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Radioshack finally goes out of business

Radioshack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday, February 8, ending the chapter of what seems to be the most drawn-out death of a business this century. Radioshack has made a deal with Sprint, which will involve Sprint mini-stores opening in 1,750 (roughly half) of its locations that are being purchased by Radioshack’s largest shareholder, investment firm Standard General. The remainder of its 4,000 stores will close unless they are bought by third parties, something that Amazon has been in talks with the company to do.

Radioshack was founded in Boston almost a century ago by London-born brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann for ham radio enthusiasts. Over the next 40 years, Radioshack became a leading distributor of electronic equipment in the Northeast. In 1962 the company was bought by Charles Tandy, a Texas-based businessman who moved the company’s headquarters to Fort Worth and reinvented the store’s image as a place for hobbyists. Radioshack began selling accessories, batteries, transistors, and capacitors in addition to radio parts.

In 1977 at the height of its business with over 1,000 stores nationwide, Radioshack introduced the TRS-80, one of the first mass-market personal computers. The operating system of the TRS-80 was designed by Microsoft, a little-known startup at the time. The TRS-80 was a huge success, so much so that in the early 90s Radioshack needed to pivot to cell phones as a flagship because computers made the company so little money.

Unfortunately, Radioshack’s state today may have been caused by its huge emphasis on phones two decades ago. While other retailers like Best Buy began to succeed with phones and carrier stores rose in prominence, Radioshack lost its place at the top. The company abandoned its do-it-yourself (DIY) roots, but couldn’t compete with bigger electronics chains. Even in light of the big DIY/maker boom of the last five or six years, Radioshack still couldn’t find a way to reclaim its niche.

If you’ve actually been inside a Radioshack in the past seven or so years, well, you know what it’s like. The company has been staffing stores with single employees at a time who wait all day, bored, for customers to show up. Sadly, the masses who have been wondering for years how Radioshack stays in business will no longer continue to do so.

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