All Radio Shacks closing in America

[Ray.B]

I just went to Radio Shack to buy a battery, and they have a store closing sign out.  I talked to the guy at the cash register, and that all of the stores are closing.  More of the sign of the times.
     Later Ray

[xrunner]

I just checked their website, they're hiring! 

[Bud]

I guess someone needs to turn the lights off and lock the door, so they are hiring a person to do this job.

[JoeN]

They say it's not going to be every store.  But some of the remaining stores will be branded Sprint.  Not sure how many, if any, will be branded Radio Shack after this, so maybe it is completely going away in that regard, but the stuff I read doesn't seem to say that specifically, so I feel like there may be a few left even after this round of bankruptcy.  Legally speaking, Radio Shack/Tandy Corporation was fully dissolved during the last bankruptcy.  What still exists under the Radio Shack name right now is owned by Sprint, bought out of bankruptcy as the highest bidder with court permission.

http://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-radioshack-stores-closing-2017-3

[Brumby]

 

(Now who's going to help me clean the coffee off my screen...)

[DaJMasta]

Near me, the number had dropped off drastically in the last few years, but I went to the last remaining one near me last week for a couple of parts I didn't have time to order and they were going out of business too.  50% off components and 30% off wire and other bits in most cases, planning on checking back tomorrow to see if the percentages have gone up.  I could use some decent hookup wire or some heavy gauge stuff and maybe some big load resistors.

[Tom45]

Radio Shack local to me is changing over to a Sprint store.

[JoeN]

Radio Shack local to me is changing over to a Sprint store.

That seems to be pretty common.  I talked to a guy running the store on I-59 in Bartlett, IL and he said their location was closing but he was personally being moved to a nearby store that was becoming Sprint branded, so he still had a job.  I never usually go to this location but they had big signs out so I had to see the discount level.  Nothing in the components area was particularly attractive even with a 50% discount.

[Harb]

They closed here in Australia years ago.......they used to go under the name Tandy Electronics, but all the stock was still marked Radio Shack.....

They were good for low end HiFi stuff and Electronic 150 in 1 Electronic kits for kids, but the rest was just overpriced junk.......pretty much the same way Dick Smith Electronics went after they sold out to Woolworths down here.
The 2 big ones are now Jaycar electronics and Altronics which both stock a range of modern parts and kits.......... I rather would have had the old surplus stores though.....you could get some great ex military junk there.

[vk3yedotcom]

"Company Man", a YouTube channel that focuses on business reporting, has turned its attention to Radio Shack and their decline

[Alex Eisenhut]

They've been closed for weeks in Canada, then again, they weren't called Radio Shack anymore either. But all the locations have been papered over, at least those I've seen here in Montreal.

The original Radio Shack from my youth ('80s) was part of my education. The Engineer's Mini Notebooks, Getting Started In Electronics, the various parts and proto boards I used with my VIC-20 are good memories.

They also sold weird and wonderful stuff before the 'net shrank the whole planet down to a Paypal transaction and waiting for the Canada Post truck.

Like the Infrared Sensor, that little plastified card with the chemical infrared to visible upconverter. Or the ~1mm plastic fiber optic and LED and phototransistor kit. Stuff I couldn't have gotten any other way as a kid with only local BBSes and pocket money. Ordering stuff from the US from magazines was more complicated than today! Who remembers buying money orders and mailing them out and waiting silently for weeks for trivial parts or books?

I enjoyed their Battery Club and kept several cards for all the stores within biking distance... Free red batteries for my CBs! Ha ha!

I also encountered my share of asshole managers that would toss me out on my ass for asking so many questions and hogging the computer displays. Oddly, the Apple/Atari store (what a weird combo) who sold 10000$ Mac IIs and projection TVs would let me sit for hours at their machines.

I digress. Anyways, the world's changed, even the shopping malls that housed Radio Shacks are in trouble. Every time I visit my parents in the suburbs, I see the shopping center of my childhood, and it's just a zombie mall. A giant Wal Mart, some restaurants, lots of For Rent signs, very few people. It's not the social center it once was.

[JoeN]

The original Radio Shack from my youth ('80s) was part of my education.

I taught myself to program BASIC on a TRS-80 model 3 at a Radio Shack location when it was not busy.  Read the book at home and took the ideas in there and keyed it right into their floor model.  We didn't have one at home until six months later which was mostly me asking for one for Christmas since I had taught myself to program some simple stuff.

[bjcuizon]

 

(Now who's going to help me clean the coffee off my screen...)

HaHaHa    Good one there! I included the encircled R the first time I read it..until I realised it meant something else.

[JoeN]

He skips from the 70s (CBs) to the 90s (cell phones) and totally skips the 80s when they were actually interesting because they had fully developed two separate lines of 8-bit computers (plus a well-regarded 8-bit portable computer) with good software support from third party vendors.  What started their downfall was none of the things the guy in the video listed, it was actually the PC standardization (which also killed Atari, Commodore, and several other lines of PCs, and very nearly killed Apple).  The PC business was really their one serious distinguishing feature, and some of their unique RC toys.  Too bad they gave up innovating, designing, and manufacturing.

[rdl]

The 80s were Radio Shack's hey day. What killed them was expanding into high rent shopping malls and then thinking they could make money on cell phones.

[rsjsouza]

He skips from the 70s (CBs) to the 90s (cell phones) and totally skips the 80s when they were actually interesting because they had fully developed two separate lines of 8-bit computers (plus a well-regarded 8-bit portable computer) with good software support from third party vendors.  What started their downfall was none of the things the guy in the video listed, it was actually the PC standardization (which also killed Atari, Commodore, and several other lines of PCs, and very nearly killed Apple).  The PC business was really their one serious distinguishing feature, and some of their unique RC toys.  Too bad they gave up innovating, designing, and manufacturing.

I watched that clip yesterday and thought that something was amiss there - thanks for bringing it up. By his account RadioShack started to focus in popular electronic products in the 90's, but personal computers and HiFi stereos were all the rage in the 80's. Radios and electronic parts were still a great part of their catalog, but not the majority of it.

One thing he mentioned that seems to be accurate was the lack of initiative to embrace the web fully - but they were not the only ones that did that. If they had quickly moved their entire catalog to an ordering system à la Jameco, JDR (focused on electronics and computing), I suspect they would be in a better position. However, in hindsight is 20-20.

[eugenenine]

I just went to Radio Shack to buy a battery,

umm, why?  They sold the worst batteries for the highest prices.

[Brumby]

I remember seeing the cost price for one of their button batteries.  Yes.... well .....

Let me just say the gross margin was in the 90's.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

Now please take K-Mart with you and shut the lights off when you leave...

[Sceadwian]

I know some people might consider this sacrilege, but it's about time they died! Nostalgia aside they've been crap for at least the last 10 years for anything.

[Alex Eisenhut]

I know some people might consider this sacrilege, but it's about time they died! Nostalgia aside they've been crap for at least the last 10 years for anything.

Pretty much. I liked their offbeat stuff, I have their pocket multimeter, frequency counter, sound level meter, and infra-red sensor.

[GreyWoolfe]

I have a 22-305 frequency counter that looks like crap but works that I got in a box of stuff I bought at a SK ham yard sale for $20.  Also in that box was a 22-175A multimeter that had batteries that leaked a bit.  Some clean up and it works as good as new.  It works perfectly for measuring resistances on an FRU on a piece of company equipment being deployed.  I just need to get another set of Frankie's Brymen leads for it to replace the crappy leads it has.  Actually, I'm going to get a few more sets and rid of all the PVC coated leads that I have.

[Rerouter]

It really does sound like DSE's death, when i was a kid i would ride out to DSE every few weekends to try and aford something there, few years later a tandy appeared in the same shopping complex and I had a peek inside, but it was only ever general appliances and phones, then to my horror over the next few years, the component and gear section grew smaller and smaller, when they eventually dropped the basics like solder, and the component racks, I only ended up visiting 1 last time, and at that point it was a carbon copy of what the tandy that was closing down in the mall had been.

My nearby Jaycar just moved in to a larger location in a much harder to access area (one way road on to main motorway), I have a fear that unless the land is crazy cheap It may also begin seeing a decline, which would be a right PITA seeing as the next nearest place is 20Km from me. (for those times you need a random resistor value at 2pm on a sunday) I regularly head there instead of ebay and cop the markup, because I like the workers, and the convenience.

[cdev]

The difference between a physical store and the net is the browsing aspect of a store is good for introducing people to new things in an immediate, experiential way. The best web sites - and especially communities like this forum, and videos like Dave's capture that, and take it farther, so for us, we lose much less, and gain more that we didn't have before - with the Internet.

However, for the average person who does not make an effort to get exposure to electronics as a knowledge domain in a general way, a source of potential exposure to the hobby vanishes.

So what we really need to get people interested in it, is for (very basic and functional) electronics and computer science to be taught in schools as one of the physical sciences, perhaps even in grammar schools.

 I think also that in high schools, they also should teach basic database competency and the very basics of how the web and Internet work. (and how to tie them together) That would make it possible for kids to do science if they had an idea they wanted to explore.

Right now few properly think of science as a way of getting things for society that we want, of solving problems, of thinking, and really, as a way of living, (i.e. fact based as opposed to whatever, emotion based or unfortunately, sometimes prejudice based) so much as they think of it as a "career".

That's not so good, in my opinion as seeing it as a way of solving problems.

[nctnico]

The difference between a physical store and the net is the browsing aspect of a store is good for introducing people to new things in an immediate, experiential way. The best web sites - and especially communities like this forum, and videos like Dave's capture that, and take it farther, so for us, we lose much less, and gain more that we didn't have before - with the Internet.

A lot of online stores have reviews and sometimes these contain interesting comments so getting product information isn't limited to specialist fora.

I'm still baffled by Trump sneering at Amazon for putting real shops out of business. If he understood business then he'd known what kind of future is ahead. But then again even Bill Gates thought internet was going to be nothing more than a short lived hype.

[netdudeuk]

The difference between a physical store and the net is the browsing aspect of a store is good for introducing people to new things in an immediate, experiential way. The best web sites - and especially communities like this forum, and videos like Dave's capture that, and take it farther, so for us, we lose much less, and gain more that we didn't have before - with the Internet.

If he understood business then he'd known what kind of future is ahead.

Yes, he has no idea about business 

[rsjsouza]

I know some people might consider this sacrilege, but it's about time they died! Nostalgia aside they've been crap for at least the last 10 years for anything.

Despite I understand their stores and products lost the appeal of older times, in my opinion I don't think this is a great way to put it; real people are losing their jobs...

The difference between a physical store and the net is the browsing aspect of a store is good for introducing people to new things in an immediate, experiential way. The best web sites - and especially communities like this forum, and videos like Dave's capture that, and take it farther, so for us, we lose much less, and gain more that we didn't have before - with the Internet.

However, for the average person who does not make an effort to get exposure to electronics as a knowledge domain in a general way, a source of potential exposure to the hobby vanishes.

The internet brings knowledge from previously unreachable places and unsuspecting sources (hopefully most of the times), but there is something different about the immersive experience of entering into a store and physically exploring the multitude of "trinkets and parts" bags, tools, etc. Several of my childhood friends got engaged in electronics after trips to the store with me.

So what we really need to get people interested in it, is for (very basic and functional) electronics and computer science to be taught in schools as one of the physical sciences, perhaps even in grammar schools.

I think also that in high schools, they also should teach basic database competency and the very basics of how the web and Internet work. (and how to tie them together) That would make it possible for kids to do science if they had an idea they wanted to explore.

Schools in my region never had anything of sorts; our parents were quite engaged in feeding our curiosity with challenges and resources. This worked for both myself and the field of electronics and for my brother and his interest in biology.

[KE5FX]

If he understood business then he'd known what kind of future is ahead. But then again even Bill Gates thought internet was going to be nothing more than a short lived hype.

He certainly understands bankruptcy, having been through it five or six times.

[nctnico]

I know some people might consider this sacrilege, but it's about time they died! Nostalgia aside they've been crap for at least the last 10 years for anything.

Despite I understand their stores and products lost the appeal of older times, in my opinion I don't think this is a great way to put it; real people are losing their jobs...

Yeah, I still feel really sorry for people who shuffle coal into steam locomotives for a living. The world moves on and so should people.

[rsjsouza]

I know some people might consider this sacrilege, but it's about time they died! Nostalgia aside they've been crap for at least the last 10 years for anything.

Despite I understand their stores and products lost the appeal of older times, in my opinion I don't think this is a great way to put it; real people are losing their jobs...

Yeah, I still feel really sorry for people who shuffle coal into steam locomotives for a living. The world moves on and so should people.

Yeah, right. Easy to move on if you are not close to retirement age and/or compatible employment opportunities around you are plentiful...

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

Code: [Select]

Public Function
If
    Buggy whips & rug beaters & wagon wheels & magic lanterns & Radio Shack _
    (surely they'll come back!) = False, then
    Build a dang space fleet now!
    'Nostalgia is OK, but there's a new frontier.
    'It can't be built with carbon comp resistors, neon lamps, stone knives or bearskins.
EndIf

[zeqing]

i know seeedstudio made more than 20 milions dollars business with Radioshack in 2012~2013, and actually the radio shake encounters serious problems in 2014 but it went back in 2015, and seeedstuio made more than 30 millions dollars with them that year... wish seeedstudio do not risk too much on this.