# How is Radioshack still in business? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 25, 2014, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498 "2014-09-25T04:12:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/81 "2015-02-09T21:37:15Z")
Is Optimus the other in house brand you’re thinking of? ---
**Author:** ![Tully\_Mars](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ab992/32.png) [@Tully\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tully_Mars)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/82 "2015-02-09T21:46:15Z")
> [@butler1850](#): > > They are long since separate entities. [1975](http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/22/business/market-place-liquid-assets-at-tandycrafts.html) in fact. (Article from 1982) Thanks. I still don’t remember where I heard that. At the time, I was amazed that Tandy Leather was still around. They have a large store on the south loop in Fort Worth with full-sized cow hides hanging in their display window. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/83 "2015-02-09T21:58:40Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > Don’t forget the PCjr-based Tandy 1000. And the [TRS-80 Handheld Computer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Pocket_Computer). My father-in-law had one to try out some commodities market algorithms he came up with. I taught him how to program in BASIC for it. This thing wasn’t bad considering the obvious limitations. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/84 "2015-02-10T00:39:20Z")
> [@Jake](#): > > Yep. We called it “Shit Shack” > Back in the tube days, it was _the_ place to go to check and buy tubes. I’m just old enough to remember their big ‘tube tester’ machines in the back (late 70s?) Didn’t really know what it was, but it looked cool! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/85 "2015-02-10T03:06:33Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > I’m just old enough to remember their big ‘tube tester’ machines in the back (late 70s?) Didn’t really know what it was, but it looked cool! Some drug stores had them, too. I’m pushing to remember that. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/86 "2015-02-10T16:17:21Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > I’m just old enough to remember their big ‘tube tester’ machines in the back (late 70s?) Didn’t really know what it was, but it looked cool! > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Some drug stores had them, too. I’m pushing to remember that. 🙂 Stores like Two Guys had them also. This was a discount department store in the North East. We had several small independent electronic parts stores around and they all had tube testers. I was fixing TVs at a young age as it was really as simple back then as unplug, stay away from the metal box with the high voltage warning and pull any suspicious tube (blacken) and take them to be tested and then replace the bad ones or spraying the control knobs with contact cleaner and rotating them a few dozen times. This worked great except for the time when I put the cover back on the main set and screwed up dropping it and breaking the back of the main picture tube. Then my parents had to call in a professional repair man. I was probably 11 when I did this. I had built up a bag of tubes from old sets people were tossing and kept a very old black and white set going for years longer than it probably should have. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/87 "2015-02-10T16:44:16Z")
> [@Kansas\_Beekeeper](#): > > I’m baffled how a company that was so successful, especially with the TRS-80 back in the late 70s, could fall so far. You are aware that 1979 was 36 years ago? Plenty of companies have cratered from huge successes that were far more recent. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/88 "2015-02-10T22:01:37Z")
> [@wolfman](#): > > Anybody remember [Radioshack.com](http://Radioshack.com) the superstore they had in Denver? That was pretty sweet I thought, I loved going there. It was like an actual electronics parts catalog that you could walk through and touch before buying much bigger than any other parts store I had been too. I thought you had the name wrong, but I checked my old catalog stack indeed that was the name. There was one sort of near me. Went there a several times. Nice be able to buy opto-isolators, odd type resistors and such without having to scout around the smaller places. Didn’t last long. I haven’t been to a standard parts places in a very long time. [Radioshack.com](http://Radioshack.com) emphasizes the corporate dimwittedness. Hey, drive here and buy stuff like you can off the Internet! And then there was [Incredible Universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incredible_Universe). ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/89 "2015-02-10T23:45:27Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > I thought you had the name wrong, but I checked my old catalog stack indeed that was the name. I would have sworn that it had a different name for a while, then only switched to [Radioshack.com](http://Radioshack.com) after several years. That’s actually why I was trying to Google it to see if I could find the original name but can’t find any evidence of it, anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Lobot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@Lobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobot)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/90 "2015-02-11T01:04:28Z")
I had a TRS-80 CoCo2 in the mid-'80s and at the time kind of resented it for not being a C64. But the TRS-80s in general had excellent manuals that taught you BASIC from top to bottom. Really, those computers bred a whole generation of coders. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/91 "2015-02-11T01:14:52Z")
I had a C-64 and when in graduate school and IBM 8086 for machine code and C. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/92 "2015-02-11T19:53:59Z")
> [@wolfman](#): > > I would have sworn that it had a different name for a while, then only switched to [Radioshack.com](http://Radioshack.com) after several years. That’s actually why I was trying to Google it to see if I could find the original name but can’t find any evidence of it, anywhere. The oldest [radioshack.com](http://radioshack.com) catalog I have has an intro letter suggesting it’s a new thing. It took some effort to find a copyright date in it: 1999. 3 retail stores listed. But I wonder if that was just a name change. The name I keep thinking of is something like “PartsAmerica” or some such. But searches along those lines suggest an old car parts site. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/93 "2015-02-11T20:18:15Z")
Radio Shack has been operating under that name for as long as I can recall, going back to the 1970s (and, I’m sure, much earlier). They sold stuff under the Realistic brand, as noted above. And their advertising touted that they were “A Tandy Company”, but “Radio Shack” was always the name over the store. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/94 "2015-02-11T20:30:14Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > I’m just old enough to remember their big ‘tube tester’ machines in the back (late 70s?) Didn’t really know what it was, but it looked cool! > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Some drug stores had them, too. I’m pushing to remember that. 🙂 I remember my dad back in the 60s pulling off the back of the old console TV set and pulling out tubes. Then we’d go to the drugstore, put the tubes in the tester, and if they were bad, the store sold replacement tubes. He’d buy the new tubes, take them home, put them into the set and it would work as good as ever. It really was a do-it-yourself job then and you saved the cost of a TV repairman making a call. They would come to your house. You didn’t take the set to them because they were so big and heavy. The repairman would fix the set right in your home, or if he couldn’t fix it there, he would take it back to his shop. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/95 "2015-02-11T20:58:39Z")
We were replacing tubes in our TV set in the 1970s. As I remember, there were maybe a dozen tubes of various sizes. When the TV stopped working, we’d pull all of them (carefully labeling where each came from) and go to Radio Shack to test them and buy replacements. This was, I think, only for the B&W set. I can’t remember doing this for a color television. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/96 "2015-02-11T21:03:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Radio Shack has been operating under that name for as long as I can recall, going back to the 1970s (and, I’m sure, much earlier). > > They sold stuff under the Realistic brand, as noted above. And their advertising touted that they were “A Tandy Company”, but “Radio Shack” was always the name over the store. This was a specific superstore concept they had. I don’t know how many there were but there was one in Denver maybe 2004 or so. I thought it opened under a different name, but I just can’t find it. But either my memory is faulty, or they eventually changed the name but it was a physical store named “[RadioShack.com](http://RadioShack.com)” that lasted 3 years or so. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/97 "2015-02-11T21:16:15Z")
And of course, now that I search Google for it again, this thread is the top search return :smack: Maybe I should look through Alta-Vista archives or something like that, that was big back then. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/98 "2015-02-11T22:12:36Z")
> [@wolfman](#): > > And of course, now that I search Google for it again, this thread is the top search return :smack: Because Gogol knows you’re a Doper. Seriously. Search again from a private browsing window and SDMB will be weighted much further down the results. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/99 "2015-02-11T22:15:40Z")
> [@wolfman](#): > > This was a specific superstore concept they had. I don’t know how many there were but there was one in Denver maybe 2004 or so. Are you thinking of Incredible Universe? There was one in Sacramento that I visited once, and once only. A Disneyland of greed-shopping with trams and fun for the kiddies and endless nonsense, something from a Mad magazine parody of the 1950s. Besides being approximately the size of the Pentagon, they had the distinctive feature of a sort of ironwork dome, maybe 100 feet across and 60 high, painted a tasteful purple. The Sac one turned into a Fry’s a few years later. The dome thing is red now. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498/100 "2015-02-11T22:51:40Z")
Screw that place. I’m glad to see it die. Worst place I’ve ever worked, hands down. Good riddance. > [@butler1850](#): > > . > > I realized after a year or so of running the store that management had it’s head in the wrong orifice, on top of doing the math and realizing I could make the same hourly rate with much less stress flipping burgers. No kidding. I remember working 60 hour weeks for just under $300. Then, at the end of the year, where you might get lucky and get a few big easy sales, management had the balls to _cut your pay rate!_ :mad: Fuck The Shack. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-radioshack-still-in-business/699498.md?page=6)