Radio Shack Last Days

[AJ1G]

Groton CT store is now vacant.  Westerly RI store has most of the component stock that's still left at a buck per item, most other stock at 90 percent off or $1.  Just did some stocking up on fuses, connectors, and audio cables and adapters.  Their last day in Westerly will be Monday, when all the remaining stuff will go into grab bags for very little money.

[ka1tdq]

I joke with my wife that all the stores I like go out of business.  Radio Shack, Sears (tools), Barnes & Noble, etc. We hang out at shopping malls sometimes. The Phoenix metro area has 9, and they're really nice when the temperature is 120 degrees. She has fun looking in the stores, and all there is for me is walking around with a coffee.

We do have two electronics stores called "Fry's Electronics."  They're an all encompassing electronics store (TV's, computers) and electronic components.  The components section is pretty extensive too. 

But, that'll last for maybe 10 years and they'll be gone too. 

After that, we're all relegated to mail order parts.  But then again, maybe we'll all be too old to hold a soldering iron without shaking anyway. 

Jon

[K1JJ]

Sad in some ways.

On the same subject - whenever I visit a large mall, I cannot believe that some of those homo clothes and trinket specialty stores are able to pay the bills considering most are empty of customers. How do they afford the huge rent, salaries, insurance, franchise fees, administration, etc., etc?  Most of the stuff they sell is overpriced garbage anyway. By now, I would have thought most malls would be vacant and the web-based retailers would have squashed them.

Another thang: The locals rarely have the size or model I need. And I pay 7% sales tax.. or is it more now in CT? In contrast, shopping on the web gives us almost infinite selection.  The brick and mortar days are fading away.  Amazon and retailers operating out of their garages are in vogue.  The only things I buy locally anymore are groceries, coal and heavy equipment, like lawn mowers, snow blowers, etc., for easy servicing.

For hams, online electronic parts buying is a breeze and beats Rat Shack hands down. It IS hard to believe that they are going bye-bye though.

T

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Amazon has brick-and-mortar stores. They just opened another one in NYC May 25. More coming around the country.

[KC4VWU]

We're all dinosaurs! The trend today is buy it, keep it for a year or so, then throw it away. I don't throw nothing away unless it is definitely trash! If I wash my hands and dry them off with a paper towel or two, they are even saved to let dry, flattened back out, and saved for later clean up jobs! Sad to say, the new age of micro-electronics and laziness has ended the days of the hobbyist repairmen.

Gone are the days of a new year "wish book" catalog, fresh free battery card, and free flashlight. The thrill of a P-Box kit with the smells of rosin core solder, burning plastic and sometimes flesh. I don't think I could put one of those together even today without it being a train wreck! Gone are the days of having an oasis to retreat to when the XYL goes shopping for clothes!

Radio Shack was not the end all for my parts or equipment needs, but it still felt like I had lost an extremity when I saw the last store in this area shut down a couple weeks ago. There is no place left to pick up simple last minute, need it now parts around here. Like a friend of mine said to me quite a few years back, "Tandy is Handy!"

Tandy WAS handy. RIP Radio Shack.

...Phil

[AJ1G]

Just as I was leaving the store,  an old  guy dressed in a 1940s style brown suit, spats, and a fedora pulled up in a '47 Frazer Manhattan that sported a what looked looked like a homebrew 6 meter Squalo, but slightly on the small side.  He opened the trunk of the Frazer and took out a bucket of Radio Shack Lifetime Guarantee 6J6s.  Said he had been trying for weeks to get them replaced under warranty without any luck at RS stores from Texas to up here in RI.  I told him that some guy just bought out the last of the Westerly store's tube inventory, but that the store up in Wakefield might still have some in stock.  Last I saw of him, he was wheeling the Frazer out of the parking lot onto Route 1 north, headed for Wakefield. I called the store up there and told them it might be a good time to close early for the rest of the afternoon.

[W6TOM]

  I always had a Love/Hate for Radio Snack, I remember my father taking me to one of the original, maybe the original, store on Washington Street in Boston when I was a kid, early 60's. That was a neat place!!! Then Tandy bought them out.

 Cheap parts, poor service.

  Before I retired I built special projects for my job and would frequent a family run electronic parts place in Berzerkeley, half the shelves were bare and often I got a "we can get for you next week". The problem was if I wanted it "next week", I would have bought it NEXT WEEK!!! I began to buy more and more on the net. One time I asked who their biggest customer base was. I assumed the students at UC Berzerkeley, wrong!!! All the electronic engineering students were doing "virtual circuit design"!!! Their biggest group of customers were the Artsy Farsty Group, they wanted LED LIGHTS for ART PROJECTS!!!

[KB1VWC]

 Stopped in at the local Falmouth Ma Radio Shack. They apparently are one of the only stores that will remain open into mid to late June. They are still very well "stocked" with stuff. According to the manager, they will get whatever is left from the other stores that will close at the end of May for even further liquidation. He also explained that stuff continues to flow into the store from the warehouses; as orders had been placed through corporate long ago for various stores and will now be shipped to this Falmouth store. He said some of the other clearance stores are Middletown RI and I believe he also said Mansfield, Ma. Lot's of stuff, but I really don't need anything. Of course I did buy a new Butane powered soldering iron for 11.00. My old mid 80's Pyropen has some kind of junk in the valve body that makes it erratic in operation. This one doesn't look very well made, but for 11.00 it becomes a throw away.

Steve

[AJ1G]

Went back to the Westerly store this morning and picked up some morte connectors, relays, fuses, and resistors.  Most of the connectors, including BNC tees, and UHF tees, were ringing up at  65 cents. I brought along my Kepco bug wooden box with the Radio Shack Corporation Boston paper label, and put my stuff in it for the trip out the door.

They were supposed to have grab bags for sale on the last day, but the manager told me that what they were told from their regional management is that whatever people could fit of the pricier items that were already marked down to five dollars into the smallest size of the bags they had in stock could be sold for 25 bucks a bag.  Most of these items were fairly large, and you could not fit more than one or two of them into the mandated bag size.  None of the components or stuff already marked down to a dollar were to be put into the grab bags.  The manager was not very happy about that.  Ironically, a final RS marketing decision doomed to failure....

In a symbolic final purchase, I actually bought a radio, an AM/FM/WX band receiver for 5 dollars.

The manager told me that the Wakefield RI store is already closed.  Don't know where Frank is going to get his 6J6s warranty replacements now, maybe they will have some over on the Cape.

[W1RKW]

The RS in New London CT was my hang out when I was a kid back in the 70's. I don't know if he was a manager or a sales person but his name was Red. He was hippy like. This guy was the nicest guy and bent over backwards for me and my brothers when ever we stopped by. He was somewhat knowledgeable and my Mom liked him because she didn't consider him a creep and was just very personable. I don't know how much stuff I bought from him but he was always helpful and curious with my projects. I'd stop in with my Popular Electronics magazine articles to collect parts and pay for them with my allowance. He'd help anyway he could to see me through.  Then one day he was no longer there. My visits then became few and far between.  Another electronics store opened up in the area and I frequented them and they're still in business to this day but they were next to a hardware store that was a fixture in New London. I never forgot about Red. Many years later I had to fix something at my parents house and went to a local hardware store. This store was like an old RS. It had everything. Guess who was working behind the counter, Red. I did not recognize him at first as he put on a lot of weight and cut his long red hair but he recognized me when I stopped in. He asked about my Mom and brothers then it clicked. I don't know what happened to him but won't forget him on how he treated me.  The hardware store went out of business and of course the New London RS changed and I move away but that place has good memories.

[W7TFO]

Hey Tommy, what do homo clothes look like?

Just curious...

73DG

[KA3EKH]

Said it before and will say it again, surprised they lasted this long. For me I had not been in one in the last ten or fifteen years, long ago maybe thirty or forty years ago they were useful but then discovered Ham fest, Radio and Television parts distributers that are all gone now and then finally the internet. So much of this reads to me like when you talk about some girl you knew in high school. Somehow the memory is all better then what the reality was and remember today they are just as old, fat or senile as we are today, if not already dead. It’s fun to remember about the past but think sometimes too many of us fall into the trap of thinking that the world has changed around us and not remembering everything that transpired.
I often wonder about companies like RCA that produced a whole world of first in the broadcast business and at one time from post WW2 to the sixties you would be hard pressed to find any AM Broadcaster not using an RCA transmitter, processing and microphones and how they dominated the market in TV with things like the TK-14 Black and White TV camera that everyone had, the TK-27 film chains, TK-44 the first common color TV camera that most broadcasters could afford or the TK-76 being the first TV Mini camera. I thought the massive amounts of money they generated from sales of any one of those products would keep them in business forever but in a ten year time span in the seventies and eighties they went from being a giant to extinct. Same thing is happening to Harris today, they went from Gates Broadcast to Harris and now the parent company has spun them off and stripped them of their name and they had to go back to Gates. Wonder how long they will last now? Today there are more non US companies then ever in the broadcast market. Nautell from Canada, Rhodes & Schwartz from Germany and Thompson from France. The last three transmitters that I have been involved with purchase and installation were all Nautell. They all replaced Broadcast Electronics and Harris products.
If anything I am surprised that Radio Shack lasted this long and have to give them credit for surviving ten or twenty years longer than I would have ever suspected. Those “Hacks” that were managing it in many ways did a better job than the ones at RCA broadcast.
A Footnote:
Every time I meet someone from New Jersey I always ask them “What the Hell happened to that state?” at one time sixty or seventy years ago that was the technological center of the world, something like Silicone Valley today and now look at it. Camden is one of those places that’s like driving thru Damascus Syria. The most popular answer is that the state taxed the business to death so they all left.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Here's something to ponder:
States in top 10 of GDP rank 2015 and lowest in business ranking
GDP rank 1 - CA - business rank 50
GDP rank 3 - NY - business rank 49
GDP rank 5 - IL - business rank 48
GDP rank 8 - NJ - business rank 47

These 4 states accounted for $5.26T GDP in 2015
The entire U.S. GDP was $17.393T so the remaining 46 states only accounted for $12.13T.
Those remaining 6 states in the top 10 GDP rank only accounted for $4.83T so the remaining 40 states accounted for just $7.30T.

What is GDP you may ask - "The gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the primary indicators used to gauge the health of a country's economy. It represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period.  You can think of it as the size of the economy.

[W6TOM]

   The PRK (Peoples Republik of Kalifornia for you in Rio Linda) and the PRNJ, PRIL, and PRNY are in a race to the bottom, my money is on the PRK. I just hope the race continues until after I no longer care as I don't wish to move.

[n2bc]

UGH - the only state of the above I have NOT lived in is IL.

Oh, back to Radio Shack.  RS was pretty good to me. in 1964 or 65 I helped open store #57 in the eastern edge of civilization outside of Buffalo NY (*).   Part time, $1.50/hour + commission.  After a few weeks I had keys to the store, combination to the safe. 

My parents didn't like it much as I couldn't drive - too young.  Mom drove me to work after school, dad picked me up - usually having to wait for me - oh, I was also somewhat of a janitor.

I was licensed in '63.  Many RS parts ended up in my 'projects', I would put all of my commission  $ into goodies - still have the D-104 I bought!

They were expanding like crazy in the 60's growing from double digit count to over 6K as I recall. 

I had fun until I found another growing company in the big city (Buffalo) in '67.  Stayed there for 34 years - had many many jobs and a few too many moves.

73 to all,  Bill N2BC

* = Clarence, NY

[Pete, WA2CWA]

   The PRK (Peoples Republik of Kalifornia for you in Rio Linda) and the PRNJ, PRIL, and PRNY are in a race to the bottom, my money is on the PRK. I just hope the race continues until after I no longer care as I don't wish to move.

From a business ranking, they are at the bottom (rank of 50 out of 50) but from economic dollars contributing to the U.S. economy, they are number 1.

[W1RKW]

CT is in a race to the bottom as well. All the RSs are gone in my area. No more "emergency" runs on a Sunday.   Insurance giant Aetna is leaving. GE left for Boston. UTC is next. The CT economy stinks. Times are a changing. Just hope my favorite local independent brick and mortar electronics store Cables and Connectors isn't subject to the ongoing demise in CT. 

And for those who do mail order and need another source, Cables and Connectors in Newington CT is a great mail order electronics business.

[W2NBC]

 The one and ONLY Valiant I have owned (still do), was purchased from the manager of a Radio Shack in Stamford, CT. He took it on trade and "held" it for me knowing I would take it!

Those were the days..

There are still a few "electronic" stores around, and they are ALWAYS packed with the same bunch of guys wearing what looks like bed clothes walking up and down the aisles just searching for parts..  

I am close to a GREAT little place with much more in actual parts and components than RS ever had:

http://makezine.com/2008/07/05/hidden-gem-wayne-electron/

[Pete, WA2CWA]

The one and ONLY Valiant I have owned (still do), was purchased from the manager of a Radio Shack in Stamford, CT. He took it on trade and "held" it for me knowing I would take it!

Those were the days..

There are still a few "electronic" stores around, and they are ALWAYS packed with the same bunch of guys wearing what looks like bed clothes walking up and down the aisles just searching for parts..  

I am close to a GREAT little place with much more in actual parts and components than RS ever had:

http://makezine.com/2008/07/05/hidden-gem-wayne-electron/

And in central NJ, on Route 22 in Green brook, we have the Green brook Electronics retail store:
https://www.google.com/search?q=greenbrook+electronics&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 (See photos of the store on the right)

[KA3EKH]

One of my favorites and a place I always stop at when out in Dayton is Midwest Electronic Surplus. Not as many big transmitter parts but way more than Rat Shack had.

http://www.midwestsurplus.net/index.html

[kd1nw]

I grabbed a few 9 and 12 volt relays from the westerly store monday.. but in RI there is Avtec on Gansett Ave in Cranston. It's a small mom and pop shop and I've found they have a good selection of parts

[w1vtp]

Very sad.     I just found out today that the Manchester, Willow st store is closed.  The nearest store now is in Derry NH.

I think they are just cannibalizing themselves while closing stores. I wonder if there are any warehouse supplies left or if it's all in the stores?

Al

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Back around the late 90's or maybe early 2000's, Radio Shack must have closed down a bunch of stores in the Ohio area. At the Dayton Hamvention flea market, there was at least 10 spaces dedicated to selling lots of stacked up cartons of Radio Shack stuff all priced to move quickly. I came home with three 30 foot telescoping masts for $5 each.

Sort of reminded me of when Heathkit, back around 1992, was dumping all their kits at Dayton when they were leaving the kit business.

[WA1QHQ]

I thought Nick Cannon was going to save Radio Shack, change it into a supplier of audio gear for the Hip Hop community...guess that didn't work out very well.

[KC4VWU]

Nah! Shoplifting doesn't generate any revenue.