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Radio Shack to Close 1,100 Stores

Your radio shack logograndfather’s electronics store is about to go through a drastic downsizing.

Radio Shack released their latest quarterly report today, and the news is not good. Sales were down nearly 20%, and as a result they lost about $191 million dollars in the last 3 months of 2013.

This is but the latest quarter with a poor financial report, and Radio Shack has decided to take drastic action. They’re going to be shutting down  around 1,100 under-performing stores, leaving them with around 4,000 locations in the US.

According to Radio Shack CEO Joseph C. Magnacca, this comes as a result of a months-long study: "Over the past few months, we have undertaken a comprehensive review of our portfolio from many angles – location, area demographics, lease life and financial performance – in order to consolidate our store base into fewer locations while maintaining a strong presence in each market."

This is sad news. Radio Shack was a great company once; they were at the forefront of a number of breaking developments, including personal computers. RadioShack had one of the early commercially successful PCs, and for the longest time was a great source of electronics components. Unfortunately, they never really adapted to the big-box era, so when consumer electronics exploded Radio Shack was never really capable of competing against Best Buy and other chains that could offer a larger selection and cheaper prices.

Engadget

 

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Comments


Paul March 4, 2014 um 2:36 pm

They relied too much recently on mobile phone contracts to make money. That was a risky thing to do.


Patrick Perez March 4, 2014 um 5:06 pm

FYI, the headline has a bonus zero. I believe it is 1100 stores closing.

Nate Hoffelder March 4, 2014 um 5:09 pm

Fixed it, thanks!


Scott Tuttle March 4, 2014 um 9:04 pm

side effect of staffing their stores with people ignorant about electronics plus online competition.


Thomas March 5, 2014 um 2:04 am

I’m really surprised that they’ve been as successful as they have been. I expected them to collapse when the electronics hobbyist market did. As it stands, they’re pretty much a Walmart electronics department in a separate building.

Nate Hoffelder March 5, 2014 um 11:01 am

Yes, it is puzzling that Radio Shack outlasted Circuit City and CompUSA.

fjtorres March 5, 2014 um 12:51 pm

Whatever their failings, they had/have(?) a better inventory management system.
CompUSA (classic) had an inventory system that reported products as out of stock (with no pricing info) that were sitting on shelves by the dozen and insisted they had stock of products nobody could find after 20 minute searches.


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