RadioShack gone for good?

The end might be near. Our local shopping center still has one, though.

I have nothing to add other than as a former Sprint employee, the place is just a culture of mismanagement.

We have one, just bought an automotive relay there. 30% off. Everything is 30% off and falling, so keep that in mind. They sell, among other things, drones.

Bummer, I really liked their stores but just another sign of the times w/ Sears, K-Mart, JCP etc. Brick n Mortar is becoming dead. Also, too much competition from cell phone, electronic and hobby stores, they spread themselves too thin. Our local RS closed over ten years ago. No major purchases there tho.

They did have a great parts bin. I'll miss that.

I've been to 2-3 Radio Shack closings where everything is 70-80% off. Got lots of wires, connectors, switches, relays, LEDs, etc. for ridiculous prices. I think one of the times I had two bags overflowing and paid less than $30.

John Welsh wrote: I have nothing to add other than as a former Sprint employee, the place is just a culture of mismanagement.

As a former Radio Shack employee this description doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.

Yeah when I bought the relay I told the salesperson I would stalk the store for a deal on a drone. He said he was waiting too! He did say he closed a store before and one person came in and bought damn near all the electronic components, took hours to ring up.

I asked him if he remembered the "Optimus" line. Before his time I guess.

Jeez, you guys still have Radio Shacks?! All of them in my area closed years ago!

They've been dead to me for a while. There might be one store in this area that's still open, but I wouldn't bother to drive across town to go there. Many years ago, they moved away from cool electronic hobby geek stuff to mediocre consumer electronics commodities. I just wait until I need a fair bit of stuff and order from Parts Express.

Yes, clearly gone for good.

Not long ago, I went into the local Radio Shack to buy, of all things, radio parts. I needed a small replacement speaker. I had bought them on two occasions in the past at the same store. Nope, not anymore. They are essentially a cell phone store at this point.

Woody wrote: Not long ago, I went into the local Radio Shack to buy, of all things, *radio parts*. I needed a small replacement speaker. I had bought them on two occasions in the past at the same store. Nope, not anymore. They are essentially a cell phone store at this point.

To be fair, a cell phone is a radio. :)

But yeah, I believe they're owned by a cellular company these days.

1988RedT2 wrote: They've been dead to me for a while.[...] Many years ago, they moved away from cool electronic hobby geek stuff to mediocre consumer electronics commodities.

+1, online businesses have taken over what Radio Shack used to do. Places like Mouser, Digikey, Adafruit, etc.

I thought they had gone under years ago. Really.

I hope Fry's stays open. Owned by Radio Shack, with lots of cool things. But not lots of customers.

Edit:. Maybe not owned by RS. Still a good store if you're into building electronics and stuff like that.

In reply to fasted58:

I think it's less that brick and mortar is dying and more that companies who've spent decades riding on name alone and not offering anything worthwhile are dying.

I can understand the sentiment when it comes to book stores and stuff, but with places like Sears and Radio Shack their death is 100% their fault.

Kramer wrote: I hope Fry's stays open. Owned by Radio Shack, with lots of cool things. But not lots of customers. Edit:. Maybe not owned by RS. Still a good store if you're into building electronics and stuff like that.

I fell in love with Frys when I lived out west. Like a radio shack on steroids. I miss that place more than the breweries even.

Local radio shack died years ago, there were 4 in town at one point, now none.

They totally missed a golden opportunity to be the face of the maker movement on a local scale. All the ppl futzing with arduinos, raspberries, the code kids - all the weirdos that are a growing market and want to run down and buy the hard parts tonight instead of ordering a gross of them from Mouser. Get into sponsoring / supporting local maker spaces. Start doing DIY classes like every Lowes and Home Depot and you have a solid basis for a chain. Maybe not 3 in every town like they used to run, but at least a couple in major metro markets.

Nothing will ever seem quite like the Christmases of my childhood without walking into the Radio Shack and seeing all the cool gadgets and RCs running around. They'll be missed, but that's been gone a long time.

Fry's is definitely not owned by Radio Shack, they're a private, family-owned business.

Fry's has been having challenges -- they grew a lot in the 90s and early 2000s, but most of the stuff they sold has either gone to online distribution (music, movies, computer games) or is becoming less and less relevant (few people build DIY PCs any more). They have several large stores here in the south bay, and it seems like the shelving units get shorter every time I go there, and now they have large chunks of floor space devoted to selling things like appliances and beds, with nobody in there looking at them. The one in Sunnyvale was built with over a hundred checkout registers (single queue, multiple server), and there were days when every single one of them was open and there was still a long line. These days they rarely have more than 8-10 registers open and lines basically don't exist.

I'm actually surprised that they haven't closed any stores, the real estate that they're sitting on is hugely valuable. All I can figure is that they must own the land, because there's no way they'd be making enough profit to cover the rent.

ultraclyde wrote: They totally missed a golden opportunity to be the face of the maker movement on a local scale. All the ppl futzing with arduinos, raspberries, the code kids - all the weirdos that are a growing market and want to run down and buy the hard parts tonight instead of ordering a gross of them from Mouser. Get into sponsoring / supporting local maker spaces. Start doing DIY classes like every Lowes and Home Depot and you have a solid basis for a chain. Maybe not 3 in every town like they used to run, but at least a couple in major metro markets.

That's exactly what they were for a long time. It's where you went for your electronics hobby parts. Who here was a member of the battery club, or learned basic electronics using one of their learning labs? Heck, I used to write text-based adventure games on a Tandy 1000. I don't know how they lost the plot, but they would have been the ideal place to be selling a Realistic 3D printer or have arduinos on the shelf.

At this point in time, there is no place in Grand Junction where I can buy a resistor. And this makes me sad, because I do actually buy resistors.

I thought they were already gone. The last on I knew of closed a year or more ago.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Oh, yeah, I grew up in their stores rummaging through the parts drawers. They changed tack when the general populace turned their back on DIY electronics work, but that interest has become popular again and they were THE. PERFECT. COMPANY. to capitalize on it! But they didn't see it...

I can't find any details to back it up, but I was thinking when I worked there(back around '98/'99) that Parts Express was Radio Shack's online entity for discrete components and other hardware - I'm sure it at least had a similar name.

Keith Tanner wrote: That's exactly what they were for a long time. It's where you went for your electronics hobby parts. Who here was a member of the battery club, or learned basic electronics using one of their learning labs? Heck, I used to write text-based adventure games on a Tandy 1000. I don't know how they lost the plot, but they would have been the ideal place to be selling a Realistic 3D printer or have arduinos on the shelf. At this point in time, there is no place in Grand Junction where I can buy a resistor. And this makes me sad, because I do actually buy resistors.

Yep - former battery club member here too.

Remember that Radio Shack commercial during the Super Bowl where they had a bunch of '80s icons in their shop pack up and leave? My reaction was, "Nicely done commercial, but exactly the wrong message." The '80s was when Radio Shack actually knew what it was doing and was relevant. They should had the '80s come back in a BMW 635 CSi instead of sending them packing in a DeLorean.

Radio Shack has made some effort at stocking maker type things, including occasionally having an Arduino on the shelf - but it's a very bad selection. The last time I looked (I happened to need a bridge rectifier and didn't want to wait for shipping), the local Radio Shack had just one Mega2560 and one Esplora on the shelf, no other Arduinos.

To go with your link...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL RadioShack may file for bankruptcy for second time in two years

Digikey is good for bulk purchases. But Radio Shack is where you went at 8:00 on a Thursday night whem you needed one more resistor to finish your project.