Goodbye Radio Shack

It's official. Radio Shack is closing their doors. The nearest store to
me (in a big city about 60 miles away), is having a "going out of
business sale". Yesterday it was 80% off almost everything. But there
was little left to choose from. I got a few audio cables, some heat
shrink tubing and a couple 12v 1a transformers. That's about all I could
find.....

This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old electronics
stores, and while they have not had much in recent years, I still liked
their stores, and over the years I found their equipment was made fairly
well.

The guy said they are presently going to keep about 70 stores, which is
about one per state, and they will only be in the very large cities.

This sucks!!!!

 

[Foxs Mercantile]

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores

Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.

They sold predominately cheap import stuff.
Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.
No amount of mismanagement or corporate greed could save
them.


--
Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi
http://www.foxsmercantile.com

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On Tue, 23 May 2017 15:58:07 -0400, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:

On Tue, 23 May 2017, Foxs Mercantile wrote:

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:
This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores

Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.

Yes. They were traditional when they were a s mall chain in the Boston
area. But they were going bankrupt, which is why Tandy bought the chain.
And one reason Radio Shack was successful after that was that it was
everywhere, at a time when electronics were widening. The average home in
1971, the year Radio Shack came to Canada, had a tv or so, some am/fm
radios, maybe a record player or stereo. But five years later, there were
pocket calculators, digital watches, home computers, tv games, endless
stuff and getting wider, the result of the switch to semiconductors, and
then especially digital ICs. And Radio Shack was there on every corner, a
more familiar place than the old time electronic parts stores that were in
basements away from the mainstream. Radio Shack was niche back then, but
it was a place when a wider audience could get those metal detectors or
shortwave receivers or scanners or whatever without having to go to some
niche store. There was no competition, the others came later. Radio
Shack was there every time something new came along, so you could get that
Casio music keyboard that would sample, even if you were in some small
town.

ANd that's how the parts survived, Radio Shack could sell other things and
carry the parts. ANd it worked. I didn't buy parts there much, too
expensive and limited in selection, but it was convenient. But since I
paid attention and got the catalogs, when I started buying "stereo" stuff,
I bought at Radio Shack, usually when the item was on sale, or better yet,
a clearance item. And I bought a bunch of computers there, since they
were convenient. The catalog gave all the information, I could just go in
and get the item off the shelf.

And then at some point, other companies were doing the same thing, and
Radio Shack stumbled, losing its way.

Michael

So there was a bankruptcy even back then..... I did not know that, but
it seems they have gone thru a lot of them. Two recently.

I never understood the connection with the Tandy leather company. Maybe
there was no "real" connection, just that they bought the business. (Is
Tandy leather still around?).

There was a point when Radio Shack was called Allied Radio Shack. Did
Allied buy R.S. or was it the other way around? I dont know much about
the history, I only recall what I remember over the years. I remember
when they sold Archer brand items too.

However, I was pleased with most if not all of their gear, and I have
quite a bit of their stuff, from a few scanners, a radio, several
multimeters, lots of plugs and connectors, and a video switcher.

I realize their parts prices were on the high side, but I paid the price
because their stores were nearby and handy. Sure beats paying the
shipping from most places, and before the internet buying by mail was
involved, required mouth to mouth discussions and having a pile of paper
catalogs laying around. Far too complicated just to get a resistor,
capacitor, phono jack or semiconductor. It was easier to drive to R.S.
and just buy it. But I do agree their parts in recent years were very
skimpy and limited.

Regardless, I liked their stores and will miss them.....

The only reason I even found out that they were closing is because the
9volt battery connector broke on my portable weather radio, so I stopped
at R.S. to buy one. (I did not know they were closing). I had no problem
paying probably about $4 for one of them connectors. Now, I'm stuck
ordering one from ebay (I found a pack of 5 for about $3), but I hate
having to wait a week or more to get small parts like that, and my bench
piles up with projects waiting to be repaired, while I wait for parts.
Lately, when I buy a part, I usually buy 5 or more and keep them on
hand, so I have that stuff here. Its costing me more to stock all that
stuff in the end, but there is no way around it....

What once took a day or two to repair something sometimes takes months
now, because I have to keep waiting for each and every part I need.
Radio Shack provided a good service in that sense, and I was willing to
pay their prices for the convenience. Now they are gone, and I'm not
happy about it....

 

[Michael Black]

On Tue, 23 May 2017, Foxs Mercantile wrote:

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:
This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores

Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.

Yes. They were traditional when they were a s mall chain in the Boston
area. But they were going bankrupt, which is why Tandy bought the chain.
And one reason Radio Shack was successful after that was that it was
everywhere, at a time when electronics were widening. The average home in
1971, the year Radio Shack came to Canada, had a tv or so, some am/fm
radios, maybe a record player or stereo. But five years later, there were
pocket calculators, digital watches, home computers, tv games, endless
stuff and getting wider, the result of the switch to semiconductors, and
then especially digital ICs. And Radio Shack was there on every corner, a
more familiar place than the old time electronic parts stores that were in
basements away from the mainstream. Radio Shack was niche back then, but
it was a place when a wider audience could get those metal detectors or
shortwave receivers or scanners or whatever without having to go to some
niche store. There was no competition, the others came later. Radio
Shack was there every time something new came along, so you could get that
Casio music keyboard that would sample, even if you were in some small
town.

ANd that's how the parts survived, Radio Shack could sell other things and
carry the parts. ANd it worked. I didn't buy parts there much, too
expensive and limited in selection, but it was convenient. But since I
paid attention and got the catalogs, when I started buying "stereo" stuff,
I bought at Radio Shack, usually when the item was on sale, or better yet,
a clearance item. And I bought a bunch of computers there, since they
were convenient. The catalog gave all the information, I could just go in
and get the item off the shelf.

And then at some point, other companies were doing the same thing, and
Radio Shack stumbled, losing its way.

Michael

 

On Tue, 23 May 2017 15:31:24 -0500, amdx <nojunk@knology.net> wrote:

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:
It's official. Radio Shack is closing their doors. The nearest store to
me (in a big city about 60 miles away), is having a "going out of
business sale". Yesterday it was 80% off almost everything. But there
was little left to choose from. I got a few audio cables, some heat
shrink tubing and a couple 12v 1a transformers. That's about all I could
find.....

This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old electronics
stores, and while they have not had much in recent years, I still liked
their stores, and over the years I found their equipment was made fairly
well.

The guy said they are presently going to keep about 70 stores, which is
about one per state, and they will only be in the very large cities.

This sucks!!!!


The last one in my town closed about two weeks ago.

According to the guy at my local one, they are all closing or have
already closed in the last month. This one will be closed the last day
of this month. There is so little left that they may as well be closed
already but they are also selling shelves and parts of the store's that
are not attached to the walls of the building. I offerred to buy the
small parts drawers, but they were already sold and paid for. But he
said the buyer has to wait till May 31 to pick them up.
Some of the largfe shelves were already gone and there were 8 or 9 boxes
of cables and cords on the floor because they did not want to hang the
stuff again.

I asked if I could make an offer for an entire box of those cables, but
he told me to come back around the 29th or 30th. He said right now he
must still sell everything at the percentage off rate that corporate
told him to do. I may make a trip there on the 29th just to see if I can
get boxed deals.

I got a laugh, because I found a connector in the parts bin that was not
in a bag, and he said although all small parts were priced at $1 each,
he could not sell that plug without a part number, but since I spent
over $25, I could have it for free as a bonus. That was nice of him!

 

On Tue, 23 May 2017 17:04:56 -0400, Ralph Mowery
<rmowery28146@earthlink.net> wrote:

In article <og23l0$1pfs$1@gioia.aioe.org>, jdangus@att.net says...

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:
This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores

Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.

They sold predominately cheap import stuff.
Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.
No amount of mismanagement or corporate greed could save
them.

Most of the components seemed to be low quality.

The manager of the local store 40 years ago had a major complaint with
the company. Whatever was on sale, the company would ship him many of
the items. He had an alotment of so many dollars. He may wind up with
half of that in antennas that he could not sell, but could not order
many of the items he could sell.

Even back in the 1970's I almost never bought anything from them in the
parts line. They did sell a few nice large items. Bought one of the
Model 3 TRS 80 computers from them, and a nice police scanner.

One part I seem to find that is more often than not, the correct size,
are those stereo 1/8th inch plugs that plug into a computer or MP3
player. They almost always seem to be a sloppy fit and get noisy because
of loose fitting.

I bought several cheap ones on ebay and they were all crappy (from
several sellers). I bought a Radio Shack one on Ebay for 3 times the
price of those cheap ones and it fit perfectly. The seller had 3 left. I
bought all of them, even at $6 a piece. I dont know why no one else can
make them things to fit properly, but I was happy to find some that did
fit and not annoy me with crappy sound.

 

On Tue, 23 May 2017 13:59:25 -0700 (PDT), "pfjw@aol.com" <pfjw@aol.com>
wrote:

We still have these guys: http://store.acradiosupplyinc.com/

They may have a gussied up website, but they are still an 'old time' radio store with
wooden floors, bins and hang-racks. And I can get a 'onesie' on a Saturday afternoon.

Not cheap. But, there.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

I wish we had that nearby!!!

 

[amdx]

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

It's official. Radio Shack is closing their doors. The nearest store to
me (in a big city about 60 miles away), is having a "going out of
business sale". Yesterday it was 80% off almost everything. But there
was little left to choose from. I got a few audio cables, some heat
shrink tubing and a couple 12v 1a transformers. That's about all I could
find.....

This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old electronics
stores, and while they have not had much in recent years, I still liked
their stores, and over the years I found their equipment was made fairly
well.

The guy said they are presently going to keep about 70 stores, which is
about one per state, and they will only be in the very large cities.

This sucks!!!!

The last one in my town closed about two weeks ago.

 

[pfjw@aol.com]

We still have these guys: http://store.acradiosupplyinc.com/

They may have a gussied up website, but they are still an 'old time' radio store with wooden floors, bins and hang-racks. And I can get a 'onesie' on a Saturday afternoon.

Not cheap. But, there.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

 

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <og23l0$1pfs$1@gioia.aioe.org>, jdangus@att.net says...

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:
This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores

Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.

They sold predominately cheap import stuff.
Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.
No amount of mismanagement or corporate greed could save
them.

Most of the components seemed to be low quality.

The manager of the local store 40 years ago had a major complaint with
the company. Whatever was on sale, the company would ship him many of
the items. He had an alotment of so many dollars. He may wind up with
half of that in antennas that he could not sell, but could not order
many of the items he could sell.

Even back in the 1970's I almost never bought anything from them in the
parts line. They did sell a few nice large items. Bought one of the
Model 3 TRS 80 computers from them, and a nice police scanner.

 

[mike]

On 5/23/2017 11:29 AM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

It's official. Radio Shack is closing their doors. The nearest store to
me (in a big city about 60 miles away), is having a "going out of
business sale". Yesterday it was 80% off almost everything. But there
was little left to choose from. I got a few audio cables, some heat
shrink tubing and a couple 12v 1a transformers. That's about all I could
find.....

This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old electronics
stores, and while they have not had much in recent years, I still liked
their stores, and over the years I found their equipment was made fairly
well.

The guy said they are presently going to keep about 70 stores, which is
about one per state, and they will only be in the very large cities.

This sucks!!!!

Local store here is at 60% off.
Even at 60% off, they're still WAY more expensive than online.
RS was only viable if you had an emergency.

 

[Carter]

On 5/23/2017 3:47 PM, Foxs Mercantile wrote:

Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.

Yup, had a GREAT manager at the local RS -- helpful, knowledgeable, a
really nice guy. Sadly, they fired him because of the bogus quotas.

 

On Tue, 23 May 2017 16:15:39 -0400, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

On Tue, 23 May 2017 17:04:56 -0400, Ralph Mowery
rmowery28146@earthlink.net> wrote:

In article <og23l0$1pfs$1@gioia.aioe.org>, jdangus@att.net says...

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:
This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores

Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.

They sold predominately cheap import stuff.
Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.
No amount of mismanagement or corporate greed could save
them.

Most of the components seemed to be low quality.

The manager of the local store 40 years ago had a major complaint with
the company. Whatever was on sale, the company would ship him many of
the items. He had an alotment of so many dollars. He may wind up with
half of that in antennas that he could not sell, but could not order
many of the items he could sell.

Even back in the 1970's I almost never bought anything from them in the
parts line. They did sell a few nice large items. Bought one of the
Model 3 TRS 80 computers from them, and a nice police scanner.

One part I seem to find that is more often than not, the correct size,
are those stereo 1/8th inch plugs that plug into a computer or MP3
player. They almost always seem to be a sloppy fit and get noisy because
of loose fitting.

I bought several cheap ones on ebay and they were all crappy (from
several sellers). I bought a Radio Shack one on Ebay for 3 times the
price of those cheap ones and it fit perfectly. The seller had 3 left. I
bought all of them, even at $6 a piece. I dont know why no one else can
make them things to fit properly, but I was happy to find some that did
fit and not annoy me with crappy sound.

Back in the day, when we had Radio Shack in Canada, MOST of their
product was middle of the road or better. A lot of their stuff was
REALLy good stuff.

 

On Tue, 23 May 2017 19:27:39 -0400, Carter <k8vt@ameritech.net> wrote:

On 5/23/2017 3:47 PM, Foxs Mercantile wrote:

Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.

Yup, had a GREAT manager at the local RS -- helpful, knowledgeable, a
really nice guy. Sadly, they fired him because of the bogus quotas.

Here in Canada a LOT of the stores were franchises - locally owned
businesses that HQ could not fire - - -

 

[Chuck]

On Tue, 23 May 2017 15:52:31 -0400, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

On Tue, 23 May 2017 15:58:07 -0400, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:

On Tue, 23 May 2017, Foxs Mercantile wrote:

On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:
This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores

Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.

Yes. They were traditional when they were a s mall chain in the Boston
area. But they were going bankrupt, which is why Tandy bought the chain.
And one reason Radio Shack was successful after that was that it was
everywhere, at a time when electronics were widening. The average home in
1971, the year Radio Shack came to Canada, had a tv or so, some am/fm
radios, maybe a record player or stereo. But five years later, there were
pocket calculators, digital watches, home computers, tv games, endless
stuff and getting wider, the result of the switch to semiconductors, and
then especially digital ICs. And Radio Shack was there on every corner, a
more familiar place than the old time electronic parts stores that were in
basements away from the mainstream. Radio Shack was niche back then, but
it was a place when a wider audience could get those metal detectors or
shortwave receivers or scanners or whatever without having to go to some
niche store. There was no competition, the others came later. Radio
Shack was there every time something new came along, so you could get that
Casio music keyboard that would sample, even if you were in some small
town.

ANd that's how the parts survived, Radio Shack could sell other things and
carry the parts. ANd it worked. I didn't buy parts there much, too
expensive and limited in selection, but it was convenient. But since I
paid attention and got the catalogs, when I started buying "stereo" stuff,
I bought at Radio Shack, usually when the item was on sale, or better yet,
a clearance item. And I bought a bunch of computers there, since they
were convenient. The catalog gave all the information, I could just go in
and get the item off the shelf.

And then at some point, other companies were doing the same thing, and
Radio Shack stumbled, losing its way.

Michael

So there was a bankruptcy even back then..... I did not know that, but
it seems they have gone thru a lot of them. Two recently.

I never understood the connection with the Tandy leather company. Maybe
there was no "real" connection, just that they bought the business. (Is
Tandy leather still around?).

There was a point when Radio Shack was called Allied Radio Shack. Did
Allied buy R.S. or was it the other way around? I dont know much about
the history, I only recall what I remember over the years. I remember
when they sold Archer brand items too.

However, I was pleased with most if not all of their gear, and I have
quite a bit of their stuff, from a few scanners, a radio, several
multimeters, lots of plugs and connectors, and a video switcher.

I realize their parts prices were on the high side, but I paid the price
because their stores were nearby and handy. Sure beats paying the
shipping from most places, and before the internet buying by mail was
involved, required mouth to mouth discussions and having a pile of paper
catalogs laying around. Far too complicated just to get a resistor,
capacitor, phono jack or semiconductor. It was easier to drive to R.S.
and just buy it. But I do agree their parts in recent years were very
skimpy and limited.

Regardless, I liked their stores and will miss them.....

The only reason I even found out that they were closing is because the
9volt battery connector broke on my portable weather radio, so I stopped
at R.S. to buy one. (I did not know they were closing). I had no problem
paying probably about $4 for one of them connectors. Now, I'm stuck
ordering one from ebay (I found a pack of 5 for about $3), but I hate
having to wait a week or more to get small parts like that, and my bench
piles up with projects waiting to be repaired, while I wait for parts.
Lately, when I buy a part, I usually buy 5 or more and keep them on
hand, so I have that stuff here. Its costing me more to stock all that
stuff in the end, but there is no way around it....

What once took a day or two to repair something sometimes takes months
now, because I have to keep waiting for each and every part I need.
Radio Shack provided a good service in that sense, and I was willing to
pay their prices for the convenience. Now they are gone, and I'm not
happy about it....



Radio Shack, by the late 60s, had stores in Boston and Portland Maine. Tandy bought them and a few years later bought Allied which was out of Chicago.

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[Tim R]

They're long gone in central Virginia.

There is nowhere else to get a connector or other small part locally. Big box home improvement stores don't have anything close, and the specialty hardware stores were driven out of business long ago.

Yeah, you can get cheaper and better stuff online, but you can't have it when you need it.

 

[Michael Black]

On Tue, 23 May 2017, Carter wrote:

On 5/23/2017 3:47 PM, Foxs Mercantile wrote:

Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.

Yup, had a GREAT manager at the local RS -- helpful, knowledgeable, a really
nice guy. Sadly, they fired him because of the bogus quotas.


That's some of the mythology of the place.

People complain about "Got questions? We've got answers", because they
took it literally. When in reality it wasn't that they'd be a source of
information, but having that adapter fo solve a problem.

I don't think the chain ever deliberately hired "technical people". But,
lots of people need jobs, and retail often means flexible schedules. So
the teenager interested in electronics would apply for jobs at Radio
Shack, since it was in line with the hobby. And I seem to recall
something about an employee discount, which had to be good.

So in the seventies I certainly had friends who worked there.

But I think with time, it became a less interesting place to work, more
about consumer electronics than hobby type things, so the hobbyist was
less likely to apply. Or maybe it's that "electronics" became mainstream,
so any kid with a cellphone applied, fancying himself as a "stereo whiz"
or something, so the hobbyist had competition.

Michael

 

[Michael Black]

On Tue, 23 May 2017, clare@snyder.on.ca wrote:

On Tue, 23 May 2017 19:27:39 -0400, Carter <k8vt@ameritech.net> wrote:

On 5/23/2017 3:47 PM, Foxs Mercantile wrote:

Middle management was draconian at best. Always grinding
on the store managers to meet constantly changing quotas.

Yup, had a GREAT manager at the local RS -- helpful, knowledgeable, a
really nice guy. Sadly, they fired him because of the bogus quotas.
Here in Canada a LOT of the stores were franchises - locally owned
businesses that HQ could not fire - - -

That was the case in the US too.

But in the US, their Franchise stores often were hybrid, selling Radio
Shack items, but also other things. I remember going to one, I guess in
Maine, in the seventies, able to get some interesting books because they
carried more than Radio Shack items.

Michael

 

On Wed, 24 May 2017 07:49:59 -0500, Chuck <chuck@mydeja.net> wrote:

Radio Shack, by the late 60s, had stores in Boston and Portland Maine. Tandy bought
them and a few years later bought Allied which was out of Chicago.

It's crazy how businesses merge and re-merge, and unmerge. The only
connection that Tandy had with Radio Shack was that both were for
hobbiests. (Entirely different hobbies).

Allied Radio is gone, but Allied Electronics remains today (their
commercial business).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Electronics

Since I was on Wiki, I looked up Radio Shack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack

It's a long article and quite interesting. As technology changed, so did
R.S. (This article is worth reading).

In that article it says that May 31, 2017 is the official closing date
for most stores (except private ones_.

That confirms it.

 

[Ian Field]

<oldschool@tubes.com> wrote in message
news:dcv8ic9rs19glsb19jiq6rop77ckkk6mss@4ax.com...

It's official. Radio Shack is closing their doors. The nearest store to
me (in a big city about 60 miles away), is having a "going out of
business sale". Yesterday it was 80% off almost everything. But there
was little left to choose from.

A few months ago I found a Radio Shack calculator dropped on the ground by
some recycling bins.

Its an old retro LED job and the = button needs a convincing jab to work -
but it has a proper on/off slide switch that doesn't get knocked on in my
jacket pocket.