would sure get a lot more business out of my parents if they somehow improved their comfort levels with buying online.
It's not like they would have had to stop selling cell phones if they didn't want to.
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If those are ideas that would've saved radio shack, then they're still good ideas after radio shack is gone...
My nostaligic comment on this from Jan 15 (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org] ..."
"Yeah, sad for me too. When I was a kid, in the late 1970s, with an interest in robotics and computers., my father and I would visit Radio Shacks to get various parts for my projects.
I was tempted to follow creimer's example from that discussion and buy some stock or options hoping for a bounce, but I guess financially now I'm glad I didn't:
http://news.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
"Radio Shack has been preparing for bankruptcy for years. There's nothing new in the WSJ report th
Darn (Score:3)
Relics (Score:2)
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It's still way cheaper on eBay. Arduino Pro mini on element14? Almost 15$ without shipping. Same thing from dozens of sellers on eBay? Under 3$ shipping included.
I paid under 14$ for an Arduino 2560 R3 (again, shipping included). The same thing costs 46$CAD from canada.newark.com (Element 14) without shipping.
Re:...and nothing of value was lost... (Score:4, Insightful)
In all fairness, when you get an Arduino from Radio Shack, you are getting a REAL Arduino, and some money goes to support the project. When you buy from China, you are getting a clone and, while it works, the Arduino project (that makes the software) gets not a penny. I am not against clones, but I like to buy an original every now and then to help support the project.
Or, you could buy a clone and donate $5 to the project to help support development.
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Once you take the shipping cost into account (and duty fees and brokerage fees if you make the mistake of ordering in the USA from Canada), I'd still be way ahead even if I donated 20$.
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Once you take the shipping cost into account (and duty fees and brokerage fees if you make the mistake of ordering in the USA from Canada), I'd still be way ahead even if I donated 20$.
But did you? Be honest.
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They would have fallen to the Internet, instead of to Best Buy, Walmart and the like. There was a time when Radio Shack's distribution system was second to none. I was up in Canada, and I could literally order, say, RAM expansion for an old Model 4 from a dealer down in New Orleans.
But between Amazon, eBay, and all the suppliers who sell directly online, Radio Shack could not have competed there either. The Internet is killing a lot of the traditional retailers like Radio Shack and Sears, and what the Inter
Re:What if they'd stuck with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
IMO Sears is doing more to kill Sears than the Internet is. When you order an item that costs several hundred dollars, and not only does it not get shipped to the store for pickup but no one even follows up on the order, you can't expect to keep very many customers.