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RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

wsj.com

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Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#4

Post by tankenmate »

Lack of vision; blinkers on and plow forward. Of all the customer bases out there you would think that most Radio Shack customers would be far more favourable to ordering via the Internet and preferring delivery. I'm a bit surprised they didn't move more towards a RS / Farnell business with the occasional small shop front combined with a warehouse model (a la Argos).

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#5

Post by hga »

easytiger wrote: post #2

Are paywalls ok on HN? http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-radioshack-prepares-to-file-...

At least for this item, the paywall that gives you the first paragraph and first bit of the 2nd is OK, the simple fact that's the situation has gone from the well known dire state to "reliably rumored" to do a bankruptcy and roughly when is all we really need.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#6

Post by gregd »

I graduated from high school in the 80s. My first computer was a TRS-80 WITH a cassette tape to save my programs to. How RS went from being ubiquitous to a laughing stock is beyond me, but I remember seeing the downfall during the 90s when they started offering really cheap toys (like remote controlled cars).

They almost became embarrassing.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#7

Post by subdane »

gregd wrote: post #6

I graduated from high school in the 80s. My first computer was a TRS-80 WITH a cassette tape to save my programs to. How RS went from being ubiquitous to a laughing stock is beyond me, but I remember seeing the downfall during the 90s when they started offering really cheap toys (like remote controlled cars). They almost became embarrassing.

While I share your sentiment, in actuality they were likely already a laughing stock in 1985 when this Jobs interview ran, "Radio Shack is totally out of the picture. They have missed the boat. Radio Shack tried to squeeze the computer into their model of retailing, which in my opinion often meant selling second-rate products or low-end products in a surplus-store environment." http://longform.org/stories/playboy-interview-steve-jobs

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#9

Post by moron4hire »

Last time I was at a Radio Shack, I was just starting to learn electronics. I bought parts to build a battery-powered guitar amplifier: LM386 IC, a small loud speaker, a handful of capacitors and resistors, a roll of wire, a project enclosure, a couple of potentiometers, knobs for them, and a switch. Just the sort of stuff one would expect to find at a Radio Shack (though, increasingly, cannot find). The store manager checked me out and made some crack about, "what are you making? Some kind of bomb?"

This was around the time that the city of Boston decided to go completely nutso and assume everything that had a wire sticking out of it was a bomb, find the people who made it, and then destroy their lives for "making a bomb hoax", regardless of what the item actually was. I had a flash of an image in my head of some soccer mom walking by the store in the mall, hearing the "bomb" quip, and calling the cops to send in the SWAT team.

I didn't expect the manager to know that speakers and amplifier chips don't go in a bomb. I mean, he was a manager at a Radio Shack, we're not talking about the cream of the crop here. But I did expect him to have a little tact and not make the sort of stupid jokes that our trigger-happy, security-theater-conscious society has demonstrated a gleeful willingness to destroy lives over.

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