While it's glib to say that Radio Shack was lost for the want of a space, the change in their corporate identity from "Radio Shack" to "RadioShack" -- 1995 -- coincides with their slide to irrelevance nicely enough to seem kind of symbolic. We don't really know what the Internet is, but we've noticed that cool companies are using CamelCase.
I suspect it's hard for people who are under 30, maybe even 40, to believe how different RS once was from the sad sack we have today. I don't think they were ever really cool -- that air you now get from their '70s and '80s catalog of old white dudes trying to be hip is an air you got from those catalogs even when they were brand new, trust me -- but they had big selections of really interesting stuff, most of which was exclusive to them, and frequently had salespeople who were genuinely enthusiastic about electronics and computers. And the importance of the TRS-80 in the early computer scene seems to be vastly underestimated today, I suspect in part because of that perpetual lack of cool. You might dimly remember "Trash-80" jokes, but you may not remember that for a few years it was the best-selling computer in the world. And unless you followed the company, you almost certainly don't remember that they had separate "Tandy Computer Center" stores, or that they sold an IBM PCjr "clone" called the Tandy 1000 that fixed all of the PCjr's problems and became so popular that big name games had exclusive Tandy 1000 features, or that they actually shipped a frikkin' Xenix workstation (The TRS-80 Model 16) years before most people had any idea what that was or why they should care.
And, really, that last one sums up Radio Shack in a nutshell, especially with computers: always either a few years ahead of their time, or a few years behind it. As someone who grew up with the TRS-80 Model I and later Model 4 (and who did a lot of strange mad science stuff with it up even into the early '90s), I'll miss RS -- but the RS that I have fond memories of has been gone a long time.
> While it's glib to say that Radio Shack was lost for the want of a space
But it might be accurate to say that Radio Shack was lost for want of space; to wit, Radio Shack's store format was optimized for electronics-as-niche-hobby, and Radio Shack really never adapted to electronics-as-mass-market, and their small format stores suffered with too little focus for the small space (both in terms of mass consumer vs. hobbyist offerings, and lack of focus within the growing part of the store assigned to mass consumer offerings). RS's corporate parent did eventually get the idea that larger stores were needed, but it got into the game late with Incredible Universe, and eventually got out again.
From at least the early-1990s, Radio Shack has had about as much focus as Fry's -- with stores that often have a footprint significantly smaller than a typical Fry's checkout area.
Quite a few comments about how Radio Shack lost their way and squandered their opportunity, but really their business model was dead. Nothing they could have done would have changed what happened.
It was a store with a very large number of SKUs that they could only sustain through very high profit margins. Sure that works great when it's Sunday and you need that resistor now, but the vast majority of times people would just order online.
Quite a few comments about how Radio Shack lost their way and squandered their opportunity, but really their business model was dead.
True, but I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive. I'd bet that the primary reason RadioShack never became a major online parts and electronics retailer is because of fear that it'd start cannibalizing their retail stores. Which it would have -- but either you cannibalize your own business or someone else does it for you. And I could certainly imagine an alternate history where they kept their own "captive brands" like Realistic and Optimus and competed reasonably well with the likes of Jabra, Jambox, Vizio and friends; I'm sure they had what they felt were sound business reasons for dumping that strategy, but it removed virtually all possibilities that buyers would go to RS for something only they sold, and I can't help but think that had significant value. (I suspect it's only the Sears captive brands that have let it hang on as long as it has, given how woefully it's been managed its last decade.)
> (I suspect it's only the Sears captive brands that have let it hang on as long as it has, given how woefully it's been managed its last decade.)
The Sears you are thinking about before the last decade was already dieing -- the current "Sears" is the result of KMart buying Sears in 2004 (during a brief profitably period shortly after KMart's own bankruptcy, and the combined entity -- which was called Sears Holdings Corporation -- went south pretty quickly.)
I don't think Sears captive brands are keeping it alive for the last decade, I think the temporary reset it got at the acquisition by KMart has been keeping it alive.
It's the holding company that bought KMart and then bought Sears which I'm thinking of as the mismanager (so to speak), actually. Sears had its share of issues pre-merger but they weren't in as bad shape before KMart bought them as they ended up afterward. It's my admittedly anecdotal impression that when someone ends up in a Sears these days it's probably to buy a Sears-specific brand. That could certainly be wrong. (A cynic might say that when someone ends up in a Sears these days it's probably because they took a wrong turn.)
I still use them all the time for just that. You no longer get a choice of 10 different bipolars and 3 different VMOS FETs, but the parts drawer is still pretty useful when all you need is a relay or an Arduino board.
There are a few of them near me and one is still a pretty decent "need it right now" electronic components place (with very limited selection) but the other two just sell cellphones and HDMI cables and basically nothing else.
Yeah...this is my experience. I hear people say their local RS has components, but all the ones near me are exclusively cell phones, crappy knock-off RC toys and batteries.
Fortunately, my local Frys has a very good components selection.
Ah, I don't miss being required to hock those at customers. We used to have to watch training videos (in Macromedia Flash!) about how Monster's special braiding technology transferred the bits with more fidelity.
But they really weren't the worst offender. "Overpriced" doesn't begin to describe the markup on their batteries. When I worked there -- and i'm sure it's even more now -- it was several hundred percent. It was absurd to the point that I went to my boss for clarification thinking that maybe the POS drops decimal places or something.
We used to have to watch training videos (in Macromedia Flash!) about how Monster's special braiding technology transferred the bits with more fidelity.
The really sad thing is, I don't think they were consciously lying. Monster's BS wouldn't work anywhere near as well as it does if they didn't believe it themselves.
I suspect it's hard for people who are under 30, maybe even 40, to believe how different RS once was from the sad sack we have today. I don't think they were ever really cool -- that air you now get from their '70s and '80s catalog of old white dudes trying to be hip is an air you got from those catalogs even when they were brand new, trust me -- but they had big selections of really interesting stuff, most of which was exclusive to them, and frequently had salespeople who were genuinely enthusiastic about electronics and computers. And the importance of the TRS-80 in the early computer scene seems to be vastly underestimated today, I suspect in part because of that perpetual lack of cool. You might dimly remember "Trash-80" jokes, but you may not remember that for a few years it was the best-selling computer in the world. And unless you followed the company, you almost certainly don't remember that they had separate "Tandy Computer Center" stores, or that they sold an IBM PCjr "clone" called the Tandy 1000 that fixed all of the PCjr's problems and became so popular that big name games had exclusive Tandy 1000 features, or that they actually shipped a frikkin' Xenix workstation (The TRS-80 Model 16) years before most people had any idea what that was or why they should care.
And, really, that last one sums up Radio Shack in a nutshell, especially with computers: always either a few years ahead of their time, or a few years behind it. As someone who grew up with the TRS-80 Model I and later Model 4 (and who did a lot of strange mad science stuff with it up even into the early '90s), I'll miss RS -- but the RS that I have fond memories of has been gone a long time.