So the reports that have been floating around since Wednesday are apparently real: RadioShack is getting its paperwork together for a Chapter 11 filing, and depending which outlet you read, somewhere between 1,100 and 1,700 of its stores could get shuttered. The stock closed under a quarter a share the other day, which is the kind of number that used to mean something was a screaming buy and now just means the company is circling the drain. They've reportedly been talking to Sprint about handing over some store leases too, which tells you a lot about what RadioShack has actually been for the last few years — a place that sells phone cases and pretends the walls of capacitor drawers in the back are still relevant to the business.
I want to be honest about my own relationship with this store before I get sentimental, because I think that's the more interesting version of this post than just "aw, RIP RadioShack" that's going to be everywhere by the weekend. I have not bought anything meaningful from RadioShack in probably four years. The last three purchases I can actually remember were a 9V battery snap connector at like 8:45pm on a Tuesday because I needed to finish something before a demo the next morning, a random HDMI cable that cost way more than it should have, and a phone charger for a rental car trip that I bought under actual duress because I was standing in a mall and it was the only option in a twenty minute radius. Every single one of those trips ended with the guy at the register asking for my phone number and zip code like it was a toll I had to pay to leave the building, and every single time I said no and he asked again anyway. That specific ritual, more than anything else, is the RadioShack experience I'll remember, not the electronics.
But here's the thing that actually bugs me about the collapse, and it's not the nostalgia part. It's that there used to be an actual reason to go there that had nothing to do with Beats headphones or drone toys stacked by the register. If you were a kid taking apart a broken remote control, or building something dumb with an Arduino before Arduino kits were something Amazon could ship you in a day, RadioShack was the one physical building in a lot of towns where you could walk in and buy a single resistor, a specific gauge of wire, a soldering iron, heat shrink tubing, whatever. Not a twelve-pack of resistors you didn't need shipped from China in two weeks. One resistor, right now, in your hand. That's gone in most places already and it's going to be completely gone in a lot more places by summer.
Amazon obviously ate this business, and I don't think there's much of a mystery in why. If I need a part I mostly already know exactly what part I need, and I can get it cheaper and with more selection without putting on shoes. RadioShack tried to pivot into being a normal consumer electronics store around the same time everyone realized normal consumer electronics stores were already dying — Best Buy's been having this exact conversation for years, they've just got the size to survive a bad decade in a way RadioShack doesn't. The mistake, if you ask me (and nobody did, but this is my blog), was trying to out-Best-Buy Best Buy instead of doubling down on the one thing nobody else was doing, which was being the hobbyist parts counter of last resort. There's a real market of makers and hackers and people fixing stuff instead of throwing it out, and RadioShack had forty years of brand equity in exactly that space and mostly walked away from it to sell RC helicopters at a markup.
I don't know if there's a version of this company that survives the next six months. I kind of doubt it, honestly, given what the stock's doing. If they do file, I hope whatever's left keeps a few stores open somewhere with an actual parts wall, because there are still nights when you need one specific little thing and the only other option is waiting until tomorrow.