Many corporate RadioShack stores, like the one above in North Carolina, closed after headquarters filed for bankruptcy.
I love it! Yet another story of a RadioShack store finding opportunity and serving their community in the wake of bankruptcy.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Troy Riedel, for sharing this article from The Citizen Tribune:
It is not often that you see a company go out of business and quickly reopen in the same location, but that is exactly what Jeff Pederson and Trevor “Reed” Freers have done with the Jefferson City RadioShack.
Freers was the manager of the original store for six years before RadioShack went bankrupt and closed all of its stores nationwide.
“I saw a lot of people lose their jobs,” Freers said. “As the marketing manager, I was the one who had to let a lot of those people go. It was really sad.”
Freers’s store was one of the last to close as they continued to do well under his high level of customer service, which often including going to customers’ homes to make sure they were satisfied with their purchases and helping customers set up or troubleshoot new devices.
“Running this store, I really grew to love the community,” Freers, who is originally from Kansas City, Missouri, said.
When Pederson contacted him about managing a privately owned RadioShack in the same location, Freers was excited at the chance to get back to doing what he loves.
[…]The newest addition to the store, unique to the Jefferson City location, is the area Freers named the “Makers’ Space.”
This open area of the store will be home to the many classes the store now offers, such as soldering classes, drone classes and monthly training sessions on how to set up and use a cell phone.
Freers has already partnered with a local gym which has requested a monthly class teaching older participants how to set up their Facebook profiles, as well at the Lakeway Amateur Radio Club to offer HAM Radio classes.
Schools and other learning programs are welcomed to use the area for classes, and Freers will also make himself available to travel to schools to teach those classes.[…]
If Radio Shack stayed true to their client base they would be like http://www.altex.com plus ham radio stuff…
Our old Radio Shack is now an empty space in a strip mall, sad. Christmas won’t be the same without Radio Shack. Glad to hear that other places have better luck in keeping their stores open.
We used to have a Sears family-owned store here for 30 years which went out of business recently. Now at the same spot it has re-opened and is looking for an owner. It’s been all restocked. I thought Sears was closing stores. All very confusing these days hi hi.
WE STILL HAVE A STORE IN JOPLIN MO. IT SURE WOULD BE NICE IF THEY COULD GET PARTS, WHEN THEY PLACE A ORDER FROM THE WAREHOUSE CECIL N0EHP
Cool. Hopefully they will resurrect the Radio Shack of the 80s and have a large section of electronic components again. My local RS had like one little shelf for components, that was it.
This was one of the original markets that Radio Shack served. As they grew, they lost their way. It is good to see that some people remembered/knew what got them to where they are today.
And out of the ashes of Radio Shack, a retro-Radio Shack emerges. I love it.
I stopped by today on my way up to Morristown. I gave them some words of encouragement, told them about our monthly VE testing sessions sponsored by UTARC in Knoxville, and bought a prototyping board while I was there. Jim- W4FJT
Wow! A real Radio Shack store. I hope that more like this will come back.