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According to Bloomberg Amazon is in talks to buy some of RadioShack's stores:
Amazon has considered using the RadioShack stores as showcases for the Seattle-based company’s hardware, as well as potential pickup and drop-off centers for online customers, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the deliberations are private.
RadioShack is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, and according to other reports, it has also been in talks with wireless carrier Sprint about selling some of its stores. The deal with Amazon may not happen, but nonetheless, it shows where Amazon is headed.
To head off competition from Wal-Mart—one of the few retailers that could pose a legitimate threat to Amazon—and to expand its operation, the company has adopted a new hybrid business model, combining e-commerce with offline services.
Originally spotted at Wired, and also linked at HackerNews.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday February 04 2015, @02:54PM
Is there a fuckedcompany.com for this business cycle? Two bubbles ago, that site was awesome. Radio shack is just the start, jc penny is almost done as is sears. Gonna be a lot of empty CRE on the market pretty soon.
Most of the mall stores that I shopped at as a kid in the 80s are now dead/dying. Probably because I got sick of the security guards harassing me as a teen in the 90s and said F that place, never again, not just me but every freaking gen-Xer in the country. We've got dead kmarts in strip malls that still are empty and not torn down yet. One of the dead kmarts has a giant hole in its roof and is a total loss and they've been promising to bulldoze it for years, but no one wants to move into the land.
The good news about the death of corporate screwed up radio shack is it'll open opportunity for something kinda like your local gaming store but for electronics. No, some air head CEO in texas won't be able to siphon off $50M/yr salary, and it won't be your only brick and mortar source of VCR cleaning tapes, but it might have a maker space in the back and some cool components for sale.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:11PM
I got sick of the security guards harassing me as a teen in the 90s
This is what I dont get... Malls should be begging for kids to come in. They are your next source of 'where do I buy something' people.
My local mall did the 'if you are 16 and under and no adult get out' recently.
That place is now *dead* most of the time. A year or two before it was usually semi busy. The appearance of dead will kill your business too... 'no one shops there'. Most of what people buy is fad junk. The perception of 'not with it' will kill your store. Sort of like radio shack did.
The local kmart to me is usually semi busy. But put a target or a walmart near it and it will be GONE. I only go into it because it is 2-3 bucks cheaper for some things I buy regularly.
Radio shack 'going away' will not be much of a problem for most of these malls. The floor space they had in each mall was fairly small anyway (kb toys was usually bigger and they are long gone). They will slot in some clothing boutique store. Something like a sears or jcpenny on the other hand...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:42PM
> This is what I dont get... Malls should be begging for kids to come in.
Same reason people are bigots about any other superficial characteristic. Some kids are trouble-makers and it is deceptively easy to blame their trouble-making on the fact that they are kids. Never mind that the over-whelming majority of kids that didn't cause trouble being even stronger counter-evidence. The idea that root causes are rarely obvious to the naked (and ignorant) eye is just too complex for many people to ever even consider.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Immerman on Wednesday February 04 2015, @06:40PM
The root causes... so you're saying the actual problem with troublemakers is roots? Excellent! From here on out all eaters of potatoes, carrots, peanuts, and other root crops shall be banned from our stores. I predict that we'll have completely eliminated shoplifting, loitering, and harassment within the year. Thank you for your gracious explanation of the real problem, I owe the future of my business to you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @02:33AM
Maybe most kids just want to have fun, but until they recognize and destroy their growing troublemaker cancer they must be held responsible.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Thursday February 05 2015, @05:10AM
Some kids are trouble-makers and it is deceptively easy to blame their trouble-making on the fact that they are kids. Never mind that the over-whelming majority of kids that didn't cause trouble being even stronger counter-evidence.
In the modern politically correct world you cannot ban a few kids - you have to either ban none or to ban all of them.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sjames on Wednesday February 04 2015, @07:58PM
Part of the problem for all of the stores is the way they DON'T handle warranty issues anymore. At one time, if your new-ish TV broke, you take it back to the store you gought it from, talk to the manager for a minute or two and walk out with a new one of the same or similar model.
Now they want nothing to do with it. At most they'll ship it off to Asia for you where you'll never see it again. Given that, why not buy it for less online? If they would actually stand behind the product, they might remain relevant.
The simple fact is that they have cut so many corners trying to wring out more profits for less work that there's little to no point in them anymore.
(Score: 1) by takyon on Wednesday February 04 2015, @04:05PM
It could be a good opportunity for urban farming. Cheap, large, flat buildings.
Some malls are being converted to open air shopping spaces which are more successful and require less maintenance.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 04 2015, @04:32PM
which are more successful
I think thats a coastie thing because we got a foot of snow on Sunday and it'll be -10 tonight. Given the choice of an outdoor strip mall or walmart, I'd shop online, but if I had to go to one or the other tonight, it would have to be the walmart (or the still enclosed mall, if its something they still sell).
If it works for the coasties thats great for them, but I'm not seeing it happening nationwide.
I have a suggestion which is dorms / condos. You got plenty of parking so tear half of it up and put in parkland. Generally located on major roads, convenient to everything else still open, plenty of utility service (water, electricity already in place).
Something I've seen repeatedly locally is an explosion of gyms in strip malls.
I bet you could make a heck of a convention center out of a dead enclosed mall. Plenty of parking, already on mass transit lines, bathrooms, utilities, roadways are usually tolerable...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday February 04 2015, @05:53PM
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2005/04/the_mall_goes_undercover.html [slate.com]
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by brocksampson on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:13PM
When I read your post I started thinking about the stores I was familiar with as a kid (also in the 80's), and so many of them are indeed either bankrupt, nearly-bankrupt, or have merged or been bought out. I only see the inside of a mall once a year or so these days, and I don't recognize the majority of the stores. My kids have never seen a JC Penny, K-Mart, or Sears. I wonder how that worked for my parents' generation? Did the Internet alone devastate the brick-and-mortar retail business model or is it part of the natural ebb and flow of businesses? It seems like there were two waves, first the big-box stores killed off the local businesses and then the Internet went after chain retail stores and department stores and both of those things are specific to the late 20th Century. Off the top of my head, most of the places I can really remember from my childhood that still exist are restaurants, diners, and bakeries and most of those were around when my parents were kids. The few local grocers that still exist converted to high-end places for people who think Whole Foods is too cheap. Even the amusement parks are gone--video games? And now it is coming full circle, with Amazon buying up old Radio Shacks. Will my grandchildren be pondering the demise of Google and Apple when the next disruption comes down the pike, or will they become the General Electric of the future?