rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

This yellow sign drooping over our local Radio Shack, wet and sagging after a downpour, is hard to read at best, and the news is dismal also.

added: I have to admit that in the four years since we moved back here, I have made a total of three purchases there - each a fairly inexpensive item.

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Basil Loc: New Mexico

I used to work at a Radio Shack back when I was in High School. I remember that I always had to ask customers "do you need any batteries today?" If I failed to ask a customer that question I'd get chewed out!

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Thanks for that. It jogged my memory. The batteries which powered that shot were my most recent purchase there {I've been running my Pentax K-30 off rechargeable AA-cells lately}

pdsdville Loc: Midlothian, Tx

Sign of a company that did not keep up with the times.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Killed by the Internet. For the last 20 (maybe 40) years, they haven't seemed to have a clear identity.

chevman Loc: Matthews, North Carolina

Bill, I do believe you have hit the nail on the head. Years ago when people used to do various electronic projects Radio Shack was one of the places to go for parts among other things.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

I have early memories of my Dad purchasing small electronic items via mail-order from "Allied Radio" of Chicago. At some point, they were acquired by Tandy and became "Allied Radio Shack", before reverting back to being "Radio Shack". I suppose Tandy could sell everything from Texas, but I'm having trouble coming up with a business model that justifies having a little store in almost every community

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

When I was growing up I started learning electronics with a little crystal radio set. I then built a short-wave receiver from a kit. I made other projects which even involved etching circuit boards. The Allied Radio catalog and the local Radio Shack store were the go-too place for all of the parts you needed - but so many of them were 8-cnt resistors and 10-cent capacitors and an occasional $2 variable capacitor or variable resistor. As interest in this sort of thing faded and rents soared, Radio Shack was destined to fail. They couldn't sell enough cell phones and little robotic toys.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

I saw the same thing yesterday in Anderson, Indiana. Are they going out everywhere? We're losing two regional chains around here, too: HH Gregg, an electronics retailer, and Marsh supermarkets. Signs of the times?

Szalajj Loc: Salem, NH

My local Radio Shack closed a year ago, without much fan fare. The store front was still empty the last time that I passed it.

Then about 1.5 months ago the Shaw's Supermarket in the same shopping plaza closed. That store was a victim of their pricing model.

When Market Basket customers went on strike and stopped shopping at their stores to force a management shake-up, our local Shaw's, reaped the benefits for apx. 6 weeks. But once some of the Market Basket board of directors were forced out, and the former President and CEO was reinstated, Shaw's saw their market share dry up and they started to close their under performing stores.

Supply and demand, as well as pricing structure caused the closings.

Without foot traffic, you lose market share! Without sales, your business model fails! Failure to change with the times and modify your product line to keep up with customer demand just exacerbates the lack of sales problem!

Unfortunately today's kids have lost the do-it-yourself bug that previous generations grew up with. We now live in an age of instant gratification! "Keeping up with the Jonses" with regards to electronics killed the likes of Radio Shack! We're going to witness a record number of retail bankruptcy filings in the coming months as retailers are finding it hard to compete with online sales. Bricks and mortar stores are becoming ghost towns. Cell phones have enabled shoppers the luxury of making purchases from anywhere and at anytime! It's become a 24/7 world of shopping that bricks and mortar stores have often failed to recognize, and adjust to.

Will we be looking at a world where there won't be many surviving retail stores in the very near future? We have already seen the implementation of online grocery shopping, which would be the last holdout for bricks and mortar retail!

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

We lost our Radio Shacks some years back. However, I did see one (new) open somewhere in the last two weeks. Don't remember where. They were always good for those hard-to-find items that larger retailers simply didn't carry. Some of their clerks were pretty knowledgeable. I think their downfall here was that they started hiring people who didn't know diddly about electronics, so lost their "knowledge" edge.

TonyReynolds Loc: Granville, OH

Wow, that was like a trip down memory lane! Went on from there to get a degree in electronics. We still have a RS store here but I've wondered for years how they keep the doors open selling basically cell phones. Especially when you have a Verizon store on nearly every corner.

PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

See more and more of those signs popping up all over. The Radio Shack in Slidell, La. is still open. At least for now.

Don

Merlin1300 Loc: New England, But Now & Forever SoTX

Agree - killed by the internet.
I get my components at DigiKey or Mouser, and fun stuff at Electronics Goldmine and others.
Consumer kit building was killed by ROHS => the death of 60/40 Tin/Lead resin core solder (the non-lead replacements are HORRIBLE to work with), and the proliferation of SMDs - which are particularly persnickety to work with.
Many Ham Radio operators have moved to digital or computer synthesized transmitters & receivers - - few build their own rigs any more.