Forbes is running a piece about RadioShack's contuinual financial woes. From the article:
So much for “out with the old, in with the new” at RadioShack: in a second quarter earnings report that might as well have been titled, “Desperately Seeking Cash,” RadioShack reported Thursday morning that it saw yet another quarter of profit losses and fallen revenue. And, in a separate document filed with the SEC Thursday — two days after one Wall Street analyst cut RadioShack’s price target to zero and warned of an impending bankruptcy — the struggling electronics retailer confirmed that if it does not find a buyer or restructure its debt, a Chapter 11 or even Chapter 7 filing would have to occur."
“RadioShack’s operational decisions are now being vetted by creditors and equity investors are no longer relevant to management decisions — the creditors clearly are in control of the ship and, in our view, the ship is sinking,” Pachter wrote. “We believe a bankruptcy reorganization is imminent.”
When was the last time you bought something at RadioShack?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:09AM
Radio Shack: You've got questions, we've got phones!
(Score: 5, Funny) by McGruber on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:27AM
No, their slogan was Radio Shack: You've got questions, we've got blank stares.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @04:49AM
Best post so far, and me with no mod points.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @06:39AM
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday September 14 2014, @11:50AM
At least here in the UK they were honest about it: Tandy (effectively RadioShack UK) was bought out by Carphone Warehouse years ago. We do have Maplin - who are more like Tandy/RadioShack used to be, but are heading in much the same direction, and don't have nearly as many stores.
They have the same problem though - usually so expensive that you only shop there if you absolutely need something there and then, or its a low-cost item, and the most common big sellers (HDMI cables, memory cards, batteries) are increasingly available in supermarkets.
That said - I have actually bought something in a US RadioShack in the last 18 months - a US mains to figure-8 connector cable to run my Macbook, because they were actually within walking distance of the hotel. I'm surprised this upsurge in international passing trade hasn't saved their bacon yet :-)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:18AM
I bought my Arduino and a bunch of parts for it months ago, and it's also where I get my soldering irons because theirs are cheap and good enough. Of course I could have had similar for much cheaper online, but the point is that you're paying the markup for the convenience factor when you absolutely either need something or can't control your impulses.
I heard that it actually used to be an electronics store before some genius thought it would be better off staffed with annoying phone-contract salesmen instead of people somewhat knowledgeable in electronics. But how would you save RadioShack? Fuck if I know, I don't know shit about business, but what would be really cool if it were to return to its DIY roots but emphasize components that even youngsters could learn, like Arduinos and Lego Mindstorms and real remote-control car kits, not the cheap one-piece crap from China. It could market itself as a higher-end toy store for adults and smarter kids, reposition itself with less stores but in more affluent areas, and sponsor its own branded content (like a subscription magazine or newsletter like in the old hobbyist days) of how to build new things with the products in its stores. This would work well because bigger electronics stores like Fry's try to do too many different things and are sorely lacking in the guided DIY market.
Does that sound somewhat sane?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:22AM
I got an Arduino at RS two years ago and went back a few times for breadboards, LEDs and other hobbyist parts. Pretty cool, that made me much more of a fan of RS than I'd been before. Unfortunately, you can't support the number and premium location of stores that they have by selling Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and the like. That's the kind of stuff that could be supported by a hobbyist store in a strip mall.
(Score: 3) by evilviper on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:58AM
Last time I compared them, the 45-watt Craftsman soldering iron from Sears was much cheaper and much more powerful.
Harbor Freight tools also has irons and guns MUCH cheaper. 30-watt for $4, which is $3.20 after the 20% coupons they litter the planet with:
http://www.harborfreight.com/30-watt-lightweight-soldering-iron-69060-8913.html [harborfreight.com]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 14 2014, @04:40AM
Locally, Sears is in liquidation mode and the only things found there reliably are beds, clothes, and appliances. Here there are no Craftsman tool sets or soldering irons, just lamp brackets or whatever else they couldn't sell before.
Harbor freight is too far to satisfy impulses.
But your advice will prove handy to others in different locales or the patience to go the extra mile for the good deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @04:47AM
Sears is the new KMart. And we all know how Dustin Hoffman feels about KMart.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Sunday September 14 2014, @02:39PM
Very true. Ever since KMart bought out Sears, it's been a downhill slide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @01:41AM
> I heard that it actually used to be an electronics store before
Apparently you are much younger than the average age on soylent.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday September 14 2014, @11:52AM
what would be really cool if it were to return to its DIY roots but emphasize components that even youngsters could learn, like Arduinos and Lego Mindstorms and real remote-control car kits, not the cheap one-piece crap from China.
Sort of a US version of the UK's Maplin [maplin.co.uk], only more so?
I'm not exactly sure how well that's working out for Maplin, though, having been recently sold to a "Turnaround specialist" [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10930541/Electronics-retailer-Maplin-sold-for-85m.html [telegraph.co.uk]
Montagu is likely to be nursing losses on the £85m deal after the firm bought it for £244m in 2004 and has injected cash to support a turnaround of the business and store refurbishments since then.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Monday September 15 2014, @02:39PM
I would agree with this and add that they could do some kind of partnership with all the various "maker-spaces" that seem all the rage lately.
(Score: 3) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:30AM
I bought an HDMI cable there yesterday for an Raspberry Pi project I'm working on. Radioshack is woefully overpriced, and their battery prices are a bleeding crime, but it is occasionally useful to have them around. Else, I'd have to trek down to 32nd Street and 3rd Ave to MicroCenter.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:50AM
I find it infinitely more convenient and cheaper to just keep an extra HDMI around. Less than $3 on Amazon. When I find a need to use it, I order another one and in a couple weeks, throw it in the box of cables from whence the other one came.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 14 2014, @01:03AM
OK, sure, but I live in an apartment in Brooklyn. Storage space is extremely limited.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dcollins on Sunday September 14 2014, @01:41AM
This is so true. Moving to Brooklyn has caused me to completely change how I interact and think about stuff in general. My prior lifelong habits towards what I kept, stored, and threw away are completely inappropriate here. And I have a larger-than-usual apartment on the very far edge of Brooklyn. The change in mental state and space issues between city living and anywhere else is amazing.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 14 2014, @02:50PM
It is true. I grew up in Montana, which is about as far on the extreme other end of the space spectrum as you can get. Here, every day I think about the novel, "The Mote in God's Eye," whose aliens marveled at the wastefulness of the human protagonists they encountered. I joke to my wife and kids that living in a space station or module on Mars would probably be a step up for us in terms of square footage.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Sunday September 14 2014, @01:43AM
I can sympathize, having lived in a tiny studio apartment myself. I find the following carts extremely useful, as they can be interlocked until they reach floor to ceiling, can hold far more than you'd imagine, drawers can be pulled out and carried around like open-top boxes when needed, and are sturdy enough for moving:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sterilite-3-Drawer-Cart-Set-of-2/15940590 [walmart.com]
Just make sure you throw away the wheels.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 14 2014, @02:42PM
Thanks for that. I'm currently building a Raspberry Pi & RFID powered storage loft to take advantage of the 152 cubic feet of under-used volume at the top of my living space. If it doesn't drive me crazy with claustrophobia I figure it will be good training for my eventual Hab on Mars. Or in the Beijing-centered Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @02:23AM
I used to use Radio Shack for buying cat5 cable. They priced it by the foot, but the clerks measured it by counting the repeating marks on the cable sheath. They assumed, perhaps not without reason, that bulk goods like cable would be priced in units of the same magnitude as the markings on the goods. Of course, the markings were actually by the yard, not by the foot, so I always got a 66% discount. It was like buying oil priced by the gallon but available in drums.
The cat5 that was already terminated and bundled in three-foot or six-foot lengths was outrageously overpriced. Perhaps they made up in sales of finished cables what they lost on their bulk sales (or rather on their clerks' ignorance of concepts of measurement).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by evilviper on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:47AM
I went into a Radioshack a couple years ago, and asked them to recommend an Android slider on pretty much any prepaid service. They offered an LG Optimus Slider they just got in, and had no clue about, saying I could return it if I didn't like it. I tried it out for a day, found it was missing the ambient-light-sensor to automatically adjust the screen brightness, had an ARM11 CPU which wouldn't run several apps I was using, such as Firefox and Adobe Flash, didn't have a camera flash for taking pictures in low-light, and other issues...
I tried to return it the next day, went through the whole process, then they said they didn't have enough cash in the register, and the manager had gone home. They requested I skip work so that I could show-up when the manager would be there, I refused and some arguing ensued. Eventually, they promised to have more money in the register the next evening.
The next guy tried to argue with me, he was SURE Adobe Flash would install and run just fine. He also tried telling me he didn't think they'd have enough cash in the register... But a bit more arguing and I got my refund.
Haven't been there, since. If you can't offer the prices and selection of a big-box or online retailer, you have to make up for it in convenience, knowledge, customer service, etc. Failing to do any of the above, just means failing.
Amazon has a surprisingly nice selection of electronics components these days, even if it's a bit of work to keep refining your searches to locate them and weed-out the flood of irrelevance.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by morgauxo on Sunday September 14 2014, @04:25AM
"Amazon has a surprisingly nice selection of electronics components these days"
Sweet! Where is my nearest Amazon store?
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Sunday September 14 2014, @04:36AM
It's located inside your mailbox...
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday September 18 2014, @02:00PM
Oh, you're right, there it is. Man, this service sucks, it takes me days (or weeks) to get my order. No tip for these guys! What's this charge here.. shipping? Is that like a tax or something?
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday September 18 2014, @06:12PM
Sign-up for prime, just $100/year, no shipping charges, and you get (at-least) 2-day shipping. And their warehouses are often close-by, so that is often next-day. It's actually better than a brick and mortar store, who will often be sold-out of an item, for days or weeks.
Personally, I'm almost never concerned about shipping speed, so ordering $35 worth at a time, and waiting a week works fine for me.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday September 14 2014, @05:29PM
I am making the assumption you did not have a credit/debit card for them to cashback too?
Any place that does not hav e cash to refund, I think, is technically insolvent...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:52AM
Here in the Netherlands, Radio Shack stores used to be called Tandy. They've all but disappeared decades ago. So the last time I bought something there must have been in the late eighties, eraly nineties. I remeber it was a great electronics store. You could buy all kinds of components - even single resistors and transistors. And they had kits, too. Without that store, my electronics hobby might as well have died.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @02:36AM
Maker Spots.
(Score: 0) by dltaylor on Sunday September 14 2014, @02:51AM
needed a mono 1/8" cable for remote control in an audio setup; in stock at the local store vs. a couple of days on the 'net.
I'm usually in there once a month for similar reasons: need a cable, battery, ... now.
Yes, the 'net, or the local MicroCenter or Fry's are cheaper, but they're farther away, so it's about the same figuring gas for the local stuff, and cheaper doesn't matter so much if I need it now and can continue with the project.
I could live without them, but I'd rather not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Sunday September 14 2014, @07:03AM
These stores haven't been the eponymous Radio Shack for years. Last thing I bought there was a 15 watt soldering iron and some solder. This was before they turned into PhoneScamShack. They turned from a hobbyist/hacker electronics store into something nasty and the last time I went there I saw nothing but phone display cases. It's embarrassing. I also saw a pack of resistors for $5. Not a bag of them like they used to sell. Two of them. That was bad enough but they also only had one resistance available whereas before I remember bags of them with any ohm you wanted or could need. I still have that soldering iron too and it still works fine. I don't think I could say the same for the irons there now because a friend who I got into hardware hacking bought his own and the coil managed to roast itself. So not only has "RadioShack" fallen, it resulted in at least one person getting scared of tools and probably not pursuing hardware hacking any further. So again, good riddance.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday September 14 2014, @11:39AM
When did this shift occur?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:30PM
In time.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Sunday September 14 2014, @12:34PM
Well I got my iron around '03 if I recall correctly but some people think that it occurred much earlier. They're probably right but at least at the time it still had some semblance of the attributes that one would expect to see in a place called RadioShack. Not too many phone displays besides what was in the showcase in the checkout counter either.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2, Informative) by twistedcubic on Monday September 15 2014, @12:36AM
I think it was during the mid 1990s. I remember buying a phone in 1994 for a fair price, before the store went bad. The beginning of the end was during the dot com boom, when they were aggressively giving away those little rat-shaped bar code scanners for free ('98 or '99?).
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday September 14 2014, @07:13AM
Why do businesses deny reality until they are in over their heads? Are highly paid MBAs just incapable of looking at their business - which in this case has been in the read for years - and accepting: This business model is no longer working, we cannot compete with the Internet. In the specific case of Radio Shack, it has been blindingly obvious for years that they are dead in the water. It would be far better for all concerned if they would realize this and close the business gracefully, rather than running it into an ugly bankruptcy.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Sunday September 14 2014, @07:21AM
I produced a parts list for a project and covered five major suppliers. None of the suppliers had every part but I was surprised to discover that RadioShack had the least. However, RadioShack seems to have endless PCBs for LED clusters.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday September 14 2014, @10:12AM
I always hated Radio Shack in the 1980s, because checking out was a long invasion of privacy and they didn't like taking no for an answer when I didn't want to give them personal info, but went there because there weren't alternatives back then. But ... now that I have alternatives, I have never been back and don't want to go back.
And it's a lesson in why I never want one store to be the only alternative. I went to Wal-Mart over the weekend and they were completely sold out of the item I wanted. A few years ago, they had almost a whole aisle of them, and now they're down to just a few, and these sell out quickly. Wal-Mart used to compete on selection and price, but after they put other stores out of business, they started reducing their inventory. So I think having more than one store in any category is good.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday September 14 2014, @11:43AM
What are the meat-space shop alternatives to Radio shack these days?
Perhaps one could call it the 555 test. If you can buy a 555 then it just might call itself a electronics store.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday September 14 2014, @05:31PM
Amazon genetically enhanced rat-drones, coming to sewer near you...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by richtopia on Sunday September 14 2014, @05:56PM
Fry's Electronics is the correct answer. Except they have limited coverage, so if you have a Fry's in driving distance, good for you!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AlHunt on Sunday September 14 2014, @02:32PM
>When was the last time you bought something at RadioShack?
About 6 or 8 weeks ago, at 75% off. The store closed for good the next day.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday September 15 2014, @02:12PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2014, @05:34PM
Probably 6 years ago when i needed a EUR - US plug adaptor, unless it was last year, if i bought my EUR - UK adaptor from radio shack. Last time i was in radio shack was some months ago, when i wanted to buy a audio cable to listen music from my phone in the car. Did not buy those over priced cables. I found one from target at a reasonable price, though they also had some over priced cables. Also on that same trip i took the wrong charger for my phone with me and wanted to buy a new. Went to radio shack first, then best buy, then AT&T shop. None had that charger.