Another Electronics Retail Chain has died.
Radioshack has been laid to rest and they will be auctioning off the assets of its Dallas, Tx Corperate office.
Like those who fell before, CompUSA and Circuit City, they failed to adapt and move with the changing world.
First Wal-mart moved in by offering a selection of products that directly competed, I know from experience with Best Buy that they started letting people go and pushing there employees a lot harder so the experience went down, started only offering over priced in house labels of accessories, etc...
Now Amazon has come and has shaken them to there core. I will say it is always nice to have a local place to take a defective device back too but they can not compete price wise with Amazon. Also when it cones to TV's, Appliances, and computers. There selection has become much smaller, and less appealing. I now prefer going to Micro Center or Fry's Electronics if I need computer parts or accessories fast, even though it is not an enjoyable drive and much farther to drive. But they usually will have what i need where as Best Buy no longer does or is too over priced. If I can wait a few days I order online from Amazon, Newegg, B&H photo video, etc... and I will get exactly what i am looking for within 7 days.
I can see how Best Buy will join Radio Shack it is a given. It is also sad because every time they close a store people loose there jobs and will have a hard time finding a similar job.
But the board members and higher ups will all be taken care of its all us little people who actually did work that get told 'bugger off go find work somewhere else'. I just love how greed always brings down a company that has been going for almost a hundred years. they do not want to change and hence die. I never understand why these people do not learn from others examples. I often wonder if the fact that they have so much money insulates them from the fact that they like anyone else can be crushed there is always another bigger fish out there.
Comments
Radio Shack was a dead man walking for years
Some of the absolute crap that they sold (or tried to sell!) was unbelievable. They had a niche and a good one but really failed to see the market changing until too late. Then their niche was full of other operators who do be honest, did it better.
The tie up with Sprint just delayed the inevitable.
With Amazon trying to become the only outlet standing it is little wonder that the likes of Sears etc are feeling the pinch.
IMHO, it is only a matter of time before Amazon and Google/Alphabet merge. No one will be able to stand up to them then.
I only use Amazon now when there is no other choice. For example, I was looking for something the other day. Lots of places had it in 3.5Kg boxes. Only Amazon carried the 10Kg tub. I bought two and got free shipping (not via prime).
Otherwise I try to shop locally now. Support your local business.
Samantha
This is why...
At times, some business should be prodded or dang near forced to become worker owned and run. Workers tend to be on the ground floor and some can usually spot the trends well versus CEO's who live in bubbles amongst their rich friends going to Country clubs and other places. Those places DON'T make for good trend recognition.
It is my belief that if GM was worker owned and run they wouldn't have had to apply for bankruptcy. I think most GM workers and the average person could see how much the Prius was biting out of the market and GM never appropriately responded, they just kept their heads buried in the sand. They thought gas prices would drop and they'd make their money back selling SUV's with bloated retail pricing. Ugh.
CompUSA was horrible in terms of pricing in some sections, especially video games. Their sales in gaming were like unicorns, rare but nothing legendary about them. That being said that idiocy allowed me to get some games, when they turned "Greatest Hits" as black labels for $20.
Circuit City for me was great, heavy clearance pricing on games and such. I mean it was like a dream. The customer service for the one's around my area were great and I truly miss them. I don't like Best Buy as much. All this being said I've heard many others complain about CC's customer service so I think I was just lucky and my Circuit City was an anomaly. If Circuit City had looked at the Circuit Cities around me for a customer service model and followed that across the country I don't think they would've gone out of business.
K-Mart is another business that is about bankrupt if not already. The best way for K-Mart to bounce back is to leverage their rural locations(if they're still around) and start selling any store brands they have as at least Non-GMO if not Organic so as to offer affordable pricing to those that want it in rural communities without having to rely on Amazon. After all, they can leverage their pricing scale to really make it affordable.
And, in Canada....
In the past year, Best Buy has closed about half, of their retail locations, in Canada. Thus leaving Walmart, as the major retailer, in Canada, for electronics and appliances. And, the major retailers that are left, in Canada, are American based, as well. Rather sad, when one stops and think about it.
Not totally.
You still have Tim Hortons. They may have merged with an American chain (Burger King, if I remember right?), but the combined headquarters is on the northern side of the border. Not to mention that Americans still have no clue about Poutine.
Best Buy is doing a great job competing in prices...
At least with Blu-ray's and others, having nice aggressive sales but most people don't want to bother going out and surfing those sales...they would rather just order online, from Amazon and others.
It's a shame because with GCU and others you get a fair bit of points for purchases.
All this being said, for certain items, I like Paypal Credit. It's not exactly layaway as there's interest I don't like but so many HQ product sites where they have the best sales after KS you can use Paypal Credit on the sale...Amazon won't do that. So I might have some cash in pocket and I can pay that off in 90 days with no interest and Paypal Credit.
Oh yeah, with conventional products Amazon is making that cash but for those of us who like certain innovative devices that IPO with KS, Paypal Credit is really killing that niche.
At the risk of sounding like
At the risk of sounding like my usual snarky jerk self...they are the victim of their own creation.
They held a niche market for decades and didn't expand when they should have. Their stores were tiny making it impossible to carry what consumers wanted and needed. While Best Buy and Walmart get blamed for ruining their business those stores didn't expand into territories Radio Shack dominated until the chain was already on the decline. While the they and Amazon built up their online presence Radio Shack kept their focus on their niche markets while that evaporated under them
It's the in thing to go after the big stores but be real: those stores did everything right while Radio Shack floundered thanks to their own actions and stupidity.
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
Nothing not merited
For something like this, sounding like a snarky jerk isn't without merit. RadioShack died by merit of their own inertia. Amazon and others did a lot to help, but RadioShack is ultimately responsible for its own demise. Your point is hard to argue with.
Radio Shack
My dad said that in the 70s, Radio Shack was the place to buy electronic kits...I just hope someone will buy the name and make it into a niche store. To me, customer service in stores are non-existent anymore. Best Buy near my house is more of a social club for the employees then helping customers, they make you feel bad for asking for help.
TGSine --958
Sears and Montgomery Wards were the Amazon of their day
Sears and Wards had the market and the customers. They had catalogs and if one didn't find it in the store you could order it. They carried "everything" from toys, dolls, guns, farm equipment, and yes a prefab home.
Radio Shack was the electronics store of the day. No matter what one wanted in diodes, capacitors, neon bulbs, knobs, anything and everything in repair, or analyzing equipment, or build your TV, radio, or science project. They also carried the Tandy brand of leather craft tools, equipment, and leathers.
The a fore mentioned name brand stores lost their way. It isn't, Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon killed them. They lost their way. The items which weren't super sellers were no longer carried and each year more items were removed as less people came to buy. Best Buy and others are following in the same death spiral. Bad service, poor help, and no longer carrying many items they once did. Once upon a time we would drive the 200 mile round trip to the city and Best Buy was our target store. After two really expensive mistakes from their Geek Squad they wouldn't correct, and the aforementioned errors, I wouldn't walk across the street to buy from them.
JC Penny lost their bread and butter shoppers when their manager catered to the gay crowd. Mom and Pop abandon them like they were the plague. Trying to be hip and draw in that 5% of the population who wouldn't shop there anyway, cost them dearly. Bankruptcy reorganization followed and a slow death has followed that.
Besides dresses, blouses, skirts, and intimates, which I want to look at, try on, Midwest Farm Supply, Tractor Supply, Walmart, and Amazon have become my target stores. I hate Walmart clothes! They not only look cheap, they are cheap. Anything more than a throw a way shirt for wrestling and kissing cows isn't on my list.
Upper mismanagement, lack of vision, failure to understand the small slow moving, low profit, items pulls in customers who usually purchase more, and hiring incompetent help who have no loyalty, has killed many of the retail leaders of the day.
BUT THEY NEVER ASKED ME or so many others like me. We stopped being customers years earlier and became target numbers. I'm going to miss you because once upon a time you were real stores with real people and you treated me like a valued customer you wanted to come back again and again. And the sales people were more, they were old friends who knew each and every item in their department.
Life changes, God recycles us because, we no longer fit in the world the way it has become. I don't belong in this world any more.
always
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Hey Barb.
I think one of the best things to do for some of these clothing stores is to start selling clothes "Made In the USA" even if the profit margin is low and doggedly spreading the word about how many of the clothes are made here. That alone, especially if the clothes were organic(I've gotten some Organic cotton, made in the USA t-shirts for $15 so they can be affordable) would make me RUN to the store(I buy most all of my shirts online as that's the only way I can find American made ones). Many of those mall stores could even sell living wage, organic, made in the USA t-shirts and they wouldn't be that much more expensive than the standard pricing. Look at the pricing at www.brandofthefree.org/ and tell me those shirts are more expensive than what you see at Hollister and others.
I have two headphones made here that are relatively new, a pair of Grado's(cheapest headphone model they have as earbuds are cheaper and foreign made) and another one that was going to retail expensive but I got in on the KS pricing and have been meaning to try them out.
Correct the URL
Sarang, thanks for the heads up on brand merchandise. I needed to google it to get the right url and yes I make the same mistakes all the time. When they moved away from dot com and went to dot anything goes, I pretty well got lost in the void.
For everyone's info it is brandofthefree.net
Surprised the virus writers haven't snapped up .com, .org, .anything. When one lands on the wrong URL welcome to the land of instant virus for so many name brand corporations and URLs.
One of the many reasons I won't let Java script run along with any other apps unless I know the URL without a doubt. I'm thinking of running in virtual mode only if all this virus stuff gets any worse. They haven't figured out how to get by a virtual program..., yet.
Have fun with life, it's too short to take seriously
always,
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Funny that Radio shack
Funny that Radio shack started out by selling cheap Chinese made electronic JUNK and now everyone does it!
but they should have expanded when 'best buy' came out with 'the good guys'
kept that great tool section and parts they had in one corner and tried to be 'Fry's' before Fry's existed!
but watch me 'seeeee' the future!
Sears dead in less than 5 years---they don't own the craftsman brand or the kenmore brand anymore. They sold both years ago!
But I hate best buy--if it is not on sale...I never go there!
went in to buy a DVD player when they first came out and needed a fiber optic cable and the 'kid' helping me grabbed the most expense one off the display--125$!!!!!! for 10ft!
I told him "are you nuts!"
But its the best out!
"Its fiber boy--light on-light off DIGITAL! and there is no signal loss till you hit 1000's of feet or miles!"
I know what I am talking about! he said next
That is when my union card for installing/building editing stages for sound in films came out---really? try again kid!
at one time they (best buy) had a cheap inhouse brand that was great...a bit more than using amazon, but good stuff and it was my GO TO in a pinch sometimes! They dropped it of course!
Proud member of the Whateley Academy Drow clan/collective
Radio Shack shot themselves
You are right, Radio Shack killed themselves. When they ditched their house brand and tried to sell the "name brand" they were going up against Wal-Mart. That was a huge mistake. You can't go up against Wal-Mart in a price war. The quantity Wal-Mart buys insures that they will always get the best price. Radio Shack made the mistake of cutting their parts inventory to devote more space to the name-brand merchandise. This lost the allegiance of the electrical experimenters and the like that provided the cash that kept the doors open. I 'm gonna miss you.
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
RadioShact TRIED to evolve.
Or at least Tandy Corp did. There was a short lived chain of Super Stores called Incredible Universe. One was in my original hometown, Sacramento and another was in Indianapolis. Not sure where else they existed. They tried to be something of Costco/sams/bJs meets Best buy and failed at it. Many people blame untrained staff and others the membership models.
Both locations named above are Frys Electronics now and I know Frys is even building some NEW stores to match the former Incredible Universe footprint.
Frys has now let me down.
They use to be really aggressive in pricing for video games and now don't even care.
Their pricing on Blu-ray's are fantastic and I wish I could've gotten in on the Well Go Blu-ray sales which I hope happen again. The pricing on those Blu-ray's is a steal but they sell out crazy fast online so B&M is the only way to go and I don't have one near me.
To give Fry's credit though, they're the only ones that would sell high dollar gaming peripherals like the Steel Battalion controller outside of GS and EB Games. They even sold(do they still sell?) metal dance pads.
well physical copies are becoming rare
With how every publisher is pushing Digital distribution when it comes to games, the main reason i think that it is you can not re-sell a used digital copy. But buy selling a Digital copy they cut out a lot of the people between them and you. They don't have to spend money to make a physical copy and then they cut out the the multiple distributers between them and the final point of sale, so they get to keep more of that $60 a copy. Same thing is starting to happen with movies but Hollywood is fighting that so you can still get good deals on blu-rays and 4k blu-rays, Hollywood is fighting change hard like the music industry did but it will have to stop when the finally realize Digital is the future and they can not stop it.
I remember when CD's, Movies on DVD and even PC games took up a large chunk of the Local Best Buy, and Micro Center. now the sections dedicated to PC games are gone from all of them and the CD sections have joined them. and also now the sections for movies are shinking fast.
"Cortana is watching you!"
Where you going to go?
Now that the Shack is closed where can I go for the odd bits I need to finish a project? Best Buy doesn't carry stuff like that, and other than Black Friday their prices aren't even in the same ballpark as WalMart. I don't buy dvds or bluerays, nor do I stream programs off the Internet. So much of the online streaming is stuff I didn't watch when it was free, I don't see any reason to pay for it.
So that leaves Frye's or Fry's or whatever the name is. The closest store to me is 300 miles south, not exactly convenient for just popping in to buy some plug or jack. Shit!
Oh, that Incredible Universe store thing, never made it to my neck of the woods. I'd never even heard of it, and that's with the Radio Shack home office in Ft. Worth. They did have a scratch & dent, discontinued or clearance store on the west side of Ft. Worth, but it got closed as soon as the money got tight. RS started selling skid lots of items, which allowed the mom & pop operations to sell at a discount products that the Shack was selling at retail prices.
As an example there was a family operation selling the stuff they bought cheap. At the Dallas hamfest they were selling scanner programing and the necessary cable for a third the price that Radio Shack was selling the program only for. I spread the word to people in the scanner forums. I got an email from the mom & pop sellers asking if I was the one telling everybody about the scanner stuff they were selling, I replied yes and they sent back that they thought they had at least a six month supply at their usual sales rate but thanks to me they had sold the entire lot in two weeks. Now if Tandy hadn't been selling off current store items by the pound a number of those sales could have been store sales.
Scanner owners would buy the software and cables in a heartbeat. When you are trying to program a 200 channel scanner manually the xxxdotxxx then press 'enter' gets old very fast. Or you could go online and cut&paste the data into the scanner program and fill those 200 channels in less than an hour. By this time their scanners were actually rebranded GRE radios so that software and cable would work on far more radios than the RS-branded scanners. (Later on about half their scanners were rebranded Uniden radios, arguably the best reasonably priced scanners available.) There are still people out there making a tidy sum developing and selling programing software. Part of those sales could have been RS sales had they chosen to keep up with the market.
Radio Shack died the death of a thousand cuts doing stupid moves like this.
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Have you tried Microcenter? I
Have you tried Microcenter? I first found Microcenter when I lived in Chicago and there is one in NJ (about 1-1.5hr away) and one outside Philadelphia, (about the same distance).
If You're Still near Gainesville....
There's a Fry's on 635 just east of DFW Airport. There is also one in Plano near the intersection (north east) of the George Bush Tollway and US 75. For me, Radio Shack had gotten so expensive that I've been buying items items on Amazon or from cyberguys.com with an occasional trip to Fry's for years.
Not any longer
Moved a considerable ways north a few years ago to combine households w/ my brother. I just finally sold my house, by the time the deal was closed and everything paid off I cleared a couple of hundred, but still out of work. My brother has some summer work on my cousin's farm. He passed away a couple of months ago and his wife needed some help. He's making enough to cover the bills here, but that's about it.
I really hadn't noticed the store by DFW, I've always gone to the one on I-20 'cause it was closest to my parent's house in Bedford. Jog over to Collins and south to I-20, then take the service road and cut under 20 to Frys. But my parents are gone now and my only brother still in the area lives in Garland and doesn't encourage guests.
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Sliding into the grave
Radio shack has been slowly sliding into a gave for years. Years ago it was my first stop when I needed resistors, capacitors, LEDs, etc for all those little electronics projects I tend to build. But over the years their electronics parts selection shrank into almost nothing, while their walls and shelves began filling with cell phone paraphernalia and other junk that EVERYONE already shops for at other stores. It's no wonder if failed.
Best buy is following it in Radio Shack's footsteps. It used to be my first stop when looking for a new or replacement computer part. Half the store used to be dedicated to computers and computer parts, now those items take up a small corner of the store and of course the selection is so terrible it's not worth the trouble of even looking for a computer part there anymore.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Yeah
Radio Shack was where I'd go for all of those random switches, and wire extensions that nobody else around here sold. They used to have the random odd rca/headphone hookups that I'd find myself needing. Even had parts for RC cars when I was into that. Then it just turned into a higher priced, and much smaller, Walmart. Selling toys and gadgets you could find anywhere else. Kind of a shame really, but they did it to themselves.
~Taylor Ryan
My muse suffers from insomnia, and it keeps me up at night.
Yes they lost their way
I used to spend half my paycheck in their store. Haven't been in one in years. Haven't had a good experience in one since...1987 sounds about right.
Never really shopped there anyway..
I think the last time i bought something from Radio Shack, it was a remote controlled toy car for a christmas present. Bought it for my brother back when he was still a kid. I remember it was right next to the TG&Y that went out of business around the same time. lol
Honestly, i didn't even know they were still around.
We had a Radio Shack...
near the house. I used it for cabling, console boxes and all the components you couldn't find anywhere else. Designed a twelve lead set launcher for model rockets for high school and rocketry club They had everything except the pieces parts we needed for the actual launch pad. Those we got from Estees.
Never did understand why there was a leather working section in an electronics store. Leather working and electronics didn't seem to fit too well together. The CB radio craze hit and you could get those and all the piece parts for a decent station.
We lost our Radio Shack to an idiot who was getting carpet and padding off a tile floor using gasoline as a solvent. Lost that whole side of the strip center. It was the first big structure fire I fought as a volunteer firefighter.
Tandy Leather
There was a Tandy Leather Goods store in the town I lived in a bit north of Dallas until at least the mid-'90's. The corporate parent was the same as Radio Shack. Wikipedia has the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Corporation. It's not surprising that the stores could be combined in some markets.
One of the largest problems
One of the largest problems with these chains is a problem with "Corporate America". That is, that Corporations are allowed to exist as independent entities. When they're run by _people_ who are responsible for them, and whose name is on the door, then they tend to focus on longer term. Now? Almost all of them are run by people who insist on golden parachutes, and huge bonuses no matter how well the business is actually doing. If the BOD and VP/Pres/etc were held liable for what the companies do, and their contracts reflected that, they'd actually be working hard at making the businesses work - for everyone.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
it is always quarterly performance now
Companies used to look to the next quarter century for there planing not the next quarter.
Alas wall street has become too greedy and it no longer matters that a company may have performed well within or exceeded the company boards projections but that they meet or beet the market analysts projections.
That mentality just does not add up too me, if the company based on there decisions meets there expectations or exceeds them but does not meet an analysts projections it tells me that the company knows more than the analysts but the market will listen to the analysts.
SMDH!!!!
"Cortana is watching you!"
It's because of "boards of
It's because of "boards of directors" and "shareholders". Everyone wants instant gratification, even the board. The President and his cronies don't care - they get their huge bonuses no matter what, and if it goes down the tubes, they go scot-free to do it again. We've only ever had one major head of a corporation do jail time in my memory, and that was from Enron.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
sucks
A friend and I we buy whole semi trailers of electronic components and hardware when these stores go down it costs more to get the trailer to us than the cost of the trailer and goods cost us but we repair radios for law enforcement,fire and others by the way scanners will be dead in five years it will all be encrypted they like to have secure communications to keep down the number of rubber necks that are slowing down fire and rescue units with increased traffic. Have a good day and enjoy life.
Have a good day and enjoy life.