When I first heard of the RadioShack bankruptcy, I was not surprised at all. Nor was I bothered by it. RadioShack used to be the go-to place for electronics parts and state of the art electronics. But those times have been long gone. The electronic giant made the fatal business decision to shift more into the cell phone parket. Many of their employees lack knowledge in teh electronics area but will try to sell you a cell phone with every purchase. At least that was my perception. Towards the end RadioShack management realized their mistake and tried to re-align the stores with the maker industry. But just putting Arduinos on the shelf by itself doesn’t do much. The employees aren’t well trained for these kind of products and therefore RadioShack never really lost its image as a cell phone store.
With the closure of many stores and the chapter 11 bankruptcy an era comes to an end. I’m not sure if it the stores in their current state will really be missed.What about you, how do you feel about the RadioShack closure? Please leave your RadioShack related stories and opinions in the comment section below.
Here are some pictures of my final blowout shopping trips:
First RadioShack bankruptcy blowout catch.
Second RadioShack bankruptcy blowout catch.
Pretty much cleared out store
Not much left
Links and Sources:
[1] QST: http://www.arrl.org/qst
Westerhold, S. (2015), "Goodbye Radioshack!". Baltic Lab High Frequency Projects Blog. ISSN (Online): 2751-8140., https://baltic-lab.com/2015/03/goodbye-radioshack/, (accessed: December 20, 2024).
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KK5WA
Sitting in the store for hours writing a tic-tac-toe program on a TRS-80, or playing Raaka Tu on the same TRS-80. Literally spent weeks in the store.
Chris
In the early 80s at one time there were 2 Tandy (that was there name over here) shops in Cologne, Germany.
I went there relatively seldom, because they only had a limited choice of electronic components, pre-packed in blister packs or little plastic bags. Other electronic shops in the city offered a much wider choice of components and you could buy just a single resistor. I remember buying some tools at Tandy. By the mid 80s the shops dissapeared, they didn’t seem to have a concept anymore.
The TRS80 was known at the time and had it’s place in the (home) computer community. One time it was mentioned that the TRS80 was used by a French space agency department developing a new Ariane rocket model.