It's too bad that Radio Shack misunderstood the threat posed by Amazon. To get a bit ahead of myself, Best Buy did NOT misunderstand the threat, and they're still around. Anyway, Radio Shack went all-in on impulse buys. They focused on putting stores in shopping malls near entrances/exits, and filled their store window with silly gadgets like plasma balls and robots. They also tried to become a cellphone store, for some reason. Best Buy survived by picking the worst locations. In industrial parks, near highways, land nobody else wanted. They properly realized that Amazon's weakness was their two-day shipping. If you need something right now, you're willing to drive 30min-1hr to get it.

A closer competitor to Radio Shack was Fry's Electronics, which also located their stores on non-prime real estate, but their infamously bad customer service [1], embezzlement losses, and poor inventory choices doomed them.

[1] - shout out to the Fry's employee at the Freemont location who got in a huffy fit when I decided that the price for an oscilloscope probe was too high, and tried to argue with me and say he couldn't remove the item when I wouldn't insert my card to pay for it. Really A+ attitude there bud.

There's something of a parallel history for Radioshack up here in Canada.

Radioshack's were everywhere once upon a time. As things became less repairable and less repaired, the components racks gradually shrank and the stores pivoted to selling a variety of other electronic junk: video games, cell phones, toys, etc.. Their prices were consistently higher than the competition and what they stocked was frequently of low quality.

In the early 2000's the Canadian franchises were bought out, and re-branded as "The Source". I asked a store manager why they'd turned their back on such a well recognized brand for "The Source", and he told me that the Radioshack brand was indeed well known, but associated with junk and high prices. I couldn't argue with that. They kept selling the same stuff at the same prices and quickly earned the same reputation Radioshack had. By this point the components racks were long gone and they were no longer even a good place to find adapters, cables, etc.. Somehow, "The Source" stores continued to persist.

Last year, they closed a significant chunk of their stores and re-branded again as "Best Buy Express". I haven't bothered to go into one since this happened but, if they're selling Best Buy's stock at Best Buy prices, it should be a distinct improvement despite the loss of identity.

Back when Radioshack re-branded to "The Source" I felt like some piece of my childhood had been lost, but Radioshack had already ceased to be Radioshack by that point, in Canada at least. "The Source" was always one of the stores you just walked past. I doubt anyone will miss them.

"The Last RadioShack In Maryland" is my new favorite Tom Waits song

I remember fondly the talks I had with strangers about their hobbies and learning about technology while I was employed there. I remember seeing this specific stores sales numbers and thinking to myself that their daily sales were close to our monthly. Our store closed shortly after.

> She said that since she didn’t go through training, Edward’s father said she couldn’t officially be a repair tech. But through the years, she honed her skills.

> Before he passed away, she said he was incredibly impressed with her growth.

> “Last year, (Michael King) informed me, ‘I can’t give you the title because you didn’t go to college, but you do a heck of a good job repairing things and fixing it and taking care of people,’” Henning said.

All that hard work and nothing but a verbal compliment, no wonder no one in retail cares anymore.

Lots of memories from my own childhood and my kids'. My dad took me on my first visit to a Detroit-area store in the mid-60's. Used to love just walking around and checking out the shelves. Sort of a Fry's vibe but there was one in nearly every decent-sized town. The oldest piece of running tech currently in my house is a 20 year-old Realistic 4-port gigabit switch that connects my office machines to the router in the family room :).

So sad. They had a huge chance to be the center of the "maker world", but instead they had some terrible leadership that was trying to make the small chains compete with Best Buy.

If the chain simply focused on it's hobbyist roots, got into 3d printing, and tried to be a physical store for something like Adafruit, partnered with like Mark Rober or something, maybe pick up some other esoteric hobbies, they'd be thriving.

The truest form of hacking was when you could fuck with public utilities using parts you got at Radio Shack. I wish I still had my DTMF dialer, it was so cool. Maybe kids today are buying parts to build GSM base stations. Maybe they'll bring back pirate radio, once all the analog radio bands have been replaced with digital. I just hope they get to experience that thrill and wonder at the power that hidden knowledge brings.

It should be possible without too much searching to find the Onion headline "Radio Shack CEO Admits He Has No Idea What the Hell His Business Model Is."

Interesting that it should have lasted so long in Maryland, and that the last store should be in Prince Frederick (a town I never heard of). It seems to me that thirty years ago I spent a lot of time at a Wheaton, Maryland, Radio Shack