I never noticed Radio Shack being a "boutique" store.
Matter of fact, here in recent years...they were trying to do what the market called for: selling mobile devices. I bought CM's last phone there for a lot cheaper than at the Verizon store.
And a lot of y'all are too young to remember when we all would have to upgrade our car stereos. Cars in the 1970's & early 1980's usually came with a pretty shitty sounding factory stereo.
But you could always go to radio shack and get a good cheap stereo, equalize, power booster, some 6x9's, and wire to hook your ride up and make that kick drum on AC/DC's "Back In Black" sound like it was in concert.
My dad built my first P.A. and light show for my band in 1978 with 15" speakers from Radio Shack (he built the cabinets for them to go in) for the P.A. and an empty electronics box, switches, and outlets for the light show.
It was always the cheap place to go.
And as I said...even in recent years it had some pretty good deals. And was damn convenient as opposed to having to drive out to a Best Buy. It was always so much faster to run into Radio Shack and grab a HDMI cable or a digital cable, etc. and be back home in 5 minutes.