RadioShack To Rebrand As "The Shack"?

Harry writes "Rumor has it that RadioShack is planning to re-brand itself as The Shack later this year, after eighty-eight years under the old name (most of them with a space in between 'Radio' and 'Shack'). I hope it's not true, because I don't think the move would do a thing to make the retailer a better, more successful business." Where will we go to buy soldering irons and those RCA to headphone jack adapters now?

Surveillance

[Baldrson]

Well since they aren't going to sell real electronics anymore, maybe they'll stop reporting who is buying what electronics components to the government. Or am I thinking of the 80s?

Re:Back in the day...

[p_trekkie]

Actually, they still sell logic chips and miscellaneous electronic components, albeit fairly well-hidden in the back of the store. I had a last minute idea for a project for a summer camp group I was leading last week and was able to pick up all the components I needed from RadioShack. Admittedly, the selection isn't what it used to be, but it's still there when you have a sudden pressing need for resistors, LEDs, transistors and capacitors....

Who knows what this "rebranding" will do for that section of the store....

Re:Back in the day...

[rikkards]

Every time I went into the Source (Radio Shack in Canada since someone still owns the name) and went to that section, the guy would always come over assuming I was stealing batteries or some remote control doodad because no one ever goes into that section anymore.

Re:How do they stay in business?

[Ohio Calvinist]

I remember that exact article, and you are right. I think RS does well in small markets (like where I am from) that doesn't have any of the big-box stores and tends to cater to customers who were told "I need a USB cable" but don't know what that is or where to get one. They expect they'll get marginally better (knowledgable) service than Wal-Mart with less hastle. Last time I was there in California a lot of people were paying the cellular bill there, which I don't understand why anyone would pay their bill in person when there are a lot more efficient method(s).

I think they key for them is that crowd, and the "I need it now so I'll pay a little extra" or the "I'll pay a little extra not to stand in line at wal-mart where the person in front of me wants to send a Money Order and buy a carton of cigarettes they have to get from the counter on the other end of the store."

They also do well when you're looking for esoteric batteries like for cameras, hearing aids, etc. They're also pretty good at having odd cables at decent prices (amongst other brick-and-mortars) such as a male-male 1/4" stereo cable for the AUX jack in newer cars. They are also good when you're traveling and need said odd batteries or a cell charger.

Re:legalize now

[cmpalmer]

Back in the early 80's, the Radio Shack store at the local mall had a fishbowl full of alligator clips marked "party favors" (roach clips).

Re:Beware of namechanges

[Anonymous Coward]

This could explain the recent rename of SciFi network. They want to lose their reputation for destroying series and bad made for TV movies, and hope that after changing their name to SyFy, people will forget. Unfortunately, they'll probably forget to fix their programming and just reaquire the bad reputation all over again.

Re:Beware of namechanges

[Trahloc]

That wasn't a rebrand, it was sold off to circuit city, now some other company prob runs it. I use to work for the @#$%@shack at one of their most profitable stores in a district of ~30. Because we weren't selling the 'right' products we constantly were treated like trash, the fact that other stores were running at a loss didn't matter, they sold cell phones so they obviously knew what they were doing. That is until those stores got shutdown because some bean counter finally saw the numbers and told the sales/marketing jackoffs to stfu. The people in charge have been ruining it the last decade trying to be mini a Best Buy instead of focusing on what they actually did best, being the 7/11 of small electronics/parts, cables, and batteries, gd idiots.

Re: competitors

[macraig]

The competitors of the traditional Radio Shack were not the likes of Ace Hardware, and only marginally were they stores like BestBuy or CompUSA. Radio Shack didn't sell hardware for mechanical engineering, like an Ace Hardware store; it sold hardware for electr(ical|onic) engineering. Its competitors were other electronics hobbyist and surplus stores, like Dow Electronics, Marvac Electronics, HSE Electronics, and so on.

Truth be told, though, Radio Shack's biggest competition came from the atrophy of that market. Over the last three decades, steadily more people have become consumers of electronics and stopped being creators or engineers of it. That is why Radio Shack transitioned from selling components to selling "pre-fab" products; they couldn't compete with those other stores in a dwindling market, and some of those other hobbyist stores have disappeared altogether. Could they have created an advertising campaign that would single-handedly have reinvigorated the hobbyist component market? I doubt it.

That said, this alleged re-branding is even more idiotic than Pacific Bell spending $750,000 to re-brand itself as Pacific Telesis Group (that was just the bill from the ad agency that came up with the name, not the total cost of the name change). "The Shack" isn't edgy or funny, it's just weird and dumb, especially because it will say NOTHING descriptive about the current business model or product offerings.

Re:Beware of namechanges

[badasscat]

With Verizon it probably helped. Anyone happy with the Bell Atlantic/NYNEX/GTE was already a customer, and wasn't going to switch just because of a name change. Changing their name gave them a chance to trick some of their unhappy former customers into trying them out again.

The Verizon rebrand happened when they still had a monopoly on northeast area local call service, and that was their only real business. There wasn't any choice of switching or not. You can rebrand as many times as you want when customers have no other company to go to. (A lot of utilities rebrand pretty frequently for that reason - my gas company just rebranded themselves as "National Grid" a little while ago, even though they only serve the Northeast. But I have no other choice of where to get my gas, so who cares?) I suspect my gas company rebranded themselves the way they did for the same reason as Verizon - they did not want to continue to be pigeonholed by their name into one region of the country. (Ditto for Cingular, now AT&T, which is an apt case of "back to the future".) In those cases, the rebranding allowed a local company to go national.

I would love to see Verizon try to rebrand themselves again now, in the middle of a major battle with Cablevision for TV and phone service, and an ongoing battle with the three other major cell phone carriers for cell phone service. It would be a disaster.

Any company that has major competition and is not region-bound by their name had better think long and hard about rebranding itself. You have to make the determination that your current brand is actually hurting you more than the confusion caused by rebranding would. I can't see how that's the case with Radio Shack. In fact, most companies interested in re-branding would be better served by going back to their roots and seeing what made them successful in the first place, not throwing it all away and trying to start from zero. (See aforementioned AT&T - how many telegraphs will you use today?)

Re:Surveillance

[istartedi]

Anyone wanna take that bet?

Yes. They're called traders. Ticker symbol RSH. You could short the stock, but that doesn't seem like such a bright idea since they have a PE of less than 10 and are even paying a modest dividend. They seem to have done a smart job over the years of changing with the times-- selling the infamous "trash 80" back in my youth, always selling consumer and hobby electronics, and now selling cel phones.

FWIW, I think the name change is a dumb idea though. It sounds like it was pitched by the same consultant that wants to rebrand Pizza Hut to "The Hut". Every few years it seems like there's a re-naming fad. 10 years ago it was the neologism fad that gave us "Verizon", "Altria", and another one that use to be Anderson Consultants. I can still remember Anderson Consultants, but for the life of me I can't remember what they call themselves now.

Re:Surveillance

[Kamokazi]

I live in a town of 10k people. That's the only place to go. It has a Gamestop, UPS Store, and some crappy clothing store. It might technically be called a strip mall, whatever. Anything bigger is an hour drive away, and I usually just order from the internet at that point.

And no, I don't live in Montana or Wyoming or something. This is actually Ohio.

Other than having no local stores with anything decent, it's pretty nice for geeks like me who'd rather spend their weekends indoors playing PC games. Quiet, low cost of living, I've got a good job, and the local telco has fiber run to my house that's fast and reliable, and their service is great (it doesn't hurt that the operations manager is my dad's weekend drinking buddy). With all the Comcast and Time Warner horror stories, I'm afraid to move anyplace where I can't say I love my ISP. (TWC is around here, but in the parts where the local telco has their fiber with IPTV, Time Warner marketshare is 20% or less...prople drop them like a bad habit as soon as they can.)

Re:Surveillance

[Nocturrne]

I used to be an exec at RadioShack, but left when they started to go into a downward spiral. Don't be fooled by misleading financial reports. The "profit" they claim was achieved through cost cutting. If you look at the details, you will see their revenue and sales have been dropping continuously for the last 8 years. They can't survive on cost cutting forever...

Re:Not Taking it Far Enough!

[TarrVetus]

As employees, we called ourselves CellularShack and iPodHut. We couldn't satisfy the (once) dedicated customers and do-it-yourselfers that came to look through our dwindling electronics parts sections--all we could do was try to sell them an iPod or cellphone. It was a miserable feeling.

Personally, I like GadgetHovel. It conjures ideas of Sharper Image and other overpriced random junk dealers, as well as uses "hovel," which captures the cheap and trashy feeling I get every time I go into a RadioShack.


Maybe it's a good idea they're rebranding. To me, RadioShack ceased to exist long ago. At least the new name will make it clear to everyone.

Radio Shack by any other name is just as FAIL

[Orion Blastar]

I remember the 8-Bit days when people jokingly called their computers as Trash-80's when they were TRS-80. Tandy Radio Shack, and then they developed the TRS Coco or Color Computer to replace the TRS-80, and then later the Tandy 1000 IBM PCjr type PC Clone, et all. The Tandy 1000 IIRC used the PCJr sound and video chips but ran Tandy-DOS and Deskmate and used special expansion slots that weren't ISA compatible because of pinout changes. Gee I wonder why it failed? :)

Radio Shack was named after the part of a Navy Ship that had the Radio equipment in it. Those not in the Navy won't get the reference.

They should have called it eShack or Electronics Shack or something that sounds better than Shack or The Shack.

I recall every time I went to a Radio Shack they didn't have the part I needed in stock, and the catalog price was way expensive and I ended up finding a cheaper part somewhere else. The only thing neat about Radio Shack were their wireless controlled cars and toys that I would buy for my son, and hand held video games. I remember a friend of mine applied for a Radio Shack credit card and got a free hand held Black Jack game for signing up. I used to be a member of their "Battery Club" when I was a teenager, and every month I would get a free battery. I remember buying magnets from Radio Shack for science experiments and parts to make stereo speakers, etc.

Want some Eggs?

[djdevon3]

NewEgg doesn't sell eggs. You can't order a real Bengal from TigerDirect. You can't buy Micro Stars from MSI. and finally... Macintosh does not sell real Apples.

Re:I prefered "Radio Shaft"

[demonbug]

As bad as Radio Shack's prices are, they're still cheaper than Best buy...