Looks like they were purchased by Tai Lopez’s PE firm and pivoted to crypto (exchange + token) + edgy tweets at the height of the bubble. RIP Radio Shack.
Sure do. I loved going to Radio Shack, as a kid. I still have a few screwdrivers and whatnot, purchased there with allowance money. If they were still around, I’d be still shopping there. Microcenter is not bad, and of course ebay/amzn/newegg. Still there was a kind of charm about an old RS store, with the junky stereo equipment and made-in-Taiwan-or-wherever-was-cheapest toolsets and the guys behind the counter wearing ties. A lost era.
There are a few RadioShack left, though the one near me still has the parts cabinets from years ago, most of the store is bicycles, tobacco, and cell phones now.
No vapes? Seems like a good crossover market for DIY inhalers (or whatever vape machines are called), especially if they're already comfortable selling tobacco.
I owned a couple of them. Unfortunately useless for understanding electronics. It is not their fault, they were no substitute for an electronics class.
> “It’s our voice, a new voice, one for the people,” said Abel Czupor, the chief marketing officer. “RadioShack’s audience used to be only an older demographic, but as times have changed and e-commerce has taken over, the old voice of RadioShack is no longer relevant.”
Everything about this quote makes me want to throw up.
Seems like it's all -- and only -- about brand and image. Nothing about value or risk or profit. Who buys an investment on brand alone?
> we continue to see robust interest among gaming-token start-ups, in particular. They understand that the RadioShack brand is congruent with their own play,”
I consider it unfortunate that Radio Shack feel compelled to hire a person from an unrelated segment and are even pressurized to pivot into a space (NFTs, general "crypto") that is being viewed with skepticism (perhaps less skepticism than it deserves).
While I myself am still studying this space, I do feel that there is a significant mismatch here.
What's especially stupid is that the maker economy, as it's now called, is very much of interest to young people and Radio Shack totally missed the boat on that by becoming a phone store. The old Radio Shack (the one that made money) sold parts for people who wanted to build electronics. That field is hotter than ever.
I had hoped that maybe Home Depot would have swooped in at the last minute and bought up RadioShack as they're at different ends of the DIY market and could have had some good crossover opportunities. And maybe Home Depot could have created some maker spaces in their big box stores. Anyone who has had anything cut at Home Depot has likely seen the "No precision cuts" signs, but what if that was a premium service one could purchase? Laser cut plywood? Waterjet cut aluminum panels? Might not have been a market for it in every store but I'd like to think it could have worked at a couple of locations in each large metro and maybe trickled down from there.
Wish the Shack had gone all in on the Maker stuff. I miss the old days (90s) when I could buy small quantities of components. Now I'm stuck buying the 1000 pack of 1/4W resistors in all the Ohms, and so many other things. But they come back on Crypto? Now!? Tell me your business is dead w/o saying "we're dead".
Our local RadioShack doubled down on the maker components. I go buy things from them weekly just to show they have community support. I really hope they don’t close.
Despite the statements at the start of the article, I remember at least the tail end of RadioShack and that still existed near me when I first got into electronics.
Nowadays, a lot of my project ideas die because I need some part, that I have to order and wait for shipping and by the time that happens, I've lost motivation or my mind has engaged another idea. It would be really nice to have a RadioShack or microcenter to at least pick up basic stuff, but ofc the former is basically dead and the latter has 0 presence the third largest US economy somehow.
Going to guess your local RadioShack is one of the handful of independent RadioShack dealers left. It would be a shame if they ended up dropping the RadioShack brand because the current owners of the brand find being profane as a good way of getting attention.
There’s no Radio Shack left to execute on any strategy, unfortunately; REV bought the brand, and just the brand (along with many others), and is busy burning residual goodwill in order to shill whatever crypto nonsense they’re pushing.
Really sad to see RadioShack reduced to this. Grew up on a Tandy Color Computer. Hate seeing RadioShacks Twitter account being dragged through the mud by a foul mouthed crypto scammer intern.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8wwBIA8wMw
That was a stepping stone along the path to the crazy tweets: https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3423441/to-the-surprise-...
Everything about this quote makes me want to throw up.
> we continue to see robust interest among gaming-token start-ups, in particular. They understand that the RadioShack brand is congruent with their own play,”
I consider it unfortunate that Radio Shack feel compelled to hire a person from an unrelated segment and are even pressurized to pivot into a space (NFTs, general "crypto") that is being viewed with skepticism (perhaps less skepticism than it deserves).
While I myself am still studying this space, I do feel that there is a significant mismatch here.
[1] https://emamo.com/event/nftnyc/r/speaker/abel-czupor
[2] https://cryptobrowser.io/people/abel-czupor/
It was part of the 90s revamp when they turned into a phone and remote-controlled toy store.
Nowadays, a lot of my project ideas die because I need some part, that I have to order and wait for shipping and by the time that happens, I've lost motivation or my mind has engaged another idea. It would be really nice to have a RadioShack or microcenter to at least pick up basic stuff, but ofc the former is basically dead and the latter has 0 presence the third largest US economy somehow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp