snorg wrote:

So does this mean fire-sale prices on all their electronic components, arduinos and such? Or no?

I would say the answer is yes:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-to-lau … ales-1423257675

Here's a map showing which stores are expected to close:

http://graphics.wsj.com/shuttering-the-shacks/

I checked my address and only one of the five stores nearby is shutting down for good. I'll probably go there and see if there's anything worthwhile 😊

Great Hierophant wrote:

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

My dad is also disappointed and is going to trash his old catalogs; no use keeping them around anymore.

Before he does, he should check and see if this site is missing any :

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/

I just did, unfortunately the site already has copies of the ones he has and they're in better shape (my dad's catalogs are very worn and tattered, and the one from 1976 is missing the front cover 😵 ). Thanks for the link though; I'll bookmark it, just in case.

Great Hierophant wrote:

This deal may be good for Sprint, because they get pre-existing store fronts that have been geared to display phones for years. How will Sprint and Radio Shack coexist? Under the deal, Sprint and Radio Shack will essentially share store space. Obviously, Sprint is not going to tolerate RS selling its competitors devices and contracts under the same roof. Radio Shack will have to say goodbye to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Moreover, Sprint does not need RS to sell its own phones. What is left for RS to sell? Overpriced cables and batteries? 3D Printers are a bit too pricey to fly off the shelves, Arduino boards appeal to a very limited market, and remote control toys tend to sell only during the Christmas season.

Moreover, what about the Sprint authorized vendors? Could they get the shaft now that Sprint has many more company-owned stores? Most Sprint dealers in my area have Radio Shacks nearby. Sprint itself had relatively few company owned stores in my area, mostly mall kiosks. In a sense, Sprint will be competing with itself unless those resellers have geographic non-compete clauses in their franchise agreements.

You're right, there's very little Radio Shack can offer from their old inventory. Perhaps portable speakers, stands and furniture will be in their new product line along with phone accessories that Sprint doesn't have. And there are very few Sprint stores and vendors in my neck of the woods, which probably explains why only one store in my area is closing for good.

Our local radio shack had a good, knowledgeable clerk. But one time i needed a DVI cable ASAP and they had one. for 37 DOLLARS!

This really is a shame. It may have been inevitable. Amateur electronics enthusiasts of the 70's and 80's really catapulted Radio Shack. I think by the late 90's and into the 2000's, technology became so commoditized that Radio Shack followed the money towards "single-serving" consumer electronics and alienated their core loyalists. To be fair, their core loyalists were shrinking only to be replaced by a new generation that new only how to stick a CD/DVD-ROM in their console and had never built a crystal radio kit or simple robot. They way I see it, WE (meaning, our dumbed down society) killed Radio Shack.

I think the maker movement is a great thing, and I'm encountering a lot more people who are interested in playing with circuits than I did 10 years ago. My local Radio Shack has REALLY embraced this and is well stocked with everything Arduino and Raspberry Pi along with a more than adequate stock of discrete electronics parts, components, and kits. It may, unfortunately be too little, too late.

QBiN wrote:

This really is a shame. It may have been inevitable. Amateur electronics enthusiasts of the 70's and 80's really catapulted Radio Shack. I think by the late 90's and into the 2000's, technology became so commoditized that Radio Shack followed the money towards "single-serving" consumer electronics and alienated their core loyalists. To be fair, their core loyalists were shrinking only to be replaced by a new generation that new only how to stick a CD/DVD-ROM in their console and had never built a crystal radio kit or simple robot. They way I see it, WE (meaning, our dumbed down society) killed Radio Shack.

I think the maker movement is a great thing, and I'm encountering a lot more people who are interested in playing with circuits than I did 10 years ago. My local Radio Shack has REALLY embraced this and is well stocked with everything Arduino and Raspberry Pi along with a more than adequate stock of discrete electronics parts, components, and kits. It may, unfortunately be too little, too late.

Back in the old days it was actually a lot cheaper to build your own electronics from kits than buy them fully assembled. Radio Shack and Heathkit were pioneers in that market, but as markets opened up to allow cheap imports to come in, building it yourself no longer seemed practical.

leileilol wrote:

would be interesting to see that MESSed up.

Thanks for the head's up! 😁 Turns out this has been on crazyc's radar for at least a year. We still need firmware dumps and CD images tho... 🙁

Started gathering an info thread: http://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ub … at&Number=98243

That guy who wrote about that VIS just posted his own thoughts on Radio Shack's demise.
http://nemesis.lonestar.org/tandy/radio_shack_farewell.html

Despite itself, by 1990/1991, Tandy had grown to be the worlds biggest manufacturer of personal computers.

Golly.

Jorpho wrote:

That guy who wrote about that VIS just posted his own thoughts on Radio Shack's demise. http://nemesis.lonestar.org/tandy/radio_ […]
Show full quote

That guy who wrote about that VIS just posted his own thoughts on Radio Shack's demise.
http://nemesis.lonestar.org/tandy/radio_shack_farewell.html

Despite itself, by 1990/1991, Tandy had grown to be the worlds biggest manufacturer of personal computers.

Golly.

After reading that it makes me wonder what future Apple has. How much of what they are doing now is just things that Steve Jobs wrote down before he passed away and how much is truly new thinking? Will they run out of ideas in a few years and then start floundering? Will Apple even still exist in 25-30 years, or will they be going through what RadioShack is going through today?

I hadn't thought about it that way. What an intriguing parallel. I might say that we should carefully watch and see when they start copying someone else, but then again there are those who will claim they've actually been copying others for years now.

Stiletto wrote:

leileilol wrote:

would be interesting to see that MESSed up.

Thanks for the head's up! 😁 Turns out this has been on crazyc's radar for at least a year. We still need firmware dumps and CD images tho... 🙁

Started gathering an info thread: http://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ub … at&Number=98243

Turns out there was a TOSEC release too, so all we think we need is the firmware dumps. And that's all I'll be saying about that, I guess! 😁

Jorpho wrote:

That guy who wrote about that VIS just posted his own thoughts on Radio Shack's demise.
http://nemesis.lonestar.org/tandy/radio_shack_farewell.html

All too true, sadly enough. Without wise leadership and fresh, new ideas, Tandy Corporation/Radio Shack just dug their own grave slowly but steadily.

sliderider wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Despite itself, by 1990/1991, Tandy had grown to be the worlds biggest manufacturer of personal computers.

Golly.

After reading that it makes me wonder what future Apple has. How much of what they are doing now is just things that Steve Jobs wrote down before he passed away and how much is truly new thinking? Will they run out of ideas in a few years and then start floundering? Will Apple even still exist in 25-30 years, or will they be going through what RadioShack is going through today?

Took the words right out of my mouth. I still remember when Steve Jobs resigned in 1985 and Apple began their own downward spiral. It wasn't until 1997 when Apple purchased NeXT and brought Steve back to their fold that it turned itself around. let's see how long they last after Steve's "to-do list" runs out (if it hasn't already).

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/31/us- … N0MR2HU20150331

As a well-known phrase goes, The Deed is Done (also the title of a Molly Hatchet studio album from 1984).

EDIT - a couple of articles from Consumerist:

http://consumerist.com/2015/04/01/heres-what- … ably-look-like/

Now doesn't that look pretty? ^^

http://consumerist.com/2015/04/02/radioshack- … ter-this-month/

Yet another CEO bites the dust. Perhaps Sprint should let Radio Shack operate without one, they'll probably do much better 😜

I can picture the RadioShack name being redone in the Sprint font and the red circle R being replaced with that swooshy thing and RadioShack being used for a specific format of Sprint customer service center that also has a section dedicated to cheap laptops and tablets. Similar to some of the larger AT&T stores but with a different carrier. Or perhaps "The Sprint Shack." Either way, RadioShack already sells plenty of goods that could compliment a wireless service plan.

I remember in the 90s and even early 2000s my parents would regularly take me to Radio Shack and I'd spend my allowance money on various components and wires so I could build different kinds of useless gadgets.

PeterLI wrote:

Amazon / eBay and so on have made traditional niche retail obsolete. Mass market retail will survive and even thrive: clothing / shoes / furniture.

Good point. Women like shopping. (It's that 'gathering' instinct.) Men not so much. Stores selling things of interest to women will survive but everything else will move to the internet.

Quite a bit of retail stuff needs to be looked at for quality and to make sure it fits correctly (especially womens clothes). Last fathers day I purchased a bunch of clothes from Sears online since I pretty much know how they would fit, didn't need to visit the store because they pictures were good enough.

I would never buy a car online nor a house without seeing it.

Radio Shack is going to become nothing more than an outlet for Sprint phones like the T-Mobile or Verizon stores.

I understand The Source in Canada is pretty much only still around for the purpose of selling Bell phones. Despite the name change and the behind-the-scenes corporate maneuvering, in the end the typical Source store isn't so different from the Radio Shack of old. The miscellaneous cables and electronic bits have definitely been very gradually dwindling for the last several years, though. I guess they still had a lot of old inventory that wasn't selling very quickly.

Here is the story from my perspective. I live in a BS county where the whole county population is ~100,000. The city I live in is probably only ~25,000. We had *two* radio shack stores, Furthermore, a one-stoplight town 25 minutes away also had a store. Point is, they had *way* too many stores, If they had been willing to close some stores sooner they might have been willing to avoid bankruptcy,

With that said, I agree they are a victim of the out sourcing of the electronics industry. And.... no one does hobbyist electronics anymore. Another US industry bites the dust - don't get me started on that.

I am really sorry to see them go, One of my best friends in college was an electrical engineer and we made many trips to the local store buying parts for home-made circuit boards