No one who's been in one in the last ten years will be shocked that the RadioShack chain is going bye-bye. A few days ago, the New York Stock Exchange began delisting the company. A fewer day ago, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that General Wireless Inc. has agreed to buy 1,500 to 2,400 of the approximately 4,000 stores RadioShack has in this country. They will close the others.
You'd think that an era in which we all have computers and smartphones and other electronics goodies would send sales soaring at a chain of technology shops…and it might if that chain had employees who knew anything about how the stuff worked.
Maybe someone will try that sometime…but usually, we get what killed Radioshack, which is the same thing that sank the Egghead Software chain that I used to patronize. It's the same thing that closed the CompUSA store where I used to buy computer equipment. It's the same thing that shuttered the Good Guys store where I used to buy software and computer equipment after Egghead Software and CompUSA closed. You'd go into these places, ask a question and you'd get either the wrong answer or none.
I'm not that tech-savvy but way too often at a Radioshack, I found myself explaining the products to the salespeople…or sometimes to other customers. I don't know what the pay scale was in these shops but it sure wasn't enough to keep anyone who knew their stuff around for long. The Ray Krocs of the world figured out how to set up their businesses so any minimum-wage teen could be hired and quickly trained to produce the exact same french fries. That interchangeability of service people doesn't work for every business in the mall.
If you ranked technical expertise via a four-star system with four stars indicating great knowledge and one denoting, say, my Aunt Dot's level, Radioshack made this mistake: Half of each store catered to the four-star folks without there being anyone on the premises with a four-star level of expertise. Then they ignored the three-star people, which was a mistake because that was the bulk of their potential customers. The rest of the store (cell phones, boom boxes, etc.) sought to sell to the two-star people. And most of the employees were somewhere between two-star people and Aunt Dot.
Still, it was at times a handy business to have around. I occasionally needed a certain cable or adapter in a hurry and I could usually find it at a Radioshack — and of course by that I mean, I would go in and locate it for myself on their racks. One time, I made the mistake of asking a salesperson and wound up explaining to them what it meant when we said a cable had a "male" or a "female" connector. And all the time, this person giggled because they thought it was dirty.