RadioShack to close ~1,100 stores

[Siege]

I don't know. I mean I hate that Walmart but every time I visit I'm like:

I can appreciate that, but the end game of the predatory American capitalist model is the Wal-Mart end game.  Everybody will work there as temp contractors with no benefits.  Everybody will shop there, as there will be no choice.

Remember Demolition Man and how there was only one restaurant in the future, and it was Taco Bell?  It's not as unrealistic as you think.  Just be glad you'll be too dead to see it.

Dead? Not necesarily.
If Greta Garbon survive the next 30 years he might be immortal.
Or at least have a long and boring indefinite lifespam, which is the term researchers are using.

[CountDeMoney]

Radio Shack suffers from an outmoded retail model, the same way other consumer electronics retail models have suffered.  There's a reason Hi Fi stereo stores and record stores aren't around anymore, either.  The Big Box shot them down, and the internet killed them off.

Back in the 70s and the 80s when The Mall ruled retail, Radio Shack was where it was at for certain things, but nobody needs to go to The Mall for toggle switches or speaker wires anymore. 

[DontSayBanana]

Radio Shack suffers from an outmoded retail model, the same way other consumer electronics retail models have suffered.  There's a reason Hi Fi stereo stores and record stores aren't around anymore, either.  The Big Box shot them down, and the internet killed them off.

Back in the 70s and the 80s when The Mall ruled retail, Radio Shack was where it was at for certain things, but nobody needs to go to The Mall for toggle switches or speaker wires anymore. 

That's why this is really a failure of branding more than anything else.  My store 's inventory is 40% wireless phones and associated accessories; most of the more esoteric stuff, while not discontinued, was moved to the website... all while running commercials with Weird Al showing off quadcopters (only three models in my store, less than 10 units overall, none over $100), kit robots with all kinds of exposed wiring (literally relegated to the back corner, by the stockroom- they expanded the section around Thanksgiving, but I have yet to move a unit from that area), and "BATTERIES!"  (Batteries is a four-letter word where we work.  The batteries are hard to sell at their current price point on their own, yet the company expects us to attach a pack of batteries to each sale.  Even with inflation, $6/pack is a lot for a universal impulse attach)

The Sprint sale really just flips around the current store-in-store model more than actually changes things- right now, the entire section of the floor forward of the sales counter is dedicated to no-contract wireless phones (of which, 3 of the brands we carry are Sprint or Sprint-operated).  So it's already close to a store-in-store model- just that after the sale, the store will be Sprint, and the featured area will be RadioShack.

[Caliga]

I didn't realise you worked at RadioShack.  Sorry dude.

[CountDeMoney]

That's why this is really a failure of branding more than anything else.  My store 's inventory is 40% wireless phones and associated accessories; most of the more esoteric stuff, while not discontinued, was moved to the website... all while running commercials with Weird Al showing off quadcopters (only three models in my store, less than 10 units overall, none over $100), kit robots with all kinds of exposed wiring (literally relegated to the back corner, by the stockroom- they expanded the section around Thanksgiving, but I have yet to move a unit from that area), and "BATTERIES!"  (Batteries is a four-letter word where we work.  The batteries are hard to sell at their current price point on their own, yet the company expects us to attach a pack of batteries to each sale.  Even with inflation, $6/pack is a lot for a universal impulse attach)

The Sprint sale really just flips around the current store-in-store model more than actually changes things- right now, the entire section of the floor forward of the sales counter is dedicated to no-contract wireless phones (of which, 3 of the brands we carry are Sprint or Sprint-operated).  So it's already close to a store-in-store model- just that after the sale, the store will be Sprint, and the featured area will be RadioShack.

Honestly, I really don't know what else Radio Shack could've done for their long-term survivability the last 25 years, short of expanding heavier into computers and video games in the late 80s and early 90s, despite the market pressures.

Shit, my junior high school's computer lab's first purchase were a dozen TSR-80 model 3s.  I remember going to Computer Camp at the local Radio Shack for the Color Computer II, and not the batteries and stereo wires store in The Mall, but the fancier, classier "PC" store at a strip mall.  Our first home computers were Tandys.

Maybe home appliances?  But that wouldn't have been able to compete with the Big Box stores, either.

I think the death of imagination of today's young people had a lot to do with it as well.  Nobody wants to build AM radios, circuit boards or their own bombs anymore.

[Caliga]

I used to build pipe bombs with some friends of mine in high school.   We stopped that when one of the other dudes accidentally set one off while hammering it shut and destroyed his right eye.

Heh, now that I think about it, one of the other guys is now my hometown's fire chief.

[11B4V]

That's why this is really a failure of branding more than anything else.  My store 's inventory is 40% wireless phones and associated accessories; most of the more esoteric stuff, while not discontinued, was moved to the website... all while running commercials with Weird Al showing off quadcopters (only three models in my store, less than 10 units overall, none over $100), kit robots with all kinds of exposed wiring (literally relegated to the back corner, by the stockroom- they expanded the section around Thanksgiving, but I have yet to move a unit from that area), and "BATTERIES!"  (Batteries is a four-letter word where we work.  The batteries are hard to sell at their current price point on their own, yet the company expects us to attach a pack of batteries to each sale.  Even with inflation, $6/pack is a lot for a universal impulse attach)

The Sprint sale really just flips around the current store-in-store model more than actually changes things- right now, the entire section of the floor forward of the sales counter is dedicated to no-contract wireless phones (of which, 3 of the brands we carry are Sprint or Sprint-operated).  So it's already close to a store-in-store model- just that after the sale, the store will be Sprint, and the featured area will be RadioShack.

I remember going to Computer Camp at the local Radio Shack

You 

[CountDeMoney]

You 

IT WAS 1982
ITS WHAT WE DID

[garbon]

I didn't do anything in '82.

[Valmy]

You 

IT WAS 1982
ITS WHAT WE DID

Doing anything with computers in 1982 was a thousand times nerdier then than it is now.

[DontSayBanana]

I didn't realise you worked at RadioShack.  Sorry dude.

Don't be.  They treat us well enough, but the pay is crap.  From my point of view, either:

1) I lose my job.  This is actually a net positive.  Since it's been more than 3 years since the last time I used a WDP grant, I can apply leverage that I'm close to my bachelor's to get an additional $4,000 grant for school, and then I can coast on unemployment, focus on school, and seriously cut down on my work-related expenses.

2) Through some miracle, I become a Sprint employee as part of the buyout.  Better pay, which softens the blow to my dignity of finally becoming primarily a wireless salesman, and possibly even jumps enough to justify the expense of commuting to work and having to frequently eat at work (brown-bagging is a lot more difficult when you're stuck at school 7 hours a day before ever getting to the work fridge).

3) I find a job closer to my school- I currently have a 40-minute drive between work and school.  There are RadioShacks closer to here, but given the uncertainty, I was reluctant to ask for a transfer (glad I didn't, since the local mall RadioShack closed about a week ago); on the other hand, the job has been comfortable enough that I didn't feel a huge urge to jump companies.

[CountDeMoney]

Heh, now that I think about it, one of the other guys is now my hometown's fire chief.

Not surprising at all, actually.

[11B4V]

You 

IT WAS 1982
ITS WHAT WE DID

I didnt own my first computer until '98

[CountDeMoney]

Doing anything with computers in 1982 was a thousand times nerdier then than it is now.

Shut up.     I could write in BASIC off the cuff.  Used to program my own "stories" using just graphics and sounds. 

If I had stuck with it, I'd have been in the first wave of the PC revolutionaries of the early '90s.  But nooooo...POLITICAL SCIENCE WAS MORE FUNNER

[Valmy]

I didnt own my first computer until '98

You missed the joy of exploring the wire frame depths of the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.