Many thanks to Ron, who shares this link to a story from the ARRL News:
RadioShack’s Long, Slow Downward Slide Nears the End
The end is near for RadioShack. It seems inevitable that the once seemingly ubiquitous electronics and cell phone retailer will liquidate its assets, after which RadioShack would cease to exist. A number of legal steps would come first, including a likely bankruptcy filing. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) delisted RadioShack on February 2, after the company failed to provide a plan to address a lack of compliance with NYSE rules related to maintenance of company value. BloombergBusiness has reported that behind-the-scenes talks are under way to sell approximately half of RadioShack’s owned-and-operated stores to Sprint and shutter the remaining outlets, although other scenarios involving other entities are possible.[…]
It’s kind of garbled, as if the writer has no experience with the chain.
Of course it sold amateur radio equipment, that’s what it did before Tandy bought it in 1963. I would also argue that it was for a long time one of the most accessible places to buy a shortwave receiver.
It gets a lot of hype for selling parts, but unless Canada was different, it was a bad place for parts. A limited selection, and high prices, the only good thing was it was accessible. Sure, plenty of magazine articles sent readers to Radio Shack, back when there were hobby electronic magazines, but that meant limited types of projects, using what was available.
Radio Shack did offer some “cutting edge” components over the years, but they were often in a vacuum, not all the support parts available. And Radio Shack would order like they ordered everything else, a certain number and if they ran out, that was it. More likely, when the next catalog came out, the part was cleared out, which was the good thing about Radio Shack, clearance prices.
What people really miss is that while Radio Shack was initially a “niche” chain, it covered multiple niches. So even if it was only for hobbyists (and that only applies to the early seventies, at the latest), it was there for the CBer, the SWLer, the builder, the police band listener, and so on, when you’d previously have to go out of your way to buy such things, in a maybe intimidating store. How many bought shortwave receivers from the chain so they could get news from overseas? They didn’t have to take on an identity and enter a foreign space.
But maybe most important, Radio Shack expanded just as things changed. Take 1971, when I first learned about the chain. There was little electronics in the average home. A tv set or two, some radios, a record player, or maybe a stereo. Anything else was too expensive, or exotic, or big. But 1971 was right on the cusp.
Within five years, pocket calculators, digital watches, digital clocks, tv games like Pong, and computers, had arrived. Electronics was getting cheap, it brought new things, or replacements for the old. There were some stereo stores, likely small and upscale, so you’d generally be buying in the electronic department of local department store, hardly cutting edge. But here was Radio Shack. It was there as things changed, maybe helping to spur the change on. They had their own stuff, or put their name on it, and it was available anywhere. You could see and buy that shortwave radio or low end sampling keyboard wherever you were. That’s what Radio Shack was, and for some time, not much competition. It could afford to keep the parts available because it was selling consumer electronics to Joe Average (just like Heathkit did).
And it kept doing that for a long time. Go in and buy that metal detector, or later that digitally tuned police band radio (so much more useful than the analog tuned or even crystal controlled police band radios of the past). Get that early cellphone the size of a lunchbox. It was there when pocket lcd tv sets arrived, when CD players came in, even when you bought your first stereo system.
I bought all kinds of things at Radio Shack, hopefully on sale or being cleared out, but bought parts only when I was desperate.
Electronics has become commonplace and now everyone sells it. That’s the most significant thing about this closing of Radio Shack.
Michael