Closing 1,100 stores.
The planned closures would leave the Fort Worth, Texas-based chain with over 4,000 stores, including over 900 dealer franchise locations, its chief executive officer said.
Sales at stores open at least a year fell 19 percent in the fourth quarter on weak customer traffic.
Mentioned to my kid that I used to go there when I was much younger. Didn’t even mention the games on tape that I could buy in those clear plastic bags. He probably would have asked “What - on duct tape?”
There was a time in the distant past when they stocked parts you wanted and the staff actually knew how electricity worked. I think that may have been before the 80s though. I bet 99 out of 100 current RS clerks don’t know V=IR.
Man, my first two computers were Tandys, so I still have something of a soft spot for Radio Shack. Sigh.
The crazy thing is that even after closing 1,100 stores, they’ll still have 4,000 stores left.
4,000 stores selling $20 USB cables to the 3 or 4 people left in the country who refuse to order them online for $0.99 each. Crazy.
They got hit by a perfect storm of everything.
The DIY demographic may not be dying out, but at the very least it’s turning into a tiny niche. When’s the last time you saw a kid build an electric generator? I remember seeing that kind of stuff in toy catalogs in the 80s.
Meanwhile, you don’t need a gazillion cables for your speakers and TV and VCR now. You just basically need HDMI, and you’re done.
They transitioned to mobile sales (handsets and plans), but the smartphone market has pretty much hit saturation, and you can buy the damn things from everywhere (Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Apple Stores, Carrier Stores).
And Amazon, Newegg, Monoprice are basically where any techie worth his/her SSD shops for tech stuff.
Heck, in my town, there’s a mom and pop electric supply store that fills the same DIY niche with a lot more charm, and with upwards of 200 years of expertise* on hand at any given time. The only thing that Radio Shack has on them and/or the hardware store is that they’re open later.
*Much of it relating to previous decades, admittedly. But it’s still pretty cool when those old fuckers get going on something.
Absolutely nothing to do with this thread, but your avatar is awesome, Courteous D. The Phantom Tollbooth & associated JF illustrations are Superior.
As for Radio Shack…it was the only place I could pick up 5.25" floppies in Bum Fuck, Idaho back in 1984. So there will always be that.
Given how you phrased this, I immediately imagined that it was run by a literal mom and pop, each of whom was 100 years old.
We haven’t really had Radio Shack/Tandy in the UK since I was a kid, but we have a similar store, Maplin. I’m kind of amazed it stays in business in an Amazon world, given that the rest of the bricks and mortar electronics retail business (Comet, Dixons, even Best Buy) has gone belly-up over the last few years and that Maplin is even more overpriced than the rest of them and yet they don’t actually sell the models/brands that hobbyists would want (on the computer side of things - I don’t know enough about DIY electronics and A/V to tell). They haven’t gone the mobile phone route, but they do sell assorted crap like remote control helicopters and plastic Christmas trees.
I used to use Radio Shack all the time for work when I needed something and didn’t have time to wait for internet delivery. If I needed a spool of 2-pair and some RJ-11 ends to make phone cables, they were the place. If I needed a box of RJ-45 jacks and some Cat-5 cable, again, they had it. PC cables? Done. Punchdown tool? Yup. Stripper/crimper? Sure. Weird ass converter to go from .8mm audio to RCA? Absolutely.
Then about 10 years ago I ran into a store looking for something pretty simple, I think it was a SATA cable or something similar. “Uh, we don’t carry computer stuff in the store, but you can order it online” was the reply I got from the clerk. Really genius? Can I order it online? How about I can order it online from NewEgg.com for 75% less, which I would do if I wasn’t working on something RIGHT NOW. When your one claim to fame as a store is that you carry everything for the do-it-yourselfer and you STOP carrying all that stuff in favor of no-contract cell phones, radio-controlled toys and a handful of fucking cables that anyone can buy anywhere for half the price, then what the hell good are you?
Radio Shack should just close ALL it’s stores and just become an online discount parts retailer like NewEgg.com. They’d stay afloat a lot longer doing that than they will slowly sinking under the weight of all those useless stores.
You’ve been there! Their son Buster is the computer guy. Still very strong on tape archives.
:) The Phantom Tollbooth is an old favorite, but I’m not sure how well Tock survives being shrunk. Tenniel scales down better, I think.
He’s immediately obvious to a true fanboy. I suspect if you dug out the musty old copy at my elementary school library, you’d still find the ~1.5 pages of checkout sheets I filled up over my 5 years there. No idea why I never just bought the damn thing.
Well, obviously you were under 10. Buying a book is expensive when you’re that age. I haunted my local used book store, and struggled with every purchase. My copy of “Lest Darkness Fall” still has $0.95 written in pencil on the inside cover.
Heh, my copy had a $0.95 cover price.
You’d think there would be profit in turning some floor space into a cross between a Discovery Store and The Sharper Image. It’s not like Americans ever fell out of love with useless gadgets.
I think Radio Shack was one of those businesses where you have to bring in the young people in every generation in order to make sure you have an ongoing adult customer base.
Horse racing is an example. When was the last time a generation of young people had “Let’s go to the track!” as a thing to do? Comic books is another one.
Radio shack had remote controlled toys and walkie talkies which were the big thing when I was a kid. Those electronic kits were more of a niche item. Today’s kid has a drone and a cellphone, in neither of which Radio Shack established a controlling market share. I think Radio Shack’s problem was they didn’t make an effort to transition to a new RS, they made their efforts to try and keep the old thing going. There was never anything compelling about their move to cellphones, and they kept selling the same kind of cheap remote controlled toys.
Where will I go for my 555 timer ICs and my 741c Op Amps?
Radioshack hasn’t had worthwhile electronic components in a long time. It’s pretty frustrating when I need something in a hurry and my only choice is to mail order it.