Radio Shack declares Bankrupcy again - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: casinada
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 06:29:06 am
content: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-radioshack-bankruptcy-idUSKBN16G06J?il=0Will they liquidate everything from the stores like last time?

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 01:24:16 pm
content: Our local store marked everything down 40-60% which made the prices about even with any other store.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 01:29:24 pm
content: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"Albert Einstein

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 03:07:31 pm
content: Quote from: xrunner on March 09, 2017, 01:29:24 pmMicrosoft disproved that though. I can do the same thing in Excel or MSSQL and get different results. Or reboot a windows server multiple times and get different results.

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 03:19:37 pm
content: Quote from: xrunner on March 09, 2017, 01:29:24 pmhttp://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/9-albert-einstein-quotes-that-are-totally-fake-1543806477Quote

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 05:13:00 pm
content: There is a franchise store next town over, I might have to poke my nose in and see if it is closing and what deals might be had.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 06:02:44 pm
content: It is interesting to read that Radio Shack needed the income from a mobile phone provider to stay alive.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 07:31:52 pm
content: In my area we have a store chain which is my substitute for Radio Shack without the annoying sales people... its called Sayal (www.sayal.com). They have toys, electronic gadgets, tons of components and parts, batteries, converters, RaspBerry Pi, breadboards, kits, etc. They are typically in huge industrial unit warehouses, prices are fairly cheap for most things.I could never see how Radio Shack could remain profitable as a business in today's environment. They are located in malls or plazas with high cost lease, small stores with limited inventory, and way too many of them. Companies like Sayal were able to carve into this niche by having way fewer stores... located in low-cost industrial areas/warehouse spaces so they could have large inventories. They have only 6 or 7 stores in all of Ontario, with about 3 or 4 in and around Toronto area.Radio Shack type electronic stores are just not a sustainable model today.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 07:39:23 pm
content: Last time I stepped foot in a Radio Shack they tried to charge me $25 for a 6' DE-9 serial cable. That was about 8 years ago, I haven't been back since.

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 08:04:50 pm
content: Just seems like investors figuring out ways to ring whatever profits they can out of a dead business.

author: iainwhite
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 08:10:30 pm
content: They have 1500 stores which is attractive to a partner that wants to buy into an instant retail presence.Unfortunately the last iteration was a partnership with Sprint, who have plenty of problems of their own.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 08:48:30 pm
content: This is good news and bad news.The good news - a bad business model implemented poorly fails. It is always good to see a win for math and science.The bad news - Radio Shack, bad as it is, is one of the few retail outlets for electronics parts left in the US. It is sad to see that market segment dying further.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 09:55:41 pm
content: Quote from: edy on March 09, 2017, 07:31:52 pmWe have a similar place in Australia.www.rockby.com.au. They have a huge range of electronic components, including some odd ball parts that have got me out of trouble in the past.I just bought a nice 30W solar panel there for $US 18

author: garboui
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2017, 10:15:35 pm
content: When I was at the Burlington sayal last week there was lots of radio shack branded stock there.

author: Dielectric
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2017, 03:21:45 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on March 09, 2017, 08:48:30 pmI was suitably impressed with the selection at Micro Center recently. Not super great on discretes but it's basically the Adafruit catalog in real life. I can't stop buying R-Pi Zeros, I think I have a problem.

author: raspberrypi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2017, 05:02:00 am
content: Quote from: Dielectric on March 10, 2017, 03:21:45 amThat place is ridiculously over priced. They had this clock you built that used old school VU meters to display the time. But it was $79.95. The sales people get commission by sticking a bar code with their employee ID on all the stuff in your basket when you are not looking. This pissed me off that the dude didn't ask, so I started peeling them off. It peeled the $79.95 sticker off the clock kit. So I just peeled off another bar code from something in those silver antistatic bags in their parts section and got the clock for $8.99. What a deal! And you know what? They still made profit off that clock thing and the other stuff they sell. RadioShack was getting ridiculous towards the end. I worked there for about three weeks during college in 2009 when I first moved to this state. I was so thankful for a job, I had just came from a state absolutely destroyed by the 2008 recession. I had to quit because their comision was a scam and I would feel bad charging the customers 29.95 for something they paid less then $0.10. You could sell one thing and it would pay your hourly wage for your shift, and they complain that they aren't making enough money.Another trick was that nothing would go on sale. We had this TV that was 299.00 yesterday then the next day it had a red sale tag on it for 299.00 saying WAS 399.00. No it wasn't. Target does this same shit. That used to be illegal.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2017, 06:14:28 am
content: Not to implicitly insult, I was only 6:Radio-Scrap ewwww.Quote: BrianHG, 1976.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2017, 08:07:14 am
content: The Radio Shack near me finally disappeared a few months ago, took me a while to even notice they were gone. The only thing I can recall buying there in the past decade is a 10' antenna mast because I could pick it up and walk home with it, shipping would have cost a fortune to order one. They became "Cell phone and crappy RC toy shack" many years ago.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2017, 01:02:13 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on March 10, 2017, 06:43:10 amWow, that is even before my time. Check out the olde school linear power supplyhttp://www.ljw.me.uk/educ8/The more famous form that era was the Miniscamp.http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/mini_scamp.htmlA rather eccentric fellow student built a Miniscamp over his bed. To get into bed, he had to remove the pillow and slide in from the pillow end. The idea was to program the switches whilst lying in bed. He went on to do a lot more crazy things. The classic was a 2m x 2m x 2m sandpit for his kids, built into clay soil. After heavy rain, it became a quicksand deathtrap, so he build a safety fence around it. Another odd project was a push bike, built with a truck air horn on it, left and right indicators, a 50W per channel Pioneer cassette AM/FM stereo WITH speakers built into a baby bath above the front wheel, an alarm system, quart halogen headlights etc, motorbike SLA. It was too heavy to ride. The "engineer" had little common sense and in the end he left the profession. He went on to become unemployable, instead preaching about the Illuminati and the end of the world and buying a property in the middle of nowhere where the government, the CIA and the Illuminati can't find him.In any case, there was a Minscamp reunion in Tassie a few years ago. I don't think there will be one for the Educ-8, and probably not another one for the Miniscamp. It would be great if someone could send an Educ-8 or Miniscamp to Dave for a teardown.

author: casinada
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2017, 04:50:03 am
content: I think it started. I went to a Radio Shack yesterday and they had some stuff 20%, 30%, and the electronic components, switches, connectors etc. were at 50% off.Probably wait a little bit more when they have 70% off deals like last time.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 02:02:22 am
content: I was in a Radio Shack yesterday. Don't know that I would expect deeper discounts. This store says they know that they aren't closing, but they are forced to offer the same discounts throughout the chain. The components, which are the things that most of us would be most interested in are marked down 50%, which makes some of them good values. Particularly since there is no shipping and immediate gratification. I picked up a bunch of slow blow fuses at 20 cents each and a bag of knobs, also 20 cents each. Surprisingly they had pretty good stocks.

author: raspberrypi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 12:41:46 am
content: I thought all the radio shacks turned into sprint stores. We don't have any around DC / MD anymore.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 02:49:02 am
content: Quote from: casinada on March 15, 2017, 04:50:03 amMay or may not happen. I was in my local store last week. The associate said that the prices probably won't go lower because as the stores close, the inventory will be shipped to a central distribution point to be parceled out to the remaining stores. I would guess, when they are down to the last few stores, those sites may have deep discounts to get rid of the last of the stuff that no one wanted.

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2017, 03:45:00 am
content: Quote from: casinada on March 15, 2017, 04:50:03 amLast time they had "grab bag" deals which meant 90%+ off if you knew what to take (not the 5% carbon resistors!). One person posted a picture here of a grab bag he got for $20 that looked like it legitimately had $200+ worth of stuff in it.

author: casinada
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2017, 05:03:33 pm
content: They're definitely closing. They posted big signs outside the door and they have some items discounted 80% off.Eachbag of binding posts cost me $0.60

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 12, 2017, 10:23:17 pm
content: no deals like that at my RS. I wanted a couple of mini SPST switches. Even with the discount, they were still $2.22 each. The clerk said that was the best deal in town, that no one had them cheaper. I let her know she was wrong. I still wanted them now, so I paid the price, plus there is still a bit of nostalgia from my ITT days. If we had a project coming up, we ordered from Mouser and Digikey. If we needed it NOW, RS was 10 minutes up the road from the school. That will probably be my last trip into the store unless they start giving it away, which I don't see happening.

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2017, 11:13:11 pm
content: A few years ago during the initial RS bankruptcy, our local RS lowered prices step by step. After the 80% off, the next thing a few days before the final close was "fill up a bag with as much as you can for $5?" Much of the good stuff was gone by then but I still managed to fill up 2 bags with batteries, HDMI cables, and some of the left overs in component drawers.The best thing I got from their closing was one of their high quality component cabinets for $200.

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 06:06:13 am
content: I was in one and they had medium-sized single-sided FR-1 project boards that commonly sell on eBay for $1 marked down from $9 to $5. Lots of other examples of stuff that, while marked down over 50%, was still several times more expensive than competitors. Radio Shack isn't content to mark up items 20% like discounters or 40% like most merchants or 100% like convenience stores, they mark stuff up 500% or more a lot of the time, at least on components. It's hard to believe they ever made any sales, the person has to be desperate for a part to complete a project but no sane person would consider buying all the parts for a project there.I should stop by that store after work again tomorrow and see if they have possibly "gone sane" by now.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 12:55:45 pm
content: Quote from: mtdoc on April 12, 2017, 11:13:11 pmYou couldn't pay me enough to use their batteries, they are about the worst I've ever seen. I value my electronics too much to have their batteries destroy them.

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 02:51:39 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on April 13, 2017, 12:55:45 pmI keep all alkaline batteries out of any electronics of value. They are all a risk IMO.. But the batteries i bought from the RS closing were mostly rechargable NiMHs and non RS branded lithiums. The RS rechargables are no eneloops but they work fine and pose no danger to electronics. Same for the non-RS litiums. Some of them are cell phone batteries which make nice power sources for small projects. All in all a bargain for the pennies on dollar I paid for them.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 03:27:34 pm
content: Quote from: JoeN on April 13, 2017, 06:06:13 amBack when they were the only game in town they did fine on this business model. The internet killed that model, and they haven't figured out a new one.

author: mc172
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 03:51:08 pm
content: I wonder how long the similar Maplin of the UK will survive...

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 05:06:50 pm
content: I was in a Maplin once when I was visiting England and it reminded me a bit of what Radio Shack was like 30 years earlier. I don't know if they'll survive long term but at the time it seemed they hadn't yet turned into mobile phone and crappy RC toy shack the way Radio Shack had.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2017, 05:20:58 pm
content: Quote from: mtdoc on April 13, 2017, 02:51:39 pmI have actually had RS NiMH batteries leak, luckily they did it outside of anything so there was no damage to anything but the danger appears to exist.