Sad for all the workers.

my thoughts exactly

its about time. the marketplace moved on & they didnt. They even pointed that out in a superbowl ad. Funny they can laugh at themselves but instead of selling something new they just reminded public they are obsolete.

no worries the radio shack workers will find jobs at sears.

:upsidedow

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

need a new radio?

go on Radio NULA awesome music charts, you will no regret this belive me

Sad day.

Radio Shack was great back in the day. Nearly every one I went to had at least one sales staff who really knew their stuff about electronics - could always count on them to offer useful advice on a wide array of things.

They got replaced around here by The Source - and went downhill rapidly. Stupid sales staff who likely got fired from a local call centre. Cheap junk products...and they got rid of most of their small items like patch cords, fuses, connectors, adapters, etc.

Bad business model will end you up like this. sad... :(

Used to love building their electronics kits when I was a kid.

http://my.core.com/~sparktron/KITS3.JPG

https://img-f.pinside.com/201404/1570129/214845.jpg

I had one of these as a kid...(it was a loooong time ago..but I think this is the exact one).


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PBgIxne3ar...kit_329524.jpg

Damn, in my early days of running porn stores I would visit Radio Shack at least once a month to buy tons of VCR head cleaners. The video booths in the arcades of the backs of the stores ran off VCR's back then, 60+ on each side so a minimum of 120 VCR's in each store running 24/7. That took a LOT of head cleaners to maintain.

A lot of hack comedians loved to rip on Radio Shack for asking for your phone number even if you were just purchasing a pack of batteries. I know they finally quit doing that years ago but it was annoying...

Radio Shack to me was in the same league as Consumers Distributing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Neat but outdated.

When I was a video editor for an adult video retail chain we operated a VHS duplication lab with 76 JVC machines - all linked together and fed from a Sony beta master deck. Had to spend many hours each week cleanin' the video heads on those damn things. Eventually we began leavin' the screws out of the chassis just to save time opening them up. They ran dupes 16hrs a day on those machines.

Nothing but AC/DC playing Back in Black in concert sounds like AC/DC Back in Black in concert. One of the best live bands ever.

But, yeah, stereo components and robot-building equipment were the two things Radio Shack was the spot for. In more recent years, they seemed more about cheap cell phones than electronics though.

Was the owner of the chain ripping off the video studios, renting out dupes? A lot of small video stores would do that, Pakistani ones always.

I thought Consumers Distributing was a brilliant concept, it did seem to be something of a success when I was a kid, everybody had the catalog, but any time I went in one there weren't many other people if any. The big box stores I'm sure was the final nail in its' coffin.

As someone who worked there I can assure you asking for peoples phone numbers, name and address for every little purchase was annoying to the person doing it as well.

I worked with a guy who would pride himself on have a 95%+ names and address rate every month. I hovered around 70%. He seemed to relish in getting that info. I just wanted to make a sale.

No, they had contracts and bought licensing rights through the studio distributors to duplicate. At the time they were Canada's largest adult video chain nationwide - they had 78 store locations. At their height they had 91 stores. They even operated their own cable TV adult specialty channel.

The owner made the cover of MacLean's national magazine at one point.

I have to say they are one of the worst stores in history...they should have gone bye bye long ago...And they didn't just ask for a phone number they tried to pry your address outta you...for a battery sale. We used to laugh and say things like Jimmi Hendrix - or Jack Meoff...somehow the horrid sales people took it really seriously like they had a GODDAMN RIGHT to know your address...oh and they still do it:

I needed a basic computer power cable the other day and stopped by a Radio Shack - $10.99 haha for a cable that probably cost them about 30 cents.

I got one at the dollar store the next day and returned the overpriced one to Ripoffshack...the salesgirl did everything in her power to not accept the return - when she asked for my address I just said "Nope"

forgot about that phone number bullshit.

I remember learning how to program on the TRS-80 in the mid 1980s. Heck, I see you can still buy them on Ebay for $100.

I remember my first time buying software in the store at Radio Shack - it was a Mircosoft scan disk utility. They sold a floppy disk in a large clear plastic bag.

In retrospect, it's amusing to think they sold a 5mb harddrive for the TRS-80 for around $2k (about $10k in today's dollars).

Thought someone had resurrected a thread that was AT LEAST 10 years old.

I can't remember the last time I saw a Radio Shack...

Wow!! I used to fucking LOVE these things. I had 2 or 3 of them (A 100 in one, a 150 in one, and a 200 in one), and I think I built every project in all 3 boxes at least twice. My favourites were the different kinds of transmitters and radios.

These are the best toys anyone can ever buy for their kids. The toys are so much fun you forget that you're actually learning how everything works.

I had that exact 150 in one kit. The 200 in one was the first one that didn't come in a wooden box for useless trivia buffs, haha.

The name and address stuff is something we should probably all be thankful for in a way. RadioShack asked people for that because they continued the mailing list started in the early 1900's by Tandy Leather which had the longest running active mailing list in the country I believe. The precursor to customer tracking, targeted advertising and.. I guess data mining. That company had / has so much data for each store, customers, employees (including name and address acquisition percentage like kane mentioned). I used to staff people based on historical data which includes how many receipts written per hour for any given hour in the year. Everything was noted, such as if weather events affected traffic and whatnot.

The buyers sucked for the company which is why things were overpriced. If they pay too much then there is no room to profit. When we had IBM computers, they were about 3% profit at regular price, which they never sold for. Other shit was the big money. Such as duplex phone adapters which cost the STORE 70 cents to buy from the warehouse, and sold retail for like $4.50. This is where RS always made it's money, and never should have tried to do anything else. Small shit you need to hook up your big shit which you bought where it was a good deal. The handwriting was on the wall since the mid 90's that this was going to happen. Now I'm stuck with useless stock shares, haha.

I had the exact same one as well...

Radio Shack was the place for batteries back then too.. the Battery club I think it was...

I still have the assorted lengths of wire from that kit in my electronics drawer.
Seriously. I'm not making a Futurama joke.

rip radioshack