They announced their bankruptcy filing two days ago. They announced plans to close 1784 stores by the end of March. Dunno if that is all of 'em, but thats a lot. If there is anything you need from Radio Shack now is the time to buy, before they are gone. First stores will close with in 10 days.
Regrettable!
A sad day indeed [xx(]
They used to be a big thing for parts buyers slike me, but in the past 30 years or so they have wandered down to zero.
Tandy Computers were a nice enough thing, but that failed. Now you cannot even find Tandy Leather Crafts. Radio Shack is an idea that went stale years ago.
LION understands that some locations will remain open as someone else bought the remains of the company, and some of these will morph into Sprint stores.
ROAR
No major loss. They’ve been dying for 20 years and dead for 10. Frankly, I don’t even know what they were supposed to be and neither did they.
There were over 4000 Radio Shacks. For comparison, there’s only 1800 Targets. They were cannibalizing themselves in the market of…whatever the heck their market was.
This saddens me because I used to work there till the early 2000’s. The bottom line is, they hired leaders in the '90s who took them away from their core business (for example, the “store within a store” that never worked well for anything other than cellular service), and jumped ship after a few years once they’d effectively killed Charles Tandy’s golden goose. The new leadership then hitched their wagon to cellular sales, which kept them afloat for awhile via residuals, but that couldn’t last forever due to market saturation. Their bankruptcy has been expected for some time, but it still bothers me because it could’ve been avoided with better leadership.
The title of the topic seems to be jumping to a conclusion. The news I heard on Friday was that RS filed for chapter 11 protection and will be closing some of their stores. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet although she may be warming up in the wings.
Eh…kind of a bummer. In more recent years Radio Shack was the place I would get the odds and ends that where too menial to pay the shipping costs from large internet suppliers. RS would typically be one of many stops I make when I go to Carson City. It’s also a good deal that my RS store shares the same building as a really good Chinese buffet…addtional justification for the 30 mile one way drive.
Mark H
Not sure I’d call the Shack dead yet. There are over 1,000 franchise stores that aren’t directly impacted by the closure list of company-owned stores. And well over a thousand of those will remain open for now. Verizon and another party seem to be moving to take over a number of those, but unkown of the name will stay.
Locally, 1 of 3 is closing. Lucky, I guess, as the one that’s 3 blocks away will stay open, although I can’t always find what I need.
I have a Radio Shack not far from here. The last time I was there I was looking for barrier strips. They were nowhere to be found, so I asked the young lady behind the counter if they carried them. I tried barrier strip, terminal strip, and describing what they do, but I might as well have been speaking Klingon.
There was a time my question would have been met with the answer “what size” or “how many do you need?”
Honestly, I don’t know how they have stayed on the radar as long as they have.
Radio Shack has filed for bankrupcy. They will close many stores across the country as they have recently closed two in my town. Sprint is going to operate the ones that are left. Unknown if they will sell parts. I just placed an order online and hope I get it.
R S went down the tubes when they stopped hiring knowlegable electronics people and starting hiring sales clerks.I think there are two left in my town and if you don’t know exactly what you want going to either store is a waste of time.
I bought my first ham radio at the shack, made my first contact on a HTX-202. Radio shack used to be the place to go for anything CB/Scanner/Ham Radio along with nice RC stuff at Christmas time. Now I can barely find anything I need there. Shame to see the once great company fall on hard times. Mike N9XLZ
Back in the day, they had a very good selection of electronic parts. They also built stores right on top of one another - heck in my small town, well, we weren’t even incorporated as a town or even a village, it was just the township, we has two stores within walking distance of each other. I worked at one, my friend worked at the other.
The downside of all those electronic parts was inventory time. We had to hand count everything. And of course you know there was always some joker who picked up a pack of 10K resistors then realized he wanted 1K and shoved the pack of 10Ks on the 4.7K peg… But even then, the writing was on the wall, as they pushed their junk stereos and stuff. I transferred to a different store in college to earn some spending money, and my manager there went through a lot of trouble to haveeverything they sold hooked up for demo - any receiver could be layed on any of the speakers and so forth. The district manager came in and yelled at home and made him disconnect it all because ‘policy’ was that the only thing that should eb hooked up for customers to try out was the system featured in the current sale flyer. And then there were the quotas on getting people signed up for their credit card… I like to say that the last person who knew anythign about actual electronics quit when I finally quit. They then morphed into a cell phone store - but there are plenty of places you cna go and buy a cell phone from any of the carriers (vs the specific stores like AT&T or Verizon) - even Walmart has cell phones from multiple carriers. They made an attempt to get back to some of the experimenter roots by carrying some microcontroller project kits and books, but the Aurdino kits they sell, I can get from a place like Sparkfun for $30 less. Lost and aimless, with no direction. I’m surprised they held on this long.
Pre IBM days, their computers were some of the best ones. Ther first PC compatibles were not completely compatible, which just didn’t f
Sad but expected. I built a lot with Radio Shack parts (and of course Heathkits if anyone remembers those). But for at least the last 20 years, they’ve been cutting back on parts and trying to sell, well, I’m not sure what their focus is. To bad many kids aren’t building those kits and learning by doing anymore.
jim
I’ve seen the handwriting on the wall for a long time. Even decades ago when they were doing well, their consumer electronics were expensive and low quality, and stuff like batteries was criminally overpriced. The only reason I could see to go there was that they had stuff you couldn’t get anywhere else, such as the electronics parts.
Unfortunately I still rely on them for parts. Sure, I can get just about anything online, but if I only need one or two small items, and need them NOW, I get them from Radio Shack. Especially since the last electronics surplus store here went belly up several years ago.
Why learn by doing, when we’re conditioned to either take everything to an “expert” or just buy a new item? Also, many people find project kits boring, or at least not as much fun as the latest shoot 'em up bang-bang video game.
As for lack of knowledge among Shack staff, they used to make employees go through training books and attend monthly training sessions. You may not have ended up knowing as much as an electrical engineer, but you knew enough to help customers, not just give them a blank stare. Then again, for the last 10 years or more, it’s been minimum wage, entry level clerk work, where the only products they seemed to care about were related to cell phones. That, after Len Roberts’ idiotic store within a store idea (RCA, Sony, Verizon, etc) that effectively destroyed RS core brands like Optimus/Realistic, turned them from a unique retail chain to just another chain that sells electronics, for higher prices than their competitors.
Still have my 202!!! AND my 404 (440 MHz version)!!
Batteries are now 3rd party but both still work on the local repeaters!!
Never did get their 10 meter rig…pity I’ll likely never get one now!!
BTW…WA1NBI here…!!
May your freight ALWAYS roll smoothly…and ON TIME!!
Training? I never went to any training, and this was in the 80’s. Maybe they added training when they got rid of the hand-written receipts we used to do - and then key into the computer each night after closing. Only reason I knew electronics was because I was in college for EE. Well, and playing with electical and electronic things was a favorite activity going back to when I was about 5 or so. I was one of those who knew what degree I wanted to go for in college before I was a freshman in high school.
–Randy
That isn’t the reason the chain is failing according to the reports - it’s more like times have changed and what used to make Radio Shack successful is simply no longer relevant in terms of sales and financial success.