A Eulogy for RadioShack

I'd be willing to bet that this is exactly the way it was at most, if not all, corporate RadioShack stores. On the other hand, the franchise stores (which mostly no longer exist) could be great places to shop and to work, because they were owned by actual breathing human beings, not faceless corporate overlords.

My first "real" job after high school was at the local RadioShack, which was owned by one of the most amazing people in my early adult life. I had shopped there for years as a teenager, as it was the only place I could find electronic parts without cracking the Mouser catalog. This was the mid 90s, and there was nearly no e-commerce yet. One day I was in there looking at the HTX-202, RadioShack's entry into 2-meter amateur radio handsets, as I had just been licensed as a Technician Class ham for the first time. Richard said "Hey, Morgan, you still looking for a job?" "Sure, but what happened to Dennis?" I replied. He said "Well, Dennis kinda died." Poor Dennis, his only employee and an elderly gentleman, had suffered an aneurysm and just like that, he was gone. Thus, thanks to the untimely death of a nice old man, I got my first and only RadioShack sales associate position.

Working there was an absolute blast; the pay sucked and the only commission to be had was on Primestar satellite sales, but Richard was like that cool uncle everyone has. I learned a lot about how to run a small business from him, and there was never a day that we didn't have fun. Christmas season could be hectic, but in a good way, with parents who were delighted to see that we carried batteries for all the toys their kids were getting (along with some nifty toys like R/C cars, too).

Even after getting a better full time job a couple of years later, I stayed on part time with Richard for over a year, until he could hire someone to replace me. I still drop in when I'm in my hometown to say hi, and we still keep in touch via email. It really saddens me to know that he'll likely have to drop the RadioShack name one day soon, but I know his store will continue operating for the foreseeable future. His kind of salesmanship stands far above what you get at the corporate stores.

While it's glib to say that Radio Shack was lost for the want of a space, the change in their corporate identity from "Radio Shack" to "RadioShack" -- 1995 -- coincides with their slide to irrelevance nicely enough to seem kind of symbolic. We don't really know what the Internet is, but we've noticed that cool companies are using CamelCase.

I suspect it's hard for people who are under 30, maybe even 40, to believe how different RS once was from the sad sack we have today. I don't think they were ever really cool -- that air you now get from their '70s and '80s catalog of old white dudes trying to be hip is an air you got from those catalogs even when they were brand new, trust me -- but they had big selections of really interesting stuff, most of which was exclusive to them, and frequently had salespeople who were genuinely enthusiastic about electronics and computers. And the importance of the TRS-80 in the early computer scene seems to be vastly underestimated today, I suspect in part because of that perpetual lack of cool. You might dimly remember "Trash-80" jokes, but you may not remember that for a few years it was the best-selling computer in the world. And unless you followed the company, you almost certainly don't remember that they had separate "Tandy Computer Center" stores, or that they sold an IBM PCjr "clone" called the Tandy 1000 that fixed all of the PCjr's problems and became so popular that big name games had exclusive Tandy 1000 features, or that they actually shipped a frikkin' Xenix workstation (The TRS-80 Model 16) years before most people had any idea what that was or why they should care.

And, really, that last one sums up Radio Shack in a nutshell, especially with computers: always either a few years ahead of their time, or a few years behind it. As someone who grew up with the TRS-80 Model I and later Model 4 (and who did a lot of strange mad science stuff with it up even into the early '90s), I'll miss RS -- but the RS that I have fond memories of has been gone a long time.

Obligatory link to The Onion article "Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business":

http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-ho...

That's from 2007, making the continued existence today even more perplexing.

I worked at Radio Shack.

I was in high school and lived with my folks. I had almost no expenses. It didn't occur to me until much later what a bummer it all was.

- You get paid commission, something like 1% per sale. Commission was pointless because almost everyone already knew what they needed (AA batteries or a headphone adapter...).

- If your commission didn't add up to minimum wage, you got minimum wage. Since it was nearly impossible to sell $800/hr at Radio Shack, everyone made minimum wage.

- There was a computer screen in the back room that showed a leaderboard of on-duty employees, and how much each sold for the day in real-time. So even though everyone was making minimum wage, the employees were pitted against each other. This made every employee your enemy.

- If somehow you made a commission for the day, when the item was ever returned, they dock the commission from your next paycheck. So you ended up making less than minimum wage.

I remember flipping through the Radio Shack catalogue as a kid in the late 70s, early 80s, and making my virtual xmas shopping list (I almost never got the things I actually wanted). radio-controlled cars, walkie-talkies, metal detectors, tape recorders, electronics kits.

I also remember being able to walk into a Radio Shack in my local mall and stroll over to the electronics section and pick out just the right resistor that I needed to complete my circuit project at home. I think I was 12 at the time.

Radio Shack had a lot in common with Sears, now also on death's doorstep. Sometimes the contract manufacturers making RS's house brand speakers or Sears "Craftsman" power tools or "Kenmore" appliances would turn out a top-performing product for a great price. As the actual manufacturer might change from year-to-year, one could never rely on the brand to deliver a good value. One had to read magazine or other reviews to discover where the diamonds were hidden.

I actually remember the point that RS became irrelevant to me. After spending lots of free-time hanging out there in the 80s at the local malls, and getting much of my early computing stuff from them, I ended up with a 386sx bought from another local computer store. It was my real first entry into IBM compatibles and I remember how easy it was to mix and match various parts and cards and extend your machine into something much better than what you bought without too much fuss or expense.

And I remember lots of those old early games had special settings for Tandy computers, special video modes, 3-channel sound, that sort of thing (I don't remember the specifics), I wondered what all the fuss was about since you couldn't buy a Tandy video card or audio card and they weren't really "industry standards" in the way a VGA graphics card or a Sound Blaster was.

I went back and visited my local RS to see one of their Tandy machines and came away singularly unimpressed. I realized then that there was really nothing Radio Shack could offer me that I couldn't get easier and cheaper from dozens of other, larger, stores with better selection.

Years later I stopped by to pick up a cuecat and I've never visited a RS outside of that.

I never understood why they didn't start aggregating their small stores into bigger stores. Heck, even Office Depot offered me more selection than my local Radio Shacks. With the coming and going of Circuit City, the entrance of Frys, Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. I never understood why they stuck by the old '70s electronic store tucked away in the corner of a strip mall next to the Laundrymat model.

I learned to program in the early 1980s by playing with a TRS-80 floor model for an hour or two at a time while my mom shopped elsewhere in the mall. My first program animated a sine wave in BASIC by printing a single character one line at a time, and letting the lines scroll up the screen. I would've loved to own one of those computers, but my dad refused to buy one because he said it would be too tempting for me. He didn't even want me to have a hand calculator, and gave me his old slide rules instead (which were fun - not complaining!). I didn't have unfettered access to computers until I went to college a few years later.

I never made a big purchase at RS, but I always appreciated that I could pop in for electronic sundries as needed over the years. My opinion of them started to go south about a decade ago when they began insisting that they needed to know my zipcode every time I bought something. That was very fishy and heralded their sad decline, I think.

RS has been obsolete for years and I really don't know how they've managed to stay in business this long, but I'll miss the name when it's gone.

It's awful to read that and compare it with what Radio Shack was for us geeklings in the 1980s. For those of us living far from big cities, Radio Shack was the source of electric parts, IC chips, LEDs, not to mention hands-on access to actual computers.

Some of the locations have started to carry a bigger electronics component selection again (instead of a single pull-out file of resistors and capcitors), along with 3D printing supplies, Arduinos and related parts (retail packed from SparkFun), and so forth.

Unfortunately, they started doing so 4-5 years too late. I was shocked in 2007-2008 when I needed a couple of resistors to finish a project, the local Nerd Palace (Electronic Parts Outlet, in Houston) was closed on a Sunday, and the local Radio Shack actually had that pull-out file of components with what I needed.

My Dad worked there in the 80s between contracts for a couple months. "Well this contract ends this month, and I've got an awesome database migration contract starting in 6 months, so I've gotta find something to do meanwhile (decades before FOSS type stuff), and I've spent tons of money at RS since it was allied radio and I was a kid ..." This was before they turned into Cell Phone Shack. About half the time they got well over minimum wage back then, even on low sales stores. Sounds like they earn even less now than in the 80s, not adjusted for inflation! One thing that didn't change was the Shack expanding to own your life, so it starts as part time and somehow 3 months later you're an asst mgr (why?) and "working" 90 hours and then a couple months later you're all WTF am I doing here at 100 hrs a week, my contract job starts next week, bye!

The article had a lot of weird stuff about not understanding why people wouldn't leave a crappy job. Well, perhaps 90% of the time the only crappy part was the paycheck, you just hung out and screwed around and occasionally sold stuff to people. So I'd take the city bus to his store after school and we'd play video/computer games for HOURS during the slow times. We had kind of a game on betting when the last customer would come in, maybe 6pm or so most days, then we had the store to ourselves till 10 or so, literally a kid in a toy store. It honestly was a lot of fun almost all the time, just not much pay. You could make a ton of money at lunch and after work rush, and saturdays, like $40/hr (which in the 80s was a lot), but you had to hang out all night long at minimum wage if you wanted the plum hours. Sales were extremely uneven over time. I still don't understand why they ever opened before noon or were open after 6pm or so.

I can prove he worked there... in the mid 80s each shipment contained a hopeless VCR tape of sales blather not for public consumption. Sell Sell Sell!

That's certainly an interesting read... and one I can't really argue with the anecdata of from my own experiences. So I'll add one:

After it was too late by that author's reckoning, the parent of Radio Shack tried another venture, a "big box" store called The Incredible Universe. When that failed and they wrote it off, it wiped out the entire profit of Radio Shack thousands of stores for that financial year.

I still think of it when I'm trying to understand the machinations of large companies.

And I, too hope that the folks I worked with at RS in the 20C found better jobs, especially the poor store managers.

I think Radio Shack could be reborn if it did a few things. Get rid of the cheap toys. Go back to just electronic parts, and today's technology--like having the Ardino and Rasberry always in stock--along with all the less know electronic kits. Try to keep the prices down. Keep all radios and cell phone stuff, but get rid of the advertisements(I don't like to walk into loud stores). I would also devote a small section of each store to used/recycled/surplus stuff. The workers shouldn't be required to wear ties.

> RadioShack is a company of massive real estate, and is peddling a business model that is completely unviable in 2014.

We have good evidence to suggest that the RS business model is indeed viable in 2014: it's Maplin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8328621 (followup https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329953 ).

So last month I was in US for the first time and I was dying to walk into a RadioShack, the temple of cool things as I have been hearing about on obscure and popular electronics hobby forums since I was 16. After checking out 6 stores in 4 cities, I was really disappointed. No cool stuff. All I could find was phone cases, cheap earphones and a few IC's(mildly interesting). To be honest, I didn't know what I was expecting but certainly not what I saw.

I wish RadioShack would transition to selling hackable electronics (Raspberry Pi, Arduino, stuff on SparkFun, Maker Bots, etc). That's how they started and now as they're nearing bankruptcy, that market is finally back and getting bigger. Further, most of these parts are made by small-time businesses with suboptimal distribution and RadioShack could be enormously helpful. And I see blogs all the time about how if you have the inside connections to factory owners in China you can get all sorts of cool stuff at very low prices--RadioShack could resell all this.

Edit: but I think RadioShack's future is in the hands of Wall Street types who only see it as an interesting financial instrument where they can cheat some fools out of money before totally liquidating.

Radioshack, want to save you business? Turn every single one of your stores into a hackerspace.

You don't even need much. Get a laser cutter, a 3D printer, a drill press, free WiFi, some tables, and a stack of arduinos and you'll be doing awesome.

Then build an instructables-esque community website for people to show off their projects.

I'll even consult with you guys on this if you make a big enough donation to the hackerspace I help run in Phoenix.

The Radio Shack where I grew up gave out free batteries once a month. I did a science fair project that compared how good Radio Shack batteries were to Duracell, etc, and they were superior by far. It's sad that they are basically dead, but it's the Circle of Life, I suppose, and a good reminder to never rest on your laurels or take it for granted.

While Radio Shack deserves the scorn, it had two big problems at a crucial time.

1) Charles Tandy died in late 1978. This was right as the computer revolution was taking off and his loss of vision was bad news.

2) IIRC, one of the corporate officers embezzled an enormous amount of cash in the 1980's right as the IBM PC clone business was taking off. This stalled the company at a point when it needed to be pivoting. Unfortunately, I have only my memory to rely on as I can't seem to pull this out of any of the web search engines.

Radio Shack at this point is a sad caricature of itself. I remember being able to buy all sorts of ICs, analog parts, interesting radios and kits. Now it peddles cell phones and overly prices things -- I recall needing a battery for my cordless phone recently, they wanted $23 for a battery for a $50 phone? Uh, no.

Two other bay area places that have changed a lot are Frys and the now closed Quement Electronics. Fry's still has a few components, but nothing like the 80s and 90s.

RIP.

I applied to work at a Radio Shack when I was 16. I didn't get a job there. The guy interviewing me spent most of the time making sure I knew the difference between being paid hourly, and being paid on commission, and making sure I really knew what a spiff was. In retrospect it was kind of weird. It was kind of weird at the time, too.

Reading these, I don't feel like I missed out on too much.

Radio Shack was always two stores in my memory. There was the legit geeky side with electronic parts, and there's the Realistic/Tandy side hawking so-so also-ran consumer electronics. The perspective always seemed to be that parts were sort of a loss-leader for consumables.

The employees almost never knew anything technical, and were often suspicious of nerdy kids like me lingering in the parts section. I remember one time I was building a circuit and needed a .22uF cap. I asked if a .22pF was the same (I was like 10 or 11). Instead of saying "I don't know" the sales guy just kind of stared at the package and then shrugged and said "Yep". My circuit did not work.

I hear people floating the idea of RS reinventing itself as more of a hacker-friendly place, but from an investor's perspective you'd be switching from a giant consumer market to a much smaller niche market. Personally, I think that's a great idea, but I'm not sure you could ever convince investors of that.

I actually think RadioShack can turn things around. "Hacking" electronics is gaining ground esp with Arduino, Rpi, etc. Here's what I would do: - Beef up stock of "maker" electronics, Arduino's, Rpi, modules, kits etc. - Buy/build modules/kits, work with suppliers like SparkFun, Shmart, Adafruit for help in this area - Create "recipes" for building electronics and guide customers through purchasing the materials - Clear out all the rip-off electronics unless you are willing to match Amazon prices. - Get rid of smartphones, who buys these from Radio Shack??? - Most importantly, hold regular (weekly) free "maker sessions" for kids to learn principles of electronics and get them excited about it...similar to what Home Depot does

The more they focus on building/diy electronics the better, this is higher margin (and lower price) than simply retailing finished electronics, although they'll need to do some of that too I suppose.

Radio Shack was my toy store as a kid, as far back as I can remember. My favorite toys were volt meters, little electric motors, power adapters, LEDs, bread boards, and those little electronics kits with the spring terminals. Radio Shack deserves some of the blame for making me who I am today. :)

What saddens me most is that RadioShack was one of the pioneers that sparked the personal computer revolution. I can easily remember my first interactions with a TRS-80 (a clone - I live in Brazil), reading avidly their manuals, understanding how their block graphics worked and writing my own small programs I would go to a computer store to test.

It's a little bit tragic, but we all know RadioShack's time has passed. We appear to be living in a time of rapid transformation. RadioShack will soon no longer exist. Like payphones, printed newspapers and magazines and soon books and bookstores will follow the video rentals and record stores into history. Change can be difficult for those who live through it, but in return, we get stories to tell our grandkids.

It's not that bad a deal.

This isn't really a story about Radio Shack. It's about how awful it is to be a retail employee. You could have written this about the working conditions inside any retail store in any dying shopping mall: Forced to work off the clock, no overtime pay, pay structure resulting in pay below minimum wage, capricious, last-minute schedule changes, do-it-or-leave ultimatums, callous, abusive management, exhausted and overworked management, management-by-screaming-at-people, nonsensical rules and policies from corporate, revolving door for employees and management, and widespread apathy. Nothing here specific to Radio Shack, folks, this is the standard retail work environment in the USA.

It's not just the company is odd and off the mark. The bond holders are also screwy: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-13/radioshack-lende...

The bond holders stopped them from closing unprofitable stores...

Honestly, I don't know what to make of the "news" of RS' imminent demise. Just 2 days ago I visited a nearby RS store and bought stuff there. The store was well-stocked and I wasn't the only customer in the store. The employees didn't have that unhappy, "short-timer" look either, that is, didn't emit even a whiff that the store was closing down.

Besides, there are at least 6 RS stores in this city, the furthest I know of being maybe 10 miles away, so I'm guessing there must be a few RS stores out there that I don't know about. Since they've all stayed in business for many years, they have to be selling some items or services or something.

I can report at least two positive aspects of my RS visit. The guy at the cash register actually knew something about the gear I was interesting in and could answer technical questions. Second, prices were low and the quality of items seemed pretty good.

So yeah, there are reasons I would hate to see them go...

Ah RadioShack, where I acquired Jazz Jackrabbit and a circuit board toy with my dad. It's sad that RadioShack isn't as fun as I remember it being, but last time I was in I saw a similar circuit board toy which is nice. It's always sad to hear that a company treats their employees as though they are no more than cattle tugging a plow.

I read this post, felt sorry for RadioShack, and decided I would give them one last shot and try their price matching policy for a pair of beats solo headphones. I hoped to avoid the long lines at some of the bigger retail outlets and, by utilizing their advertised "extra 10% off" price matching, avoid mail in rebates as well. Long story short, after waiting close to an hour for one of the two working associates to become available I was denied a price match. They ended up losing my sale because of this and leaving me wondering how they have lasted this long. I had a bit of sympathy for them earlier but the only sympathy I have left is for the people still working for them.

https://twitter.com/MatthewTavares/status/538138578208169984

As of today (Nov 26), Yahoo Finance shows RadioShack as having 3-ish billion USD in revenue, and a market cap of of 83 million USD. I guess there isn't a lot of faith on Wall St. that RadioShack is going to turn itself around.

My SO worked at RS corporate for a few years during late 2000s. The Internet is definitely what killed this company. They had loyalty with a older generation and that's how they survived until now. They never found out how to bring young people into the stores in an Internet age. That's what the whole "the shack" thing was all about. It failed. Now that loyal customer segment they did have is 1) aging out of the market 2) coming around to online shopping.

I can't really say much about how store ops ran, but I'm sure it was a result of the financial pressures the company was under just trying to survive.

In Canada radioshack rebranded itself as "The Source". I used to pop into radioshack to find plugs, adapters, and the occasional electronics component. They stopped carrying those years ago and now, if I want anything like that, I either drive across town to a hobby shop or order online. Since "The Source" now seems to specialize in overpriced junk, I haven't set foot in one for years. This article makes me feel good about that decision. It would be better for ratshack's workers to be out of a job and then in a job that treats them as human beings.

I guess one of Radio Shacks biggest problem is the same as most brick and mortar stores, many us just want to order it online have it show up.

They could have tried/could try to become the home tech store. Take your home to the newest level, LED lighting all around, wireless integration of home automation and security. Sharing video all around the home. Then show it off in store. Hell, sell solar panels or such, I don't care. Just give today's geek a reason to come in. I don't need a phone or a computer; but a specialized home automation turn key system... well...

Just tonight my father-in-law's new TV required a HDMI cable. He suggested RadioShack. I said "I'm going to Target. At RadioShack you have to talk to people."

The days of high-touch service are over.

I shopped at RadioShack just one time in the '90s. I bought some walkie talkies, and the cashier insisted that I provide my name and address to make the purchase. I said I didn't want junk mail. He assured me that it was only for recordkeeping purposes and that my info wouldn't end up on a mailing list. Within weeks, I started receiving RadioShack catalogues and flyers. I'm pretty sure they spent more on postage, paper and ink over the next few years than I had originally spent on the walkie talkies.

Christ, I can't imagine what their corporate IT must be like.

Probably the Windows XP syndrome of never ever ever never investing into your infrastructure, but stretched over fourty years.

My earliest memory of Radio Shack(which is probably circa 1990, so even before the name change) is that I walked in accompanied by my mother and attempted to play the display miniature pinball game, and then was yelled at by the manager for this crime.

I've had better experiences, I even got a microSD from them the other day(after being tipped by a friend that they were cost competitive on this one item). But it has never been warm fuzzies.

Part of the fall of Radio Shack is that the market for discrete components isn't what it used to be. This is because not as many people take up electronics as a hobby. And that, in turn, is because a lot of people that would go into electronics, got sucked into computer programming instead. After all, the decline of Radio Shack coincides with the rise of affordable personal computers.

I still have a cuecat!!! I never intended to use it for it's intended purpose,but thought it was great to get a free bar code reader.