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The company that arose from RadioShack's 2015 bankruptcy saga could soon itself be filing for bankruptcy.
General Wireless is reportedly on the brink of seeking protection from creditors and entering the liquidation process. The biz could not be reached for comment. The formal paperwork for the bankruptcy could be posted within a matter of days, it is claimed.
A liquidation of General Wireless will effectively mark the end of RadioShack, which opened its first store in 1921 and became a mainstay of electronics hobbyists through the rise of the home computing era.
The retailer was nearly liquidated outright in 2015 after years of struggling to keep up with competition from online stores and a financial plummet that saw the value of its stock fall so sharply it was removed from the New York Stock Exchange.
Micro Center remains, but in the era of Adafruit, Seeed Studio, Sparkfun, and others are big-box retailers still relevant?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday March 07 2017, @09:45PM
I'm sorry to see them go, but mostly for nostalgic reasons. Radio Shack started becoming an irritating place to shop 25 years ago when they started interrogating their customers at the checkout -- asking for name, address, phone number, etc, just to get them on the mailing list. I started looking for other sources for parts, and I'm sure other people felt the same way.
Then they started shifting away from hobbyists, and moving towards run-of-the-mill electronics products, culminating with selling mobile phones. It was a mistake to think they could compete with Best Buy. They pretty much lost the remainder of their loyal customers at that point.
They still might have saved the brand, because they could have been like Seeedstudio, et al, with brand recognition, and so forth, but no. At some point they lost their way, got off into the weeds, and couldn't get back.