The Shack is back!

[Duke_Nukem]

Back in February 2015, Radio Shack filed for bankruptcy.

Many of us feared that we had lost a popular source of electronic products and parts. Well, in case you didn’t get the memo, Radio Shack is alive and well as a new company. It did not come out of bankruptcy as is the usual case. Instead, Standard General, a New York hedge fund, bought the assets and brand and formed a new company under the ownership of General Wireless with the name Radio Shack. It retained about 1,700 of the original 4,000-plus stores. Roughly 1,400 of the 1,700 are co-branded with Sprint and the telecommunications giant will sell cell phones and subscriber plans on-site.

Radio Shack is now a greatly scaled-down company and more focused on building a new business model around its stores and a greatly expanded online presence. It will continue to sell popular consumer electronics items, but also will take advantage of the growing DIY/Maker niche. Look for a growing number of Radio Shack smaller electronic kits in stores in the months to come. What they really need is a few signature larger kits to generate some significant buzz and dollars. Drones and robots come to mind, but that has been done. How about more radio products? Why not ham radio products, as this is a known and growing market? Besides, the former ham kit company Heathkit is not doing anything.

The Shack Is Back

[Terrence]

@ Duke Nukem - good news. Thanks for the update.

[godefroi]

They ought to sell printer filament, and have a printer or two on site and print to order. Sort of a miniature Fry’s. Maybe partner with NewEgg.

[ianlee74]

@godefroi

They ought to sell printer filament, and have a printer or two on site and print to order. Sort of a miniature Fry’s. Maybe partner with NewEgg.

They should rename it the “STEM Shack” and target that market. And definitely stock some 3D printer filament and low cost 3D printers. I don’t know that they should provide a print to order service unless they spend a lot more on educating their staff than they have in the past. It would be great to have another local shop for picking up those items you don’t have time to order.

And for God’s sake, they should not sell mobile phones!

[devhammer]

@godefroi

Sort of a miniature Fry’s.

Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
:think:

[godefroi]

@devhammer

Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
:think:

Well, it is, but it doesn’t have to be. If we left out music, movies, etc, and all the consumer electronics, we’d have left what Radio Shack used to be, and could be again.

[Mike]

My first exposure to Radio Shack was in 1959. At that time, they were a ham radio and electronics surplus seller, out of Boston. As I recall, they sent out a newspaper style catalog. I bought a surplus WWII army flashlight.

As a teenager, I used to go to the electronic stores on Cortlandt Street in Manhattan. Anyone else have memories of Cortlandt Street?

[Dave_McLaughlin]

In the UK they were called Tandy and the one in Dundee was my source of electronics (albeit very expensive packaged parts) for resistors, transistors etc when I needed new parts instead of de-soldering old board for the bits.

My first Multimeter was from that shop. A manual one. Auto ranging was too expensive back then (30+ years ago)

[Dave_McLaughlin]

@Mike

My first exposure to Radio Shack was in 1959.

1959??? You must be as old as that guy Dave on eevblog did an interview on! :whistle:

[Mike]

@ Dave McLaughlin - not quite… but I do have underwear older than most people on the forum. ;D

[devhammer]

@godefroi

@devhammer

Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
:think:

Well, it is, but it doesn’t have to be. If we left out music, movies, etc, and all the consumer electronics, we’d have left what Radio Shack used to be, and could be again.

Well, yes. But part of the appeal of Fry’s (at least, IMHO) is the sheer scale of it. I think of Fry’s as more of an experience than a store…

[mcalsyn]

I’ve had pretty miserable consumer shopping experiences in Fry’s. I love the access to all that parts inventory, but I had the sad misfortune of trying to buy a TV there. Seeing my frustration, an industry rep from one of the brands pointed me to another retailer where I could get the same thing, same price, and less of a mind-destroying, soul-sapping experience.

I think it may just be the TV department, because I have gotten laptops there and done just fine, and of course, all the self-serve geek parts are a real boon.

[devhammer]

@ mcalsyn - Given that there’s no Fry’s within a reasonable distance of me, I’ve never been tempted to buy appliances (or anything that won’t fit in an overhead bin on an airplane), so my experience is really more of the window-shopping kind. For that, it’s hard to beat.

[Brett]

I’m heading to Seattle in late July, Frys are always on my go-to list if I can wrangle it ! The weird eclectic of the place is interesting at the least, and I always manage to snare something unusual

[devhammer]

@Brett

I’m heading to Seattle in late July, Frys are always on my go-to list if I can wrangle it ! The weird eclectic of the place is interesting at the least, and I always manage to snare something unusual

Not sure I could find the picture without a lot of searching, but when I was still at Microsoft, one of my fellow tech evangelists and I visited Fry’s out there (probably MVP summit, or such), and two of our finds were stuffed animals, and a magazine about raising fowl. Eclectic is an understatement.

[mtylerjr]

@Dave McLaughlin

@Mike

My first exposure to Radio Shack was in 1959.

1959??? You must be as old as that guy Dave on eevblog did an interview on! :whistle:

Wasn’t that when he was finishing up the MFM hard drive driver for the babbage difference engine?