I heard a comedian once. He said he walked onto a RS store and asked "ya got anything made out of plastic?" They sell cheap stuff, that's about it, some of it is nice and some is krap. I'm a circuit designer so I have looked at some of their products designs.. sometimes they can find the worst designed stuff that they can pass off, it can just be incredibly bad. They had a multi purpose battery charger back in the day that was about the funniest design I ever saw... it's always about the cheap.. I bought a big numeral alarm clock from them, it had a 9volt backup battery, but when the power went out, the alarm sound, the high current display, the entire clock, was powered from the 9 volt and it would last about 5 minutes...... anything to sell batteries is my take on that. I had a shortwave radio on my list of things to get for so long that finally I got a RS one, compared to Sony it's a noise generator, complete waste, same goes for a CB I bought there, the store manager went ballistic when I tried to return it so I wrote them off as a supplier of anything other than odd parts I just simply can not wait for from DigiKey. They had only one store within 40 miles of my rural location at one point and it was owned by a CB'er that hated licensed Hams... what a jerk that guy was, I walked in and asked if he had something and he said "yes" and went back to messing with some stock or something... he was always trying to set up the receipts so you could not return stuff, it was just right out of the third world, the level of service... it turned out he was an old timey franchisee that would not sell the franchise back to the corporation so they built stores all over the area and shut him down.......
There is a radio shack in a shopping center where i ride my bicycle to. it always has customers in it..not many but the store is small. i hope they stay in business casue sometimes i will go just to look around and they always say hi to me and let me look around and ask questions if they are not busy with a real customer. Sure can't do that in a big store like best buy..they always say like "what is it you want to BUY?"....duh, can't just look around without them thinking you going to try and steal something. I like the radio shack by me...it has some cool stuff in it and at one time they sold a lot of cell phones ( don't know if they still do or not )
I bought a cell phone holder (leather) At RS for $2 (original $25) that fit a portable radio I got on Amazon for $20 (price mistake , it was worth at least 45) Good for the random purchase, but I rarely find anything that isn't second rate there.
Radio Shack makes most of its money trading equities/bonds, they have a pretty impressive operation. The storefronts are for tax purposes. Think of Berkshire which originally ran textile operations (last one in 85)
In many small towns all across america is where you will find many radio shacks. They are the only game in town when you move outside of the major cities. That is where a big chunk of revenue is coming from.
One thing RS has is a website with a good look and feel to it... I'm just now recalling how I reviewed it and got a $5 certificate when it first came out..... information is easy to access after you find a product too, they were way ahead of the curve when they designed that, way ahead, most of the web was "Hello, I'm a student, I apologize for my site being under construction......"
I just made some calculations. At 4 billion in revenue and 6000 stores thats roughly between 600-700k per year per store. I dont doubt that the shack has all these little trinkets for me like wire and looms and batteries, but I simply dont buy into all this. When have I ever needed to solder something into a circuit board or needed a plug or some odd battery. I dont know. I guess its good that its there for me, but I have never used it. A 4 gb SanDisk for 9 dollars might do me some good. I might check it out. Apple or Dell would do a lot of good by buying them up and converting the 6000 stores into technology centers to sell their jizz.
they have the worst customer service how they stay in business is beyond me. I think best buy should buy them out and stick them in their stores. They should stick them where they now sell CDs and DVDs because those 2 means of entertainment are going away pretty soon.
I bought some shortwave radios there, about 7 years ago, they're just like Sangeans The things won't pick up any programming now, there'sso much noise in the atmosphere these days, and I live in the boonies. I was hoping to use them for the "end times", when the internet no longer exists. Just in case. The local store does do a fair amount of cell phone and satellite TV business. I remember they had some little micro RC cars a few years ago that were pretty popular.