Oh, Radio Shack. What a beautiful place you once were, a commercial haven for those seeking RC cars, resistors, and universal remotes. Then, the downfall, as you veered away from your origins, only to lead to an ultimate collapse. More recently, the brand was supposed to return to new heights online… only to fall afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission. (via Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg)
The Radio Shack brand was picked up a few years ago by a company known as Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV). The company’s modus operandi was to take well-known but beleaguered brands and relaunch them as online-only operations. Beyond Radio Shack, REV also owned a number of other notable brand names, like Pier 1, Modell’s Sporting Goods, and Dress Barn.
Unfortunately, the Radio Shack rebirth probably won’t reach the stellar heights of the past. Namely, because REV has been accused of operating a Ponzi-like scheme by the SEC. Despite huge boasts allegedly made to investors, none of REV’s portfolio of brands were actually making profits, and the SEC has charged that the company was paying investor returns with cash raised from other investors — unsustainable, and a major no-no, legally speaking.
We were cautiously optimistic when we heard about the REV buyout back in 2020, but at this point, it’s probably best to come to terms with the fact that Radio Shack won’t be coming back. The name will linger in our hearts for some time to come, but the business we knew is long gone. Sometimes it’s better to look to the future than to try and recreate the magic of the past, especially if you’re doing inappropriate things with other people’s money in the process.
Oof, too bad.
Not like the relaunched RS would even have anything going for it except nostalgia…
Pretty much. Things have changed too much, and even more so with recent events.
Not entirely gone. If you know where to look* on the Mass Pike, you can see an 80s Radio Shack ad, painted on what I believe was their Commonwealth Ave warehouse.
*just east of the Comm Ave bridge, on the north side of the Pike, it’s at the top of a white wall.
Shouldn’t post before coffee. Map link here…if you squint, you can actuially see the lettering
https://maps.app.goo.gl/FVk6RUitbHipivdY9
Sorry, not Comm Ave., it’s the Brookline Ave bridge.
If the point was competing with Temu or Banggood, then SEC was right, it was a ponzi thing. I am guessing ENRON has to be repeated again and again.
For things to happen, US would have to bring all the production back, factories, industries, ENGINEERS, WORKERS, etc etc. I do not see anything of a kind happening any time soon, because it is not just one industry or few dozen shops that should be returned, but gazillions mom-and-pop little garages and shops powering the industries, The Main Street that used to be the backbone of the US industries. Japan managed to keep some theirs intact (after resisting the US-management “lessons” it didn’t need, btw), Canada (to a degree), too, so I am afraid we are stuck “feeding starving banksters” (2008 term) who can only invent ponzi schemes – so-called “fractional banking” IS a ponzi schema invented and implemented by the UK banks – who actually copied that from Netherlands, but I digress; only “selected/anointed few” are allowed to run ponzi schemas, and not anyone else.
If DEV would be serious, they’d approach this with a different mindset – let’s start with micro-financing, instead of riding the 30% APR gravy train (credit cards), let’s issue credits (not cards) for 3% financing, flat percentage, no gotchas, simple and straightforward. Finances thus realized go DIRECTLY into building local factories, all 50 states, no exception, again NO EXCEPTION, so that production stays LOCAL, instate. Again, not managers’ salaries, and not stocks, direct investment into things that make things, buildings, machines, hiring and training ENGINEERS, etc etc. Robots-shmobots, AI-Shmei-ai, those are all tactical details left to the local implementations, how, when, where and why.