Something has gone terribly wrong with RadioShack
Nostalgia has a more exquisite value to those at the waning, and so, with RadioShack it is thoughtful that we begin to remove the coins from its fountain.
Where to start the narrative of its decline is imprecise.
We have no Thucydides to inform us of the characters and intrigues. But, we do possess the benefit of a panoramic view of its history.
RadioShack survived enormous competitors such as Crazy Eddie, The Wiz, CompUSA and yet today, rather than dominating a retail empire, the own a contemporary, proverbial, shoe repair franchise.
We are not at its absolute end yet, that will happen in a time lapse, from something that was lovely in to something fully digested and ugly at the last image.
My funeral oration for RadioShack is not eloquent, nor is it weepy with reminiscing or intimacy:
I first met Radio Shack in the early 1980’s. Their semi gloss catalog was my wish list. When I was about 20 years old I bought a computer with the turbo xt86 chip, an early predecessor to the Pentium line. It was overpriced, always broke down and I never forgave them. In the 20+ years since then, good will was never restored. When I would need a cable or power strip or other peripheral urgency, I would go to RadioShack, still resenting their ‘beingness’ and additionally angered by their ill trained staff. They never invested in their consumer.
They forced out a local White Castle from its marquis spot on 21st avenue in Astoria, NY. I never ate at that White Castle but it was one of their earliest locations, was a community ‘destination’ and its equivalency of Starbucks. As a spectator, I visited that new RadioShack location. Rather than displaying their inventory of goods and making it accessible for tactile, visual and audio lingering, they had cardboard representation of their bigger ticket items and postcards of the smaller stuff, like games. The text on the images was (something to the effect of) if you would like to purchase this item, please bring this card to the register. Electronics and consumer items are somewhat aspirational and for RadioShack to come into a lower income neighborhood and then distill its essence from its consumer is not inventory loss control, it is contempt.
They lasted 20+ years and won the pyrrhic victories but they never built anything substantial. Their tactics lacked strategy.
They garrisoned themselves in their own town so they could not be overtaken by the invaders, but hiding in a cave while World War 2 rages and then emerging to find Tokyo completely rebuilt maybe self preservation but they missed every trend and their cycles of hibernation have left them irreconcilably irrelevant. They can never come back. The greatest value they can now muster is to fix (or ship out to be fixed) your broken cell phone screen.
Farewell RadioShack. It’s been fun (not)