Comment: They tried like only RadioShack can (Score 2) 314
They just tried too late, and made such a tepid entry, it only served to get people exposed locally, and ultimately hooked up with SparkFun and Adafruit (or eBay for knock-offs which RS could damn well produce in Fort Worth, TX.)
First, RadioShack acknowledged there was a need, so they teamed up with Make and began carrying Arduinos.
Then they made a very public appeal to the community for feedback on how to be awesome again. http://hackaday.com/2011/05/27...
Next, the stores received a Bright White remodel that did nothing but highlight how few people there were in the store, and there was that Super Bowl commercial that may serve as Tandy/Radio Shack Corp's epitaph.
You may notice the rather complete shelf of branded electronics tools and racks of organized component drawers, largely missing from most of the stores you've been in lately.
They could be *owning* the SDR and Quadcopter market with DIY and R2R set-ups, workshops. The 3-D printing and DIY screen repair stations are cool but unused and expensive.
Bottom line; RadioShack's used to *BUZZ* with activity. There were computers humming, disk drives loading, an ungodly cacophony of "Made in Taiwan" beeps and squawks, CB's that needed squelch, and customers enjoying and producing that buzz.
It's gone, and no number of Cell Phones will bring it back.
Domestic Hi-Fi for the blue collar audiophile could, so could an in-house engineering department that hires grads and rewards them with equity. Take the damned thing private for a while, narrow the focus.
Hell, I'd even advocate for a merger with MicroCenter or buyout from Adafruit or SparkFun. (10MM could have bought more than greenfield construction)
