[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Glen VanDenBiggelaar]

I also think you had to factor in the retail Scene of the 1970's to mid 1990's. It revolved "the Mall" back in the eighties, the typical shopping mall (here anyway's) was were the middle class did 99% of their shopping. Every mall (here anyways) followed the same basic layout- a long corridor lined on both sides by shops and at one end a Safeway for groceries  and at the other end a major department store. Here, the most common was Woolco (Wolworth in the US?),Simpson Sears (as it was call back then) and sometimes K-Mart, Zellers etc. Every Mall had also it's basic "small" shops -Usually a movie theater in the parking lot, a record store, Arcade, Toy shop (for us was tops in toys and toys and wheels) and a bank, restaurant, Hair salon, and a Radio shack Store, usually strategically placed close to Safeway, so Mom could dump the kids there or at the toy shop and get the groceries. 
With the death of the middle class, so came the death of 70% of shopping malls- People now drove to the big box stores -usually all huddled together in a what we here call "Commons" and it's just a bunch of separate big buildings in a group, but not attached to each other. Or they go to a "attraction mall" like our West Edmonton Mall, so they can swing by our Apple store etc.
Radio shack thrived in small spaces catering to local people- Most people did not have to go very far and did not have access to "Better" stuff, or cared. If it wasn't at the mall, it didn't exist as far as most people were concerned.Radio Shack also carried CB and Ham stuff too, and nobody else stocked stuff like that.
But, like I said before, most malls are Dead, so even if RS does become Viable again, they will have to do so without all the malls, and that could mean a whole lot more expense than just to rent a space.

By the way, La Source is owned by Bell Media and has nothing at all to do with Radio Shack. A few years back, Intertan (which was RS's Canadian Identity was bought out by Circut City and Tandy sued them over the Radio Shack name, - and stop selling ANYTHING Radio Shack Related so they had to rename all the stores "the Source or La Source". Bell bought them out when Circut City went belly up.