Meet the new RadioShack

Ron Czapala

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/radioshack-is-dead--long-live-radioshack-141217507.html

According to plans filed with the bankruptcy court, the stores will look a lot like the streamlined outlets RadioShack Corp. had hoped to build before running short on cash earlier this year.
Sales of cellphones, a crucial traffic driver that nevertheless had long since stopped being very profitable for the chain, will be outsourced to Sprint.

...focus on higher margin house-brand chargers, batteries and speakers.
... a lot fewer items in the stores—around 1,000, down from more than 4,000

Heater.

Still too many stores.

I reckon may be about 500 is optimal to cover supplying electronic bits and bobs to the population of the USA.

Publison

Heater. wrote: »

Still to many stores.

I reckon may be about 500 is optimal to cover supplying electronic bits and bobs to the population of the USA.

But I think the proposed co-owner, (Sprint) wants the 1700 retails space to sell phones, and oh by the way, some Radio Shack stuff. That's the way way I read it.

Ken Gracey

Heater. wrote: »

Still to many stores.

I reckon may be about 500 is optimal to cover supplying electronic bits and bobs to the population of the USA.

Yes, I tend to agree here. Maybe more like 1,000 is the right number. The current number of 1,700 (?) just seems far too high for what I know about this business.

Ken Gracey

User Name

It would be cool if RS ended up being a back corner of a Sprint store. Deja vu. Now if they'd start selling electronic kits again...

GordonMcComb

I really doubt RS is going to continue selling the small packs of resistors and capacitors. While they're high-margin, they're low-ticket. Hard to make money when your average receipt is just $5-10.

If they stay in electronics at all, it'll be things like toy-level kits. Or if they do carry components, it might be limited to larger assortments.

jdolecki

Maybe a Parallax store that sells phones ???

Please send me royalties in parallax product.

$WMc%

Well I got a nice new S6 from the shack yesterday Free and a TAB too (Free) from my local Radio Shack/Sprint store. They still have all the resisters, Caps, IC's, Etc. and the Parallax stuff too.
'
My bill went down from $119.00 a month to $80.00 for unlimited data, The free TAB cost me $15.00 bucks a month for 4G internet....I'm still ahead.
'
Long live the Shack...lol

davidsaunders

Radio shack start there downfall when they stopped carrying a lot of the hobby electronics stuff, and began to focus more on consumer electronics.

Radio shack has always had some consumer electronics, though that was a small display in the front of the store, with 90% of the store dedicated to hobby electronics. It used to be you could go into a radio shack buy all your 74xxx, 4xxxx series IC's, any of the transistors, resistors, caps, etc that you may need, many low end CPU's (8080's, z80's, M6809's, MC68000's), RAM, etc, etc. It stayed that way through the mid 1990's.

Then radio shack decided they must be doing to good, so they would see if they could put themselves out of business by focusing on consumer electronics. At least that is the only explanation I can see.

cbmeeks

I certainly feel for the people who lost their jobs but RS had this coming for years. RS used to be awesome (just as Johnny 5 from Short Circuit). But the people who work there clearly have no clue about electronics other than what Android device runs Flappy Bird.

I've asked them about IC's and all I get is dumb looks.

R.I.P. Radio Shack.

Heater.

davidsaunders,

Radio shack start there downfall when they stopped carrying a lot of the hobby electronics stuff, and began to focus more on consumer electronics.

This is a commonly expressed view which has been discussed here and around the net many times.

I could be wildly wrong but I'm guessing they did not have much choice. At some point electronic stuff was suddenly everywhere. Computers, games consoles, phones, ipods, digital clocks and watches, radios, transmitters, TVs. There was almost nothing anyone could want to make when buying it was so plentiful and cheap.

At the same time as peoples attention was diverted by all that, electronics moved to surface mount components and anything worth while became very hard to make.

There was dark age of the electronics hobby.

Then the net grew up. All of a sudden components were super cheap and quickly available from Digikey and others. Sparkfun and AdaFruit got a start providing break out boards for interesting SMD parts that people could play with. And there was the rise of the Arduino and the Maker Movement.

RS could not, or at least did not, keep up with all this. If they has wanted to they would have closed most of their stores years ago and gone on line.

But that was impossible. They did not have the skills or imagination of an AdaFruit. And share holders would have resisted downsizing the business like that.

It is certainly possible to run thriving electronics parts stores. We have a few around here. May be 10 such stores serving a country with a population of 5 million. Scaling that up to the population of the USA I calculate that RS should have pared back to about 700 stores.

kwinn

Radio Shack seems to be following in the footsteps the stores in Canada took a few years back when they became "The Source". Close some locations, Sell phones, TV, audio, laptops, clocks, and other similar gadgets, along with a small closet sized area or two for outdated components. Only difference I can see is that it's Bell instead of Sprint for the cell phones.

Sad in a way, but inevitable. No way brick and mortar stores can compete with variety of parts available, prices, and convenience of online shopping.