[Coco] RadioShack closing 1100 stores

[Nick Marentes]

Radio Shack were big with phones since the earl;y 80's. They saw a 
growing market in phones and they were right. Look where at the 
evolution of normal phones into smartphones.

What killed them is the amount of competition that came up to take up 
that markets.

And the fact that they "put all their eggs in one basket".

Radio Shack, like every other major retailer are always looking for the 
next big thing. The TRS-80 was a gamble which management had their 
doubts on originally. As it turned out, it became a success... until the 
competition closed in.

It could also be that Radio Shack are a large company and it can be hard 
for large companies to transition into areas as quickly as a smaller 
company. They were slow in keeping up with the trends, the competition 
often moving forward faster than them.

If they were to go back-to-ther-roots and support the hobby market, they 
would have to do it with less stores. The hobby market isn't as 
profitable and they will struggle to keep so many US stores open. 
Closure of stores is inevitable.

Nothing new here in Australia. All their stores closed down 10 years 
ago. Purchased by Dick Smith Electronics who themselves have struggled. 
They too have lost the hobby market and have tried to become a big 
electrical department store.

It's unfortunate but stores in high rental areas need to make high 
profits to survive else they shutdown.

Nick


On 8/03/2014 5:23 AM, Bill Loguidice wrote:
> You know, with all this talk of what Radio Shack's direction should have
> been and could be now, which includes going back to some form of hobbyist
> electronics or going down an alternate technological path, it reminded me
> of something I haven't thought about in years. Tandy's ill-fated experiment
> with super stores like Computer City (where I worked for a while after
> college) and Incredible Universe may have been a big factor in determining
> Radio Shack's "anti-tech" path and setting them on that smartphone-centric
> course that didn't end up working out. Those expensive detours may have
> sucked the life out of any potential internal momentum the company might
> have been able to initiate about returning to its technological roots.
> After all, those were the types of failures that Tandy as a corporate
> entity hadn't experienced in decades up to that point. That couldn't have
> sit well with the future decision makers.
>
> -Bill
>
>